Joshua 9:1 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Joshua 9:1
And it came to pass, when all the kings which were on this side Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, and in all the coasts of the great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof;
a Jebusite or inhabitant of Jebus · conjunction + definite article + noun, gentilic masculine singular absolute
heard
כִשְׁמֹ֣עַkhish.Mo.a'
H8085
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attent… · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Numbers 34:6 And as for the western border, ye shall even have the great sea for a border: this shall be your west border.
Exodus 3:17 And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and…
Exodus 23:23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivi…
Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanit…
Genesis 15:18-21 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great ri…
Exodus 23:31 And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the…
Exodus 34:11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Pe…
Deuteronomy 3:25 I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Joshua 9:1-2
Hitherto the Canaanites had acted defensively; the Israelites were the aggressors upon Jericho and Ai. But here the kings of Canaan are in consultation to attack Israel, and concert matters for a vigorous effort of their united forces to check the progress of their victorious arms. Now, 1. It was strange they did not do this sooner. They had notice long since of their approach; Israel's design upon Canaan was no secret; one would have expected that a prudent concern for their common safety would put them upon taking some measures to oppose their coming over Jordan, and maintain that pass against them, or to give them a warm reception as soon as they were over. It was strange they did not att…
And it came to pass, when all the kings - heard thereof - From this account it appears that the capture and destruction of Jericho and Ai had been heard of to the remotest parts of the land, that a general fear of the Israelitish arms prevailed, and that the different dynasties or petty governments into which the land was divided, felt all their interests at stake, and determined to make the defense of their country a common cause. This was the most prudent step they could take in their circumstances, and therefore they entered into a confederation in order to arrest the progress of the Israelites. The Great Sea mentioned here is the Mediterranean Sea, the coasts of which were inhabited by t…
And it came to pass, when all the kings which were on this side Jordan,.... On the side Israel now were, and was that in which the land of Canaan lay, and was now governed by many kings, and all that were now remaining, even all but the kings of Jericho and Ai, who were slain: both those
in the hills, and in the valleys; that dwelt in the mountainous part of the country, and in the plains of it:
and in all the coasts of the great sea, over against Lebanon; who inhabited and governed in that part of the country which lay on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, the country of Phoenicia, in which were Tyre, Sidon, and other cities, and were over against Mount Lebanon, which was on the northern…
The Church Fathers
But let us see what is written after these things: "and all the kings of the Amorites heard," it says, "both those beyond the Jordan, and those in the mountains, and those in the plains, and those upon the shores of the great sea, and those who were in Antilibanus, and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites, and they gathered together into one, to make war against Jesus and Israel together." The history of the deeds done is clear and needs no explanation, since it has plainly been fulfilled; yet from these visible things which have been done, let us contemplate the wars and triumphs which our Lord Jesus the Savior has waged, although we also see these fulfilled visibly in him himself. For the kings of the earth gathered together, the senate, and the people, and the Roman princes, to make war against the name of Jesus and Israel together. For they decreed by their laws that there should be no Christians. Every city, every order attacks the name of the Christians. But just as then all those kings gathering together against Jesus were able to do nothing, so also now neither the "princes" nor those adverse "powers" have been able to do anything to keep the race of the Christians from being propagated more widely and more abundantly. For it is written: "the more they humbled them, the more they became and grew exceedingly strong." And we are confident that not only will our invisible enemies and adversaries not be able to prevail over us, but also that, with Jesus our Lord conquering, "Satan will swiftly be crushed under the feet" of his servants. For with him as leader his soldiers will always conquer, so that we too may say, as it is written in Ezra: "From you, Lord, is the victory, and I am your servant; blessed are you, God of truth." Let us too always call upon him, that he may grant us victory in Christ Jesus our Lord, "to whom is glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen!"
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Gibeon — Hill-city, “one of the royal cities, greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty” (Josh. 10:2). Its inhabitants were Hivites (11:19). It lay within the territory of Benjamin, and became a…
Hill — (1.) Heb. gib’eah, a curved or rounded hill, such as are common to Palestine (Ps. 65:12; 72:3; 114:4, 6). (2.) Heb. har, properly a mountain range rather than an individual eminence (Ex. 24:4, 12,…
Hills — From the Hebrew Gibeah, meaning a curved round hill. But our translators have also employed the same English word for the very different term har, which has a much more extended sense than gibeah,…
Hittites — Palestine and Syria appear to have been originally inhabited by three different tribes. (1.) The Semites, living on the east of the isthmus of Suez. They were nomadic and pastoral tribes. (2.) The…
Hittits — (descendans of Heth), The, the nation descended from Cheth (Authorized Version Heth), the second son of Canaan. Abraham bought from the “children of Heth” the field and the cave of Machpelah,…
Plain — (1.) Heb. ‘abel (Judg. 11:33), a “grassy plain” or “meadow.” Instead of “plains of the vineyards,” as in the Authorized Version, the Revised Version has “Abel-cheramim” (q.v.), comp. Judg. 11:22; 2…
Vale, Valley — It is hardly necessary to state that these words signify a hollow sweep of ground between two more or less parallel ridges of high land. The structure of the greater part of the holy land does not…
Alliances · . — .
Hittites · Conquered by Joshua — Conquered by Joshua
Hivites · Conquered by Joshua — Conquered by Joshua
Joshua 9:1-15
1. And it came to pass, when all the kings which were on this side Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, and in all the coasts of the great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof,
1. Quum autem audissent omnes reges qui erant trans Jordanem in monte, et in planitie, et in toto tractu marls magni e regione Libani, Hitthaeus, Amorrhaeus, Chananaeus, Pherisaeus, Hivaeus, et Jebusaeus,
2. That they gathered themselves together, to fight with Joshua and with Israel, with one accord.
2. Congregaverunt se pariter ad pugnandum cum Josue et Israel uno consensu.
3. And when the inhabitant…
Jos 9:1, Jos 9:2 form the introduction to chs. 9-11, and correspond to the introduction in Jos 5:1. The news of the miraculous passage of the Israelites through the Jordan had thrown all the kings of Canaan into such despair, that they did not venture to make any attack upon Israel. But they gradually recovered from their first panic, partly, no doubt, in consequence of the failure of the first attack of the Israelites upon Ai, and resolved to join together in making war upon the foreign invaders. The kings of Canaan did this when they heard, sc., what Israel had hitherto undertaken and accomplished, not merely "what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai" (Knobel): that is to say, all the kings…
Joshua once again failed to consult God (9:14; cp. 7:2-4), this time over an unexpected request. Other ancient Near Eastern accounts tell only of a leader’s triumphs; this author also recorded the shortcomings of Joshua and Israel’s elders. The real hero of the story is God, whose accomplishments the author wished to tell.
9:1 Hittites . . . Jebusites: See study note on 3:10. • The fertile region of lower hills between the highlands of Judah and the southern coastal plain was known as the western foothills. • Although not all of the coastal plain of the Mediterranean Sea was occupied during this period, several important cities did exist. The kings of those small city-states, as far north a…
Lebanon · Northern boundary of the land of — Northern boundary of the land of
Mediterranean Sea · Mentioned in Scripture as “the Great Sea,” — Mentioned in Scripture as “the Great Sea,”
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
