Joshua 10:34
And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it: And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it:
Joshua with all Israel passed from Lachish to Eglon, and encamped against it and fought against it. This movement was one stage in the campaign to conquer Canaan and its several small kingdoms, marked by thoroughness that did not stop fighting until the work was finished. The peoples in this conquest were not spared because allowing them to continue would have let them spread the same corrupt influence. Joshua was about eighty years of age in leading this work of bringing Israel through the Jordan, conquering all foes, dividing the land, and setting them in the way to the promised rest. The Captain of Jehovah's hosts was with him in all this work of victory, and as at Jericho the invisible army of God gave triumph when Israel trusted, while failure to trust brought defeat as at Ai; Israel might have possessed the land soon had they been faithful, but backsliding brought adversity instead of prosperity.
The verse belongs to repeated statements in the chapter and its continuation that all the souls in the various cities were slain by the sword, meaning all the people were killed. Joshua destroyed all the people in many cities, using souls to mean persons who could be killed. Soul there in its first sense means a person, a living being or living creature, the entire man and whole man, as Adam became a living soul. A soul is therefore the man himself who can die: a living soul is a living person and a lifeless or dead soul, in the original language dead soul, is a dead person. It is not an inner man or separate entity breathed inside, not an immortal entity living inside man or capable of sentient existence apart from man.