Hazor means “walled,” and the city stood in defiance against the God they refused to worship.
Trust, or confidence, is the main support that holds up the universe. Lack of trust can collapse a marriage. A “No Confidence” vote will bring down a government. It was with good intentions, no doubt, but with little connection to reality today that the words “In God We Trust” were placed on U.S. currency. The Lord will declare in Jeremiah’s day, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches” (9:23). Here the word glory means “to boast in” or “have confidence in” these things. The Lord certainly did not want His people to be in an arms race with the surrounding nations. Thus the motto, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the Lord our God” (Ps 20:7). The next book, Judges, will underline this fact dramatically with the odd assortment of weapons used. But here the Lord had told Joshua, “You shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire” (Jos 11:6). Again, our modern sensibilities cringe to hear of the treatment of these horses. But these were war horses, not draft animals. In our day, it would be the equivalent of the Lord telling them to destroy the enemy’s tanks and trucks. This was a mission very much bigger than defeating a few Middle Eastern despots. As far as God was concerned, this was the cosmic battle of the ages. If Israel, after all God had done for them, couldn’t trust Him, who would? And if Israel couldn’t shout from the housetops that Jehovah, the covenant-keeping God, could be trusted, what was left for humanity to trust? The options are ominous. Found at Hazor was a temple to the moon-god, the moon whose crescent is now seen over 3.6 million mosques worldwide.