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Catholic Commentary
The Southern Campaign: City by City (Part 2)
36Joshua went up from Eglon, and all Israel with him, to Hebron; and they fought against it.37They 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.38Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir, and fought against it.39He 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.
Joshua 10:36–39 describes Joshua's conquest of Hebron and Debir during the southern Canaanite campaign, in which he systematically destroyed both cities and their populations under the sacred ban (ḥērem), leaving no survivors. The passage emphasizes Joshua's obedient consistency in executing total destruction across multiple targets, establishing a pattern of comprehensive devotion to God's command.
Joshua leaves no remnant of sin standing—and Christ demands the same total purging from every soul that follows him.
Typological and Spiritual Senses Patristic exegesis, particularly in Origen's Homilies on Joshua, consistently reads these campaigns as figures of the soul's warfare against vice. Just as Joshua (whose name is identical to "Jesus" in Greek — Iēsous) leads Israel in the systematic conquest of the Promised Land, Christ leads the baptized soul in the conquest of sin. The ḥērem — leaving no remnant — figures the radical demand of repentance: no partial conversion, no negotiated settlement with habitual sin. Origen writes explicitly: "Unless those carnal vices and those sinful movements… are eliminated, we cannot observe the divine law." The naming of Hebron (associated with "fellowship" or "alliance" in rabbinic tradition) and Debir ("oracle/word") suggests a spiritual reading in which even our distorted alliances and corrupted words must be surrendered to God's purifying judgment.
Catholic tradition brings several distinct lenses to this passage that secular or purely historical readings miss.
The Ḥērem and the Holiness of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC §2811) teaches that to "hallow" God's name means to recognize and honor the absolute sovereignty of his holiness. The ḥērem in the Old Testament is the most extreme liturgical expression of this: what belongs wholly to God cannot belong to human ambition. The violence is not arbitrary but sacramental in structure — a total consecration. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§42), cautions that difficult Old Testament texts must be read within the "progressive revelation" of God's pedagogy, moving toward its fulfillment in Christ, who is both conqueror and victim.
Origen and the Allegorical Tradition. Origen's Homilies on Joshua (Hom. XII) — among the most sustained patristic commentaries on this text — argues that "Jesus [Joshua] does not conquer with his own power but with the power of the Father." The Church Fathers were unanimous that the wars of Joshua are not moral exemplars of military conduct but typological figures of spiritual combat. St. Augustine reinforces this in Contra Faustum (XXII.74–78): the Israelites were not acting from cruelty but as instruments of divine judgment, and the inner meaning points beyond carnal warfare to the destruction of sin.
Hebron and Apostolic Succession. Hebron's later significance as the city where David is anointed (2 Samuel 2:4) and where the covenant with Judah is ratified makes its conquest a type of the Church's establishment. Just as Joshua secures the covenantal heartland, Christ — the true Joshua — establishes the new covenant community, the Church, as the definitive "land" of God's promise (CCC §756).
Total Conversion. The Council of Trent (Session VI, Decree on Justification, Chapter 6) teaches that true justification involves a complete turning away (conversio) from sin — not merely its reduction. The ḥērem pattern of "leaving no one remaining" maps precisely onto this theology: authentic conversion leaves no negotiated enclaves of sin intact.
The modern Catholic reader may feel instinctive discomfort with passages of total destruction — and that discomfort is itself spiritually productive. Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia (§298) and Benedict XVI in Verbum Domini (§42) both invite us to sit with the tension of difficult texts rather than sanitize them, trusting that the canon's full arc clarifies the partial. But the spiritual application is pointed: the ḥērem principle confronts every Catholic with the question of whether there are "cities" within the self — strongholds of pride, lust, bitterness, or addiction — where we have negotiated a ceasefire with sin rather than pursuing total surrender to grace. The rhythm of Joshua's campaign (city after city, no exceptions) mirrors the sustained, methodical character of genuine ascetic life. Confession is not a one-time siege; it is a campaign. St. John Climacus (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 5) warns that the soul that tolerates even one "remaining" sinful habit gives that habit time to rebuild its walls. The concrete challenge: identify one habitual sin where you have "left someone remaining" — and bring it under the sword of confession, spiritual direction, and prayer.
Commentary
Verse 36 — The Ascent to Hebron "Joshua went up from Eglon… to Hebron" is more than topographical notation. The Hebrew verb ʿālāh ("went up") is used consistently for movement toward high places and sanctuaries; Hebron sits in the Judean hill country at over 3,000 feet above sea level, and its elevation gives the phrase a subtle liturgical resonance. Hebron is no ordinary city. It is the burial place of the patriarchs (Genesis 23), where Abraham received God's covenant promises and where David would later be anointed king (2 Samuel 2:1–4). Its conquest is therefore charged with historical and theological weight: Israel is claiming the very ground where the covenant was born.
Verse 37 — Total Destruction of Hebron The phrase "struck it with the edge of the sword" (lĕpî-ḥāreb) — literally "according to the mouth of the sword" — is a standard idiom in the conquest narrative, but the subsequent formula, "he utterly destroyed it, and all the souls who were in it," invokes the ḥērem (sacred ban). Under ḥērem, persons and property are not taken as spoil but devoted entirely to God, removed from the sphere of ordinary human use. The inclusion of "its king and all its cities" specifies the comprehensiveness of the action: satellite towns in Hebron's orbit fall under the same judgment. Critically, the narrator notes obedience to precedent: "according to all that he had done to Eglon." Joshua acts not in passion but in fidelity to a pattern of obedience already established.
Verse 38 — The Return to Debir The word "returned" (wayyāšob) suggests Debir had already been approached or that the army doubles back southwestward. Debir (likely modern Tell Beit Mirsim or Khirbet Rabud) was a Canaanite scribal center; its name may derive from the Hebrew dābār ("word" or "oracle"), lending the conquest of Debir an ironic dimension — the city of words falls silent before the word of God executed through Joshua. The structural echo ("Joshua returned… and fought against it") mirrors the earlier descriptions of Libnah (vv. 29–30) and Lachish (vv. 31–33), creating a rhythmic litany of obedient advance.
Verse 39 — Utter Destruction of Debir and the Cumulative Formula The closing comparative formula — "as he had done to Hebron… as he had done also to Libnah, and to its king" — is the literary and theological hinge of the entire southern campaign. It creates a chain of equivalences stretching back to the initial acts of judgment and forward toward the summary statement of v. 40. The effect is cumulative: no city, no king, no enclave of resistance is exempt. The narrator's insistence on "he left no one remaining" (repeated twice in these four verses) is not triumphalism but theological testimony: where God commands the purging of what is devoted to destruction, the work is to be total.