And the Lord delivered them (see Joshua 10:42). The issue of every battle is in God's hands. The natural man attributes it to human skill. The spiritual man, whether under the law or under the gospel, acknowledges the truth that "there is no restraint to the Lord, to save by many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6).
But if victory should ever side with numbers, if God appears not to "defend the right," it is that anxiety and sorrow may chasten the hearts of its upholders, lead them to "crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts," and so conduct them to a final victory when they are fitted to resist the intoxication of prosperity.
Many a lesson in history has taught us that immediate success is by no means a blessing, even to those who are in the main fighting for a good cause. Great Zidon. So called, not to distinguish it from any other city, but to mark (so also Joshua 19:28) its importance as the capital of Phoenicia.
This expression, "great Zidon," marks the early date of the Book of Joshua. In Homer's Iliad, Sidon is represented as the great home of the arts, though the historian Justin tells us that, even when Homer wrote, her superiority had passed to Tyre.
In later years, Tyre, known only to the Book of Joshua as "the strong (literally, 'fortified') city." Tyre (Joshua 19:29) outstripped her rival, and from the time of David till that of Alexander the Great, in spite of her destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, retained her pre-eminence (see the vivid description of Tyre in Ezekiel 26:1-21; Ezekiel 27:1-36).
Sidon, now called Saida, is still a commercial city of some importance, whereas Tyre is, or was, a few years ago, little better than a collection of huts. This is not difficult to explain. The pre-eminence of Tyre was due to her military strength in a time of warlike enterprise, that of Sidon to natural, position.
"This ancient city of Phoenicia, 'the eldest born of Canaan'" (see Genesis 10:15), "stood on the northwest slope of a small promontory which runs into the sea, and its original harbour was formed by three low ridges of rocks, with narrow openings between them parallel to the shore in front of the city.
On these islands there are remains of massive substructions, the work of the ancient Phoenicians. There is a spacious but unprotected bay on the south of the promontory … No traces of the ancient city can be seen on the mainland, but at a short distance to the north are sepulchral grottoes, which probably mark the necropolis."
The plain of Sidon is prolonged as far as Sarepta, the Zarephath of the Old Testament, eight miles to the south, which stands on a rising ground near the sea, and shows the remains of ancient walls. Misrephoth Maim.
Literally, burnings of waters. Kimchi conjectures that these were hot springs, whereas Jarchi more reasonably supposes them to have been salt pits, in which the water was evaporated and the salt left.
Masius, whom most modern commentators follow, thinks that glass houses, of which there were several near Sidon ("constat enim eas apud Sidonem fuisse plurimas"), are meant. But it is difficult to translate the Hebrew with him and Gesenins, "burning near waters," and the idea of some that water stands here for glass is absurd.
Knobel regards it as equivalent to water-heights, i.e; cliffs rising from the sea, and derives the word from an Arabic root, saraph, to be high. The LXX. renders it by a proper name. Symmachus, "from the sea," reading מִיַּם for מַיִם.
The Chaldee has "fossas aquarum." Misrephoth Maim (see Joshua 13:6) was not far from Sidon. Valley. The word here, Bik'a, signifies an open, wide valley between mountains (see verse 17). Sometimes, as in Genesis 11:2, it is equivalent to plain.