Day 185—The Southern Campaign
When the LORD Fights, He Finishes
However you can engage today, we’re here. Read, listen or both.
The written portion gives an overview, with verses broken down into smaller bites, and journaling/prayer prompts for reflection. In the podcast, Steve Traylor reflects on today’s passage with Scripture reading, a deeper pastoral teaching, and prayer (about 15 minutes). Perfect for morning coffee, commutes, or when your eyes need a rest.
📚 Resource Library:
Printable Bible Book Guides: Discipleship charts for books we’ve completed together
Hard Questions, Honest Answers: Deeper dives on difficult topics that arise along the way
JOSHUA RESOURCE: A map of the Joshua campaigns and a reference outline is available here.
Why did God command total destruction—and what does that mean for us? Learn more at: The Devoted Thing: What Cherem Means
Joshua 10:16–43
Steady yourself before you read today.
Yesterday the sun stood still. An army fled as hailstones fell from heaven. Joshua marched through the night and arrived at dawn—and the LORD met Israel with power that no army could have manufactured.
Today the battle continues—but the tone shifts. What was miraculous gives way to what is methodical. Five kings cower in a cave while Joshua finishes what God began. Then, one by one, the cities of the southern hill country fall. Makkedah. Libnah. Lachish. Eglon. Hebron. Debir. The names pile up like stones, each one a completed promise.
This passage is not comfortable reading. The conquest means the end of kingdoms, the death of kings, the application of cherem—the devoted destruction commanded by God—to city after city. The text does not soften this. It was not meant to be softened.
What the text does say, again and again, is this: the LORD God of Israel fought for Israel. Not Israel fighting with God’s help. God fighting. Israel following.
Today we see that when God commits to completing a thing, He completes it—and the comprehensive nature of His faithfulness is not always comfortable, but it is always trustworthy.
1. Kings and Cave
Joshua 10:16–21
16 These five kings fled, and hid themselves in the cave at Makkedah. 17 Joshua was told, saying, “The five kings have been found, hidden in the cave at Makkedah.”
18 Joshua said, “Roll large stones to cover the cave’s entrance, and set men by it to guard them; 19 but don’t stay there. Pursue your enemies, and attack them from the rear. Don’t allow them to enter into their cities; for Yahweh your God has delivered them into your hand.”
20 When Joshua and the children of Israel had finished killing them with a very great slaughter until they were consumed, and the remnant which remained of them had entered into the fortified cities, 21 all the people returned to the camp to Joshua at Makkedah in peace. None moved his tongue against any of the children of Israel.
The five kings who had formed the coalition—Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, Eglon—were not captured in the heat of battle. They ran. They hid in a cave while their armies were destroyed around them. And when word came to Joshua, his response was unhurried: seal the cave, post a guard, keep moving.
There is something instructive in that order. The kings were not the priority. The fleeing remnants of their armies were—because armies that regrouped behind city walls would have to be dislodged later. Joshua kept his focus on what was in front of him, not on the already-defeated behind him.
The enemies of God’s people often flee before they are finished. That does not mean the work is over. It means the moment calls for sustained faithfulness—keep moving, keep obeying, trust that God will close what remains open.
What hides in a cave does not disappear. But God’s people don’t have to stop moving to address it.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there something in your life that has “gone underground”—a fear, a grief, a struggle that seems contained but isn’t finished?
What is sealed in the cave is not forgotten. Joshua came back. God keeps His accounting. You do not have to abandon what is before you to tend to what is behind the stone.
2. Feet and Fear
Joshua 10:22–27
22 Then Joshua said, “Open the cave entrance, and bring those five kings out of the cave to me.”
23 They did so, and brought those five kings out of the cave to him: the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. 24 When they brought those kings out to Joshua, Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the chiefs of the men of war who went with him, “Come near. Put your feet on the necks of these kings.”
They came near, and put their feet on their necks.
25 Joshua said to them, “Don’t be afraid, nor be dismayed. Be strong and courageous, for Yahweh will do this to all your enemies against whom you fight.”
26 Afterward Joshua struck them, put them to death, and hanged them on five trees. They were hanging on the trees until the evening. 27 At the time of the going down of the sun, Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and threw them into the cave in which they had hidden themselves, and laid great stones on the mouth of the cave, which remain to this very day.
Notice what Joshua does before the execution. He doesn’t deal with the five kings privately. He doesn’t move quickly past an uncomfortable moment. He calls for all the men of Israel to gather and watch—and then he summons his commanders forward. Come near. Put your feet on the necks of these kings.
