Joshua 10:26
“Afterward Joshua struck them, put them to death, and hanged them on five trees. They were hanging on the trees until the evening.”
What does Joshua 10:26 mean?
Joshua had just decisively defeated five kings who had threatened his people, and he took the additional step of executing them and displaying their bodies publicly until sunset. In that ancient Near Eastern context, this kind of visible justice served both as a deterrent and as a sign that God had delivered Israel from real enemies who sought their destruction. This passage sits uncomfortably with modern sensibilities, and that's okay. It's part of the Bible's unflinching honesty about the cost of war and survival in a brutal ancient world. The point isn't that we should imitate this response today, but rather that God was actively involved in protecting his people during their fight for a homeland, even when that protection looked violent and harsh by today's standards.