Yehoshua Chapter 12
This chapter summarizes the conquests of Yehoshua and his army in the land of Israel. Fascinatingly, it begins with a recap of the conquest of the Transjordan under the command of Moshe and the territory he captured from Og, King of Bashan and Sihon, King of the Emorites. It concludes with a list of the thirty-one kings (southern and northern) who were overthrown and defeated, and their land acquired, by Yehoshua and his army.
In a proper scroll of the Book of Yehoshua, reproduced in some editions of the Tanakh, this list of kings is recorded in the Biblical poetic form, with wide spaces on the page dividing each verse in half. Songs and poems are typically used in Tanakh to indicate the conclusion of an era or the occurrence of a significant transition in history, focus, spiritual awareness, or leadership (consider the Song at the Sea when the Exodus is finally complete, the song of Hanna heralding the new era of leadership in the time of Shemuel, or the song of Devorah.)
The reason for the connection back to Moshe Rabbenu’s initial conquests should be clear in light of what we have discussed previously. Throughout the book, there is a continual effort to relate Yehoshua’s actions, decisions, and experiences to those of Moshe Rabbenu, to demonstrate that he is, in effect, completing work that was started but left undone by his master and mentor. Here too, Yehoshua has successfully conducted the conquest of large swaths of the land of Israel, bringing the task first begun by Moshe Rabbenu to the next stage of its development. It was critical that Moshe Rabbenu be the one to capture the territory on the eastern side of the Jordan River so that the military operations on the mainland of Israel could be viewed as the extension and conclusion of his efforts and not seen as an unprecedented initiative of Yehoshua and the new generation of Jews.