This was a known act of conquest in the ancient world. But Joshua is not performing a military ritual. He is giving his army a sermon they can feel in their legs. Every commander who stepped forward and pressed his boot against a king’s neck was receiving a promise in his body, not just his mind: this is what God does to the thing you feared. Not eventually. Not in theory. Now. Under your feet. Today.
Then Joshua speaks—and the words are the same words God spoke to him in chapter one: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be dismayed. Be strong and courageous. Those words were a promise then, spoken before a single battle. Now they are a verdict, spoken with five defeated kings as the evidence. For Yahweh will do this to all your enemies against whom you fight.
Everything that ultimately opposes His kingdom will not escape His feet.
There is something here that reaches far past this riverbed and these limestone hills. Psalm 110:1 is humming underneath this scene: “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The image that Joshua enacted in the valley is the image the New Testament returns to again and again—enemies under feet, defeat made visible, what was feared made subject. First Corinthians 15:25 says Christ must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be put there is death itself.
What Joshua enacted in this valley, Christ will complete in full. Every enemy of everyone who belongs to Him will ultimately answer to the same victorious Lord—not because of anything His people bring, but because they are united to the One who has already won.
The kings were then executed and hanged on five trees. Joshua obeyed the law carefully: when the sun went down, the bodies were taken down from the trees and sealed back in the cave. Deuteronomy 21:22–23 prohibited leaving a body on a tree overnight. Many interpreters across church history have seen a shadow here—the Deuteronomy 21 passage that Paul quotes in Galatians 3:13: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” The connection belongs to the long history of reflection on this text, not to something Joshua or Israel understood in that moment. What is clear is this: the law was obeyed. The judgment was real. And what had been sealed was finished.
God does not leave His word incomplete. What He has promised, He performs. What He has judged, He concludes.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there an enemy you have been facing—not a person, but a fear, a darkness, a spiritual weight—that you need to see as already under God’s feet?
You may not feel the victory yet. The commanders didn’t defeat the kings—God did, before they ever stepped forward. Their boots just confirmed what was already true. Bring your fear before the God who has already rendered the verdict, and ask Him to make what is true in heaven visible enough to stand on.
3. Swift and Sweeping
Joshua 10:28–39
28 Joshua took Makkedah on that day, and struck it with the edge of the sword, with its king. He utterly destroyed it and all the souls who were in it. He left no one remaining. He did to the king of Makkedah as he had done to the king of Jericho.
29 Joshua passed from Makkedah, and all Israel with him, to Libnah, and fought against Libnah. 30 Yahweh delivered it also, with its king, into the hand of Israel. He struck it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls who were in it. He left no one remaining in it. He did to its king as he had done to the king of Jericho.
31 Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him, to Lachish, and encamped against it, and fought against it. 32 Yahweh delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel. He took it on the second day, and struck it with the edge of the sword, with all the souls who were in it, according to all that he had done to Libnah. 33 Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua struck him and his people, until he had left him no one remaining.
34 Joshua passed from Lachish, and all Israel with him, to Eglon; and they encamped against it and fought against it. 35 They took it on that day, and struck it with the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed all the souls who were in it that day, according to all that he had done to Lachish.
36 Joshua went up from Eglon, and all Israel with him, to Hebron; and they fought against it. 37 They took it, and struck it with the edge of the sword, with its king and all its cities, and all the souls who were in it. He left no one remaining, according to all that he had done to Eglon; but he utterly destroyed it, and all the souls who were in it.
38 Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir, and fought against it. 39 He took it, with its king and all its cities. They struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls who were in it. He left no one remaining. As he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to its king; as he had done also to Libnah, and to its king.
Six cities in rapid succession. The structure is nearly identical each time: Joshua arrived. Yahweh delivered. It was taken. No one was left. The repetition is not literary laziness—it is theological percussion. This is what it looks like when God says He will give a land and means it.
The cherem—the devoted destruction—applied here is the hardest thing to read in Joshua. It cannot be sanitized. What can be said honestly is what the text itself establishes: this was God’s covenantal judgment on specific peoples in a specific time and place, peoples whose sin the text elsewhere describes as filling up over centuries (Genesis 15:16). This was not a template for human warfare in general or across history. It was a bounded act of divine judgment executed through human hands. The text is not comfortable with making that comfortable, and it should not be.
