Catholic Commentary
Elimination of the Anakim
21Joshua came at that time, and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities.22There were none of the Anakim left in the land of the children of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, did some remain.
Joshua 11:21–22 describes Joshua's systematic destruction of the Anakim, a race of giant warriors, throughout the Judean highlands, though some survived in the Philistine cities of Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. This partial victory leaves future threats unresolved, particularly Goliath's lineage in Gath, foreshadowing Israel's later conflicts.
Joshua completed in obedience what an entire generation refused to face in faith—the giants we shrink from are only larger than the God we forget.
The Fathers read the Anakim as figures of demonic powers and deeply entrenched vices. Origen of Alexandria, in his Homilies on Joshua (Hom. 15), interprets the giant peoples of Canaan as the spiritual forces that occupy the "promised land" of the soul before Christ-Joshua drives them out. Just as the historical Anakim made the Israelites feel like "grasshoppers," the giants of pride, lust, despair, and habitual sin dwarf our sense of our own spiritual stature — causing us to shrink from the inheritance God intends for us. The "hill country" they inhabit suggests the high places of the soul, its strongholds of will and imagination, which are hardest to take and last to surrender.
The incompleteness of Joshua 11:22 — the survival of Anakim at Gath — carries its own typological weight: in this life, the spiritual battle is never wholly finished. Certain enemies are driven from the interior landscape of the soul but linger at the borders. The tradition of ascetic theology, from John Cassian to John of the Cross, consistently warns that even advanced souls will face renewed assault from passions and temptations they thought conquered. Final victory belongs to the eschaton.
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage at several interlocking levels.
On Holy War and Divine Providence: The Catechism (CCC 2311) and the Church's broader reading of Old Testament warfare passages acknowledge that these accounts must be read within the unfolding pedagogy of salvation history — God working through the historical, cultural, and moral limitations of an ancient people toward the full revelation of Christ. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§42), calls readers to recognize the "progressive" character of divine revelation: the violence of the conquest narratives finds its ultimate hermeneutical frame in Christ, who conquers not by the sword but by the Cross.
On the "Giants" as Spiritual Enemies: St. Augustine in The City of God (XV.23) treats the Nephilim and Anakim traditions as pointing to the spiritual reality of disordered greatness — the pride that exalts itself against God. The "giants" of the earth represent civilizations and souls built on self-sufficiency rather than covenant dependence on God. Joshua's campaign is thus a figure of God's reclamation of a creation distorted by sin.
On Joshua as Type of Christ: The Fathers universally (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 113; Origen, Hom. in Jos. 1) identified Joshua (Yēšûaʿ, the same name as Jesus) as a type of the Savior who leads his people into the true Promised Land. The destruction of the Anakim prefigures Christ's harrowing of Hell and his defeat of the powers that hold humanity captive (Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14–15). What Joshua accomplishes in the land of Canaan, Christ accomplishes in the whole cosmos — and in the individual soul through grace and the sacraments.
On Incompleteness and Purgation: The survival of Anakim in the Philistine cities speaks to the Catholic doctrine of ongoing sanctification. Justification does not instantaneously erase all disordered inclinations (CCC 1264 — the "temporal consequences of sin" and concupiscence remain even after Baptism). The Christian life is precisely the prolonged campaign against these interior remnants, aided by grace, sacrament, and virtue.
The terror the Anakim provoked in the spies of Numbers 13 is one of Scripture's most psychologically honest moments: the giants were real, and the fear was understandable. What made it sinful was that the Israelites allowed the giants to be larger in their imagination than God. Contemporary Catholics face analogous "Anakim" — not physical giants, but entrenched habits, systemic injustices, cultural ideologies, or personal sins that loom so large they seem impossible to dislodge. We shrink and say, "We were like grasshoppers."
The lesson of Joshua 11:21–22 is pointed: what an entire faithless generation refused to face, one generation of trust and obedience dismantled city by city. The spiritual application is not passive optimism but active, methodical cooperation with grace. Identifying the specific "hill country" — the particular stronghold of pride, addiction, resentment, or fear — and targeting it deliberately with prayer, the sacraments, and spiritual direction is precisely what this passage models. The monk or penitent who names their particular vice and wages a specific, sustained campaign against it is doing what Joshua did in the highlands of Judah. And the honest note of verse 22 — some giants survive at the border — is a salutary caution against spiritual complacency: vigilance is a lifelong discipline, not a one-time achievement.
Commentary
Joshua 11:21 — The Systematic Destruction of the Anakim
The Anakim (Hebrew: bənê hā-ʿănāq, "sons of Anak") were a race of formidable warriors first encountered in the scouting report of Numbers 13:28–33, where the Israelite spies described them as making ordinary men feel like "grasshoppers." Their presence in Canaan had been the single greatest psychological obstacle to the Exodus generation's entry into the Promised Land — and their faithless capitulation to that fear condemned an entire generation to die in the wilderness. Now, forty-plus years later, Joshua completes what the spies' fear had forestalled.
The geographical specificity of verse 21 is significant and not merely archival. Hebron was the city promised to Caleb (Joshua 14:12–14), explicitly because Caleb had refused to fear the Anakim forty years earlier. Debir (also called Kiriath-sepher) and Anab are part of the same southern Judean highland cluster — rugged, defensible territory where these warriors had made their redoubts. The phrase "all the hill country of Judah and all the hill country of Israel" signals a totality: this is not a partial campaign but a sweeping purge of the highlands on both sides of the future tribal division. The verb wayyaḵrēt ("cut off") is sharp and surgical, while ḥerem ("utterly destroyed," the devotion to destruction) invokes the theological category of the ban — these are not merely military victories but acts of sacred consecration to God. The Anakim and their cities are not simply conquered; they are removed from the order of creation as a judgment.
Joshua 11:22 — The Remnant and Its Significance
The survival of Anakim in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod — three of the five principal Philistine cities — is not a footnote but a narrative seed. The text's candor here is important: the task was not perfectly completed in the territory of Israel proper, and what was left undone would return to menace later generations. Gath, in particular, reverberates forward to 1 Samuel 17: it is the home city of Goliath, who is explicitly described in that passage as a giant (and in 2 Samuel 21:15–22, his kinsmen are called descendants of the Rapha, a related giant lineage). The Philistine remnant of the Anakim thus becomes the seedbed of Israel's greatest future threat. What Joshua leaves incomplete, David — the type of the messianic king — will ultimately be called to face.