The cities that stood still in their strength. This is the rendering of the Chaldee version. The LXX. has κεχωματισμένας, heaped up, i.e; defended with mounds. Rather, on their hill ("in collibus et in tumulis sitae," Vulg).
As many of the towns in Italy, and the castles in Germany in the middle ages, so these Phoenician cities were placed upon hills, that they might be more easily defended. The various tribes of Palestine were no doubt continually at war, and, as regards these northern tribes at least, were not accustomed to subsist by commerce.
Therefore each of these cities stood (the Hebrew עמד surely implies situation here) on its own hill, a detail possibly obtained from an eyewitness, who was probably struck by this feature of the district, a feature he had not observed before.
The expression is used, however, as Masius observes, by Jeremiah (Jos Jeremiah 30:18). Knobel observes that all the early versions have no suffix here. What he calls the "free translation," however, of the LXX.
(which has αὐτῶν) requires the suffix, though the Vulgate requires none. We must not adopt the very plausible explanation of Knobel and others that Joshua burnt the cities in the valleys, but spared the cities on the hills, because they could be more easily defended (see Joshua 17:16; 1:19, 1:34), since we read that Hazor alone was burnt.
The word here translated hill (Tell, Arabic) is one with which we are familiar in the modern name of places in Palestine (see note on Joshua 8:28).