Hear Fear Flee
In this argument, where the king and his army is destroyed in an alliance of several cities and away from the city or cities of the kings, the defenseless cities may have many citizens, (women and children along with the elderly, infirm and others) who may have fled to hide from the on coming victorious Israelite Army. What they would do once the Israelite Army leaves is another story.
Bloody, Brutal and Barbaric?: Wrestling with Troubling War Texts
ground away from their cities. The destruction of a city’s king and its armed forces meant that the biblical authors could speak of the total-kill (representative, i.e., part for the whole) destruction of all the people, even those in the cities, in a hyperbolic sense.