Came down from the hills may be taken to mean “went down into the Jordan Valley.”

The Hebrew of this verse contains four verbs of motion (“returned”; “came down”; “crossed”; “came to”). Good News Translation combines the force of the first (“returned”) and last (“came to”) verbs in the series by rendering went back.

Everything that had happened is more literally “everything that had happened to them”; the clause may also be translated “everything that they had done” or “everything that they had experienced.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Newman, Barclay M. A Handbook on Joshua. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1983. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .