They utterly destroyed - both man, and woman, etc. - As this act was ordered by God himself, who is the Maker and Judge of all men, it must be right: for the Judge of all the earth cannot do wrong. Nothing that breathed was permitted to live; hence the oxen, sheep, and asses, were destroyed, as well as the inhabitants.

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,.... All the inhabitants of it, by the direction of Joshua, and according to the order of the Lord, Deuteronomy 7:1; being guilty of capital crimes, which deserved death, as idolatry, incest, &c.

both men and women, young and old; neither sex nor age were spared:

and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword; in which creatures chiefly lay the substance of the eastern people; see Job 1:3.

After the taking of Jericho, man and beast were banned, i.e., put to death without quarter (Joshua 6:21; cf. Joshua 6:17); Rahab and her relations being the only exceptions. Joshua had directed the two spies to fetch them out of her house, and in the first instance had them taken to a place of safety outside the camp of Israel (Joshua 6:22, Joshua 6:23). "Her brethren," i.e., her brothers and sisters, as in Joshua 2:13, not her brothers only. "All that she had" does not mean all her possessions, but all the persons belonging to her house; and "all her kindred" are all her relations by birth or marriage, with their dependants (cf. Joshua 2:13). Clericus is correct in observing, that as Rahab's house was built against the town-wall, and rested partly upon it (Joshua 2:15), when the wall fell down, that portion against or upon which the house stood cannot have fallen along with the rest, "otherwise when the wall fell no one would have dared to remain in the house." But we must not draw the further inference, that when the town was burned Rahab's house was spared.

(Note: The statements made by travellers in the middle ages, to the effect that they had seen Rahab's house (Rob. Pal. ii. pp. 295-6), belong to the delusions of pious superstition.)

וגו מחוּץ ויּנּיחוּם (Joshua 6:23; cf. Genesis 19:16), "they let them rest," i.e., placed them in safety, "outside the camp of Israel," sc., till they had done all that was requisite for a formal reception into the congregation of the Lord, viz., by giving up idolatry and heathen superstition, and turning to the God of Israel as the only true God (to which circumcision had to be added in the case of the men), and by whatever lustrations and purifications were customary at the time in connection with reception into the covenant with Jehovah, of which we have no further information.

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

6:21 Young and old - Being commanded to do so by the sovereign Lord of every man's life; and being informed by God before that the Canaanites were abominably wicked, and deserved the severest punishments. As for the infants, they were guilty of original sin, and otherwise at the disposal of their creator; but if they had been wholly innocent, it was a great favour to them to take them away in infancy, rather than reserve them to those dreadful calamities which those who survived them were liable to.

6:17-27 Jericho was to be a solemn and awful sacrifice to the justice of God, upon those who had filled up the measure of their sins. So He appoints, from whom, as creatures, they received their lives, and to whom, as sinners, they had forfeited them. Rahab perished not with them that believed not, Heb 11:31. All her kindred were saved with her; thus faith in Christ brings salvation to the house, Ac 14:31. She, and they with her, were plucked as brands from the burning. With Rahab, or with the men of Jericho; our portion must be assigned, as we posses or disregard the sign of salvation; even faith in Christ, which worketh by love. Let us remember what depends upon our choice, and let us choose accordingly. God shows the weight of a Divine curse; where it rests there is no getting from under it; for it brings ruin without remedy.