Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Cave at Makkedah
Joshua 10:16-27
16 These five kings fled, and hid themselves in the cave at Makkedah. · WEB
Five kings hide in a cave and are held there while the battle finishes — and their end is staged as a lesson in courage for the chiefs who will fight on.
These five kings fled, and hid themselves in the cave at Makkedah Joshua 10:16.
The men who convened the coalition run first, and the kings of five royal cities end the day underground. Joshua's field decision is a commander's: roll large stones to cover the cave's entrance, and set men by it... but don't stay there. Pursue your enemies Joshua 10:18–19. The trapped kings can wait; the fleeing armies cannot be allowed to reach their walls. The main chance is kept in view while the trophy is sealed for later — a discipline of priorities that the earlier Joshua of Ai's first assault had not yet shown Joshua 7:3.
"Come near. Put your feet on the necks of these kings." They came near, and put their feet on their necks Joshua 10:24.
When the kings are brought out, the gesture Joshua orders is the ancient Near East's standard image of total victory — the foot on the neck, carved on monuments across that world. But the detail that matters is who does the treading: not Joshua, but the chiefs of the men of war — the field officers who will have to fight the remaining campaigns. And the words spoken over the act are the book's own charge, redistributed: don't be afraid, nor be dismayed. Be strong and courageous, for Yahweh will do this to all your enemies against whom you fight Joshua 10:25 Joshua 1:9. What God said to Joshua, Joshua now says to his officers, with the evidence under their feet. Courage in this book is transmissible, and it is transmitted by exactly this: past deliverance handled, stood on, remembered as policy for the next fear. The psalms will make the posture a promise for all God's people — every enemy eventually underfoot Psalms 110:1 Romans 16:20.
Afterward Joshua struck them, put them to death, and hanged them on five trees Joshua 10:26.
The executions are judicial, not vindictive — these are the kings of the ban's docket Deuteronomy 20:16–17, displayed until evening and then taken down at sundown as the law required for the hanged Deuteronomy 21:22–23, scrupulous even here. The bodies go back into the cave that hid them, sealed under great stones which remain to this very day Joshua 10:27 — the campaign's fourth cairn. Jericho's rubble, Achan's heap, Ai's gate, Makkedah 's cave: the conquest is leaving a landscape of stone markers, each one holding a memory down where a question can find it Joshua 4:6–7.
held with reason What this mark means