Joshua 10:40

Hebrew Bible

40 Joshua defeated the whole land, including the hill country, the Negev, the foothills, the slopes, and all their kings. He left no survivors. He annihilated everything that breathed, just as the Lord God of Israel had commanded. 41 Joshua conquered the area between Kadesh Barnea and Gaza and the whole region of Goshen, all the way to Gibeon. 42 Joshua captured in one campaign all these kings and their lands, for the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. 43 Then Joshua and all Israel returned to the camp at Gilgal.

Joshua 13:13

Hebrew Bible

12 the whole kingdom of Og in Bashan, who ruled in Ashtaroth and Edrei. (He was one of the few remaining Rephaites.) Moses defeated them and took their lands. 13 But the Israelites did not conquer the Geshurites and Maacathites; Geshur and Maacah live among Israel to this very day. 14 However, Moses did not assign land as an inheritance to the Levites; their inheritance is the sacrificial offerings made to the Lord God of Israel, as he instructed them.

Joshua 16:10

Hebrew Bible

8 From Tappuah it went westward to the Valley of Kanah and ended at the sea. This is the land assigned to the tribe of Ephraim by its clans. 9 Also included were the cities set apart for the tribe of Ephraim within Manasseh’s territory, along with their towns. 10 The Ephraimites did not conquer the Canaanites living in Gezer. The Canaanites live among the Ephraimites to this very day and do hard labor as their servants.

 Notes and References

"... The text of Joshua presents the reader with a puzzling contradiction. One the one hand, there are commands to slaughter all of the enemy, descriptions of complete destruction and statements recording the success of the conquest, and on the other hand, Rahab's family, the Gibeonites and others continue to live in the land. To this puzzling contradiction, several explanations have been offered ... Smend also realizes that the ideas of the annihilation of the nations and their continued existence in the land are incompatible, and therefore belong to different redactional strata. He designates 13.1b-6 and 23.1b-16, together with 1.7-9, as part of a later deuteronomistic redaction which he calls DtrN ... Unfortunately, neither Smend nor Auld explains the prominence given to Rahab and the Gibeonites in the Joshua narrative. It is these stories that constitute one of the major contradictions to the idea of the complete destruction of the occupants of the land ..."

Mitchell, Gordon Together in the Land: A Reading of the Book of Joshua (pp. 13-15) Sheffield Academic Press, 1993

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