Lives of Scripture

Horam, king of Gezer, appears in a single verse during Joshua's southern military campaign. While Israel's forces were attacking Lachish, "Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish. And Joshua defeated him and his people until he had left him no survivor" (Joshua 10:33). Unlike the five-king coalition against Gibeon narrated at length earlier in the same chapter (10:1-27), Horam's account is compressed into a single clause -- he marches out to relieve a besieged ally and is annihilated along with his entire army before he can change the outcome at Lachish. Joshua's later summary of the thirty-one Canaanite kings defeated west of the Jordan also lists the king of Gezer among them (12:16). Brief as it is, Horam's defeat is presented as part of the same divine pattern running through the whole conquest narrative: Canaanite military power repeatedly proves unable to stand against Israel because, as Joshua 10:14 says of this same campaign, "the LORD fought for Israel."