What A Day - Joshua 10:1-14

By making that pact with Gibeon, Israel is finding itself in a bit of a pickle. First, I think it’s important to note that verse 2 describes Gibeon as “a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty.” This wasn’t some Podunk town that was certainly going to be slaughtered by Israel, but it was a large city with a strong, formidable army so the fact that it had made a peace treaty with Israel, even though done deceptively, was very off putting to the surrounding kingdoms, specifically to the king od Jerusalem “Adoni-zedek.” TB gives a lengthy explanation of how Jerusalem came to be and the name of this Adoni-zedek being a mix of Melchizedek and some pagan thing, but the IM doesn’t say anything about it, so I’m not going to recount it here. This Adoni-zedek sends word to 4 other kings who surround him and they decide to go to war against Gibeon because they are angry that Gibeon is now in cahoots with Israel. I don’t know why they thought going to war with Gibeon was going to improve their situation but I don’t make the rules I guess. Anyway, these 5 kings take their armies and go lay siege to Gibeon. Gibeon goes to Joshua and says “Slack not thy hand from thy servants; come up to us quickly, and save us, and help us: for all the kings of the Amorites that swell in the mountains are gathered together against us.”

Joshua finds himself in a lose-lose scenario and is probably just angry at himself for getting there. The pact compels Joshua to come to Gibeon’s aid, but he hopefully has learned his lesson by now and doesn’t want to engage in battle that God doesn’t command. Verses 7-9 give an interesting timeline which I think is important. It says first that Joshua takes his soldiers and leaves Gilgal, then it says that God tells Joshua, “Fear them not: for I have delivered them into thine hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee.” Then it says “Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal all night.” The reason that I think the timeline is important is because I want to know, did Joshua take his soldiers and leave BEFORE he talked to God about the situation or after. Because if Joshua left before talking to God, it makes it seem like God is just going along with whatever Joshua wants to do, which He’s demonstrated repeatedly that that’s not how this show goes. But if Joshua goes up AFTER he talks to God about it, then that’s what is supposed to happen but verse 7 makes it questionable. It’s the term “therefore” in verse 9 that makes me think Joshua recognized his risky situation and went to God for guidance first, THEN took his soldier after God told him what to do.

Joshua didn’t consult God about the peace treaty with the people who ended up being from Gibeon, nor did he consult God about whether to keep the treaty with them or to kill them after he found out. He’s not done what God wanted him to do, just like we don’t do what we are supposed to do all the time, but in that situation and in the ones we create for ourselves, God takes the mess that we made and turns it into something that works for our good. God tells Joshua so not be afraid and that He has already delivered them into his hands. Hearing this, Joshua immediately got his troops and left. Verse 10 “the Lord discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon.” I needed to look up some alternative interpretations for this to better understand it, it seems like the consensus for this verse is “the Lord threw them into a panic before Israel,” or “the Lord threw them into confusion before Israel.” This is a call back to God’s promise to cause confusion, panic, fear, and dread in Israel’s enemies which I think is an interesting concept. Israel didn’t have to be large or intimidating, God put fear and panic and confusion into the minds of their enemies all on His own and Israel was able to easily defeat the enemy because of their distraught state of mind. It’s interesting to consider that God can do that, mess with people’s minds like that, but I guess it makes sense, I’ve heard stories of completely unexpected promptings, God could control our hormones, causing cortisol or adrenaline spikes, cause electrolyte or mineral imbalances to people could become dizzy, all types of things.

God makes their enemies confused and they run away and while they are running away, “the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.” That is wild, so not only did God make their enemy crazy so they ran away, He then rained stones down on them and killed them as they ran. This begs the question, why didn’t God just make the enemy slow down or get tired and lay down so Israel could kill them all? Why do it Himself? I think that if the soldiers had been the ones to kill all the enemy, then it would have prompted many of them to “boast in their own strength,” thinking that they were mighty warriors, or become bloodthirsty. Killing does something to people, even if they do it professionally or for good reasons, and God took that burden away from the soldiers while still reminding them that He was greater than them all, that they needed Him for their victories.

All this fighting and running and pursuing was taking a long time, and that’s usually how it went, battle takes time, but historically, fighting really only took place from sun up to sun down because that was the only time that people could see, until we got night vision, which was very recently. TB explains the dilemma that Joshua was facing as the fighting went on, saying “First of all there was a very practical reason that Joshua wanted for the daylight to go on longer than normal. Battles ended at sunset in that era. It was a simple matter of not being able to discern enemy versus friend. Plus they were exhausted and needed food and rest. In this particularly incident the troops of the 5-nation coalition were anxious for the darkness to come so that they could hide and then escape from Joshua’s clutches. They stood a very good chance of most of them making a stealthy return during the night to their home cities. Joshua perfectly understood this and realized that by all that was natural there simply was not going to be enough daylight hours to finish the job.” Verse 12 says that “then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? SO the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”

The mention of the sun and moon both standing still is significant because the sun and the moon typically don’t shine together at the same time. TB comments on how that’s possible, saying, “The scene has Joshua asking God to keep the sun AND moon from setting and thus preventing nightfall. How is it that both the sun AND the moon are mentioned since it is a daytime event? Well, we’e all seen the feint glow of the moon during the day, haven’t we? IN our current narrative we have the sun hovering over Gibeon and to the west, over Ajalon, was the outline of the moon. The un was on its decline and the moon on it’s ascent.” The sun was actively setting when Joshua recognized the need to have the sun stay up longer in order to finish and win this battle. The verse says that Joshua spoke to the Lord and commanded the sun and moon to stand still with all of Israel watching, but I don’t know if that means that Joshua talked to God about it before commanding it, or if he came up with it in the moment and said it just hoping that God went along with it. It seems to me that he would have had that conversation before commanding it in front of all the people, but TB talks extensively about his interpretation being that Joshua “commanded” God and that God obeyed, even though he says it wasn’t really this way but the way that it’s worded was basically Joshua said it and God made it happen. This is an interesting concept for me because this is something I’ve been thinking about recently. It started with a video I saw on Instagram that was discussing how in the scriptures people were healed by not asking God for healing please but commanding it. And it’s true, the verses that were cited said that the people were commanded to be healed, so what I’ve been thinking about recently is where is the line between asking and commanding in that authority and power? And not just healing, but everything, and this is an example of that, did Joshua ask or did he command?

Whichever way it happens, the sun and the moon held still until Joshua needed it to be over. There was significant debate on how exactly this happened, physics and gravity and all that but the IM quotes Helaman 12:13-17 where Mormon explains that the earth went back, I don’t necessarily need to know exactly how it happens, but God being able to manipulate time and space for His purposes is something that hits home for me. The IM also quotes multiple other scriptures, mostly D&C, that talk about the great calamities that will accompany the last days, saying, “This episode of Joshua commanding the sun and moon to stand still was insignificant compared to the stellar upsets that will accompany the second advent of the Savior, when stars will be hurled from their places.” That was disconcerting. What a day that must have been, God confused and scattered their enemies from before them, bludgeoned their enemies to death with huge rocks from the sky, and then stopped time until they could completely win their battle. I couldn’t even imagine what that would look like, how could anyone doubt the God of Israel after that? But that begs the question too, what miracles and signs in my life have I overlooked or disregarded to discount God in my life? Rahab believed for much less.