Joshua 11:13

• The cities built on their mounds: In the ancient Near East, it was common practice to rebuild cities on the same sites after they had been destroyed. All the elements that made a city site advantageous remained after a city’s destruction. Many cities were rebuilt many times. Each time a city was destroyed, debris piled up. Over time, the city slowly rose higher as this debris accumulated.

• Joshua burned only Hazor in the north, just as he had destroyed Jericho and Ai in the center of the land (6:24; 8:28).

The detailed accounts of Joshua’s campaign in southern Canaan show that the Israelites needed God's help to succeed (chapters 6–10). The same was true for the northern campaign (chapter 11). So those details were not needed here.

This second major section of the book records Joshua's southern and northern campaigns against two coalitions of kings from Canaan. Joshua's victories allowed Israel to settle the hill country from Galilee in the north to the Negev in the south.