into Canaan, delivering the Lords (or possessors) of Jericho,” not “the rulers, i.e., the king and his heroes,” as Knobel maintains (see 2Sa 21:12; 1Sa 23:11-12; and the commentary on Jdg 9:6), “and all the tribes of Canaan into their hand,” and sending hornets before them, so that they were able to drive out the Canaanites, particularly the two kings of the Amorites, Sihon and Og, though “not with their sword and their bow” (vid., Psa 44:4); i.e., it was not with the weapons at their command that they were able to take the lands of these two kings. On the sending of hornets, as a figure used to represent peculiarly effective terrors, see at Exo 23:28; Deu 7:20. In this way the Lord gave the land to the Israelites, with its towns and its rich productions (vineyards and olive trees), without any trouble on their part of wearisome cultivation or planting, as Moses himself had promised them (Deu 6:10-11).
Verses 14-15
These overwhelming manifestations of grace on the part of the Lord laid Israel under obligations to serve the Lord with gratitude and sincerity. “Now therefore fear the Lord (יראוּ for יראוּ, pointed like a verb הל, as in 1Sa 12:24; Psa 34:10), and serve Him in sincerity and in truth,” i.e., without hypocrisy, or the show of piety, in simplicity and truth of heart (vid., Jdg 9:16, Jdg 9:19). “Put away the gods (Elohim = the strange gods in Jos 24:23) which your fathers served on the other side of the Euphrates and in Egypt.” This appeal does not presuppose any gross idolatry on the part of the existing generation, which would have been at variance with the rest of the book, in which Israel is represented as only serving Jehovah during the lifetime of Joshua. If the people had been in possession of idols, they would have given them up to Joshua to be destroyed, as they promised to comply with his demand (Jos 24:16.). But even if the Israelites were not addicted to gross idolatry in the worship of idols, they were not altogether free from idolatry either in Egypt or in the desert. As their fathers were possessed of teraphim in Mesopotamia (see at Jos 24:2), so the Israelites had not kept themselves entirely free from heathen and idolatrous ways, more especially the demon-worship of Egypt (comp. Lev 17:7 with Eze 20:7., Jos 23:3, Jos 23:8, and Amo 5:26); and even in the time of Joshua their worship of Jehovah may have been corrupted by idolatrous elements. This admixture of the pure and genuine worship of Jehovah with idolatrous or heathen elements, which is condemned in Lev 17:7 as the worship of Seirim, and by Ezekiel (l. c.) as the idolatrous worship of the people in Egypt, had its roots in the corruption of the
