Joshua 10:24
And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them.
The verse belongs to Israel's conquest of Canaan, which took place when Palestine was greatly disturbed and weakened by conflict, a condition that would have made the country easier for Joshua and the Hebrews to take. Joshua led Israel in this great work of victory at about eighty years of age, conquering foes, dividing the land, and setting Israel in a fair way to find the promised rest, with the Captain of Jehovah's hosts with him in all his victory. Joshua, whose name means saviour even as Jesus in Greek, was one of the two of his generation who wholly followed the Lord during the forty years of temptation and wilderness, and the book recording this victory was largely written by him.
The verse records Joshua having the Israelite captains of the men of war place their feet on the necks of the five defeated kings, who had been brought out from the cave. The kings had left their cities to join their forces in battle, and rulers left behind in those cities could then be called kings, so a later reference to the king of Hebron concerns such a ruler and not another king among the five captured at the battle.
In Joshua 10 the word souls and the word soul mean the people themselves, used over and over in the chapter to say that so many souls or persons in the cities were destroyed and slain. The primary meaning of soul shown here is the whole being, the whole creature, a living person. When Israel conquered Eglon and other towns, the people called souls were killed, and the original wording means dead soul, showing that a soul is a person who can be lifeless and killed and that a human soul can die.