What the text holds together in these verses is obedience and speed. Joshua did what God commanded. He did it completely. He did not negotiate, spare strategically, or leave the work half-finished the way Saul later would (1 Samuel 15). The obedience was total because the command was total.
Partial obedience is not faithfulness. What God calls His people to, He calls them to completely.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there an area of your life where you have been obeying God partway—keeping the part that’s manageable and quietly holding back the rest?
What God commanded but His people left unfinished often became a source of future trouble. What is left undone rarely stays neutral. Bring what is half-surrendered before God, and ask Him for the grace to complete what He has asked.
4. Finished and Faithful
Joshua 10:40–43
40 So Joshua struck all the land, the hill country, the South, the lowland, the slopes, and all their kings. He left no one remaining, but he utterly destroyed all that breathed, as Yahweh, the God of Israel, commanded. 41 Joshua struck them from Kadesh Barnea even to Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even to Gibeon. 42 Joshua took all these kings and their land at one time because Yahweh, the God of Israel, fought for Israel. 43 Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp to Gilgal.
Verse 42 is the theological summary of the entire southern campaign, and it deserves to stand on its own: Yahweh, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.
Not: Israel fought with exceptional courage. Not: Joshua’s strategy was flawless. Not: the military advantage was finally theirs. God fought. Israel followed, obeyed, and swung swords—but the verse is careful about who the subject of the verb is.
The southern campaign was completed in what appears to be a single sustained operation. From Makkedah to Debir, from Kadesh Barnea to Gibeon—the southern hill country was in Israel’s hands. The return to Gilgal was not a retreat. It was a rest after completion.
For those in Christ, this refrain belongs to a larger story. The God who fought for Israel at Makkedah is the same God who, in the fullness of time, sent His Son to accomplish what no human army could: the defeat of sin and death at the cross. The enemies that threaten those who belong to God are real—but the verdict on them has been rendered. The work has been completed. The return is coming.
The God who finishes what He starts in history is the same God who is finishing what He has started in you.
Journaling/Prayer: Do you believe—even now, even in what feels unfinished—that God is not abandoning what He has begun in your life?
He returned to Gilgal. The work was done. There would be more ahead, but this chapter closed in completion. God keeps His accounts, and He does not leave His promises as ledger entries. In Christ, every promise of God is yes and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Summary
Joshua 10 ends not with a shout but with a sentence: Yahweh, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.
Five kings who had assembled a coalition, who had terrified the region, who had commanded armies—were sealed in a cave, brought out, defeated publicly, and buried in the cave that had hidden them. Six cities swept through in one sustained campaign. The southern hill country secured.
The text doesn’t let us forget what this cost or what it required. The cherem was applied city by city. The sword was real. The obedience was total. And when the chronicler adds up the campaign, the credit goes not to Joshua’s generalship or Israel’s courage, but to the God who fought.
What God commits to completing, He completes. His faithfulness does not run out before His promises do.
For those in Christ, this is not merely ancient history. It is the shape of the God you belong to. He took on every enemy of your soul at the cross—sin, death, condemnation—and He did not stop at Lachish. He did not turn back before Debir. He finished what He came to do. He returned to the Father not in defeat, but in completion.
Come back tomorrow. There is still more land ahead.
Action / Attitude for Today
This passage asks you to consider whether you trust that God finishes what He starts—not in general, but in your own life.
If you are in the middle of something that has gone on far longer than you expected—a trial that has no visible end, a grief that hasn’t lifted, a promise that hasn’t landed—look at the structure of today’s passage. Joshua sealed the cave and kept moving. God kept His word. What seemed impossible in the morning was finished by evening.
If you’re struggling to believe that God is actually present in what you’re going through—that this isn’t just drift or accident or divine indifference—read verse 42 slowly: Yahweh, the God of Israel, fought for Israel. That is the same God who calls you His own through Christ. He is not absent. He is fighting.
If you can’t reach either of those truths today—if the distance feels too great, the silence too long—then take only this:
He finished the southern campaign. He finished the cross. He will finish what He has begun in you.
Say this prayer, as much of it as is true for you today: “Lord, I confess I don’t always trust that You finish what You start. The waiting has been long. But You brought down kings and sealed caves and swept through a land in a single campaign—not because Israel was strong, but because You fought. Fight for me today. I don’t need to understand the timeline. I need to remember who is holding it. Amen.”
The God who fought for Israel is the God who fights for you—and He does not stop before the work is done.
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