It happened, when all the kings who were beyond the Jordan, in the hill-country, and in the lowland, and on all the shore of the great sea in front of Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard of it;
The hill-country, the lowland, and the seacoast were the three geographical divisions of Palestine, and the picture here is simply that of a coalition of many of the kings of Canaan, forced by the fear that fell upon all of them as a result of Israel's victories at Jericho and Ai.  They were too late with this.  They had been forewarned of what Israel intended to do ever since the crossing of the Red Sea, but they still waited until Joshua and the Israelites were practically upon them before they acted. From the human standpoint, their coalition against Israel was a good thing. As Matthew Henry said: