Joshua 12 · a question people ask
The list counts thirty-one kings struck. Does that mean the whole land was held?
Joshua 11 asks how "So Joshua took the whole land" (11:23) fits with the LORD's word to Joshua, "there remains yet very much land to be possessed" (13:1); the book sets the two side by side and doesn't say how they fit. This list stands between those two verses, and what it counts is kings: "These are the kings of the land whom Joshua and the children of Israel struck" (12:7). It doesn't say which of their cities were held. Later chapters say some were not. The king of Jerusalem is on the list (12:10), and Judah "couldn’t drive them out" of Jerusalem (15:63). The kings of Taanach, Megiddo and Dor are on it (12:21, 12:23), and "the children of Manasseh couldn’t drive out the inhabitants of those cities" (17:12). Near the end of the dividing the book says, "So the LORD gave to Israel all the land which he swore to give to their fathers. They possessed it, and lived in it" (21:43). The book sets these side by side without comment.
The verses
“So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD spoke to Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Then the land had rest from war.”
“Now Joshua was old and well advanced in years. The LORD said to him, “You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to be possessed.”
“These are the kings of the land whom Joshua and the children of Israel struck beyond the Jordan westward, from Baal Gad in the valley of Lebanon even to Mount Halak, that goes up to Seir. Joshua gave it to the tribes of Israel for a possession according to their divisions;”
“the king of Jerusalem, one; the king of Hebron, one;”