Jos. 12: All the Kings Defeated

Joshua 12:1 "These are the kings of the land whom the Israelites had defeated and whose territory they took over east of the Jordan, from the Arnon Gorge to Mount Hermon, including all the eastern side of the Arabah."

Joshua 12 reads like a brag page...reads like those WW2 planes that put stickers on their fuselages for shoot downs. It's a checklist, listing which kings were defeated and the land they vacated. All in all, there were two kingdoms taken down on the east side of the Jordan River, and 31 on the west side.

There's not much really to say about this. Israel took out 33 kings. In a span of a few years' time. Quite the military campaign.

Why was it necessary to keep an inventory of all that were vanquished? To boast? To keep record of the victories God granted? A sticker on the plane? I don't know how established and fortified these kingdoms were, but they were some (if not all) members of the HACPHAJ...who God told them to defeat for many many years. And here they are, and God has done it through them. And God would presumably not tell someone to war against someone else unless that someone else was an enemy of God.