Tag Archives: Jericho

Bible Interpretation, Sunday School

Commentary on Joshua 3-6 (The Fall of Jericho)

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In chapter 3, the Israelites are finally ready to enter the Promised Land, but to get there, they have to cross a river, the Jordan River. Given that there were tens of thousands of Israelites, young and old, along with all of their supplies, how would they do this? The Jordan River was not a small stream that could easily be crossed. Dale Ralph Davis, in Joshua: No Falling Words (Focus on the Bible), describes the scene:

The actual Jordan Valley between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea varies in breadth from 3 to 14 miles. Within this valley is the river’s floodplain, which is 200 yards to 1 mile wide. The floodplain was packed with tangled bush and jungle growth. . . . Then there was the river channel itself, which—if similar to nineteenth-century (AD) conditions—was from 90 to 100 feet broad, with a depth of 3 feet at some fords to as much as 10 to 12 feet. The current was strong because of the drop in elevation (a drop of 40 feet per mile near the Sea of Galilee and an average of 9 feet per mile overall). This means that the river Israel faced that springtime was no placid stream but a raging torrent, probably a mile wide and covering a mass of tangled brush and jungle growth.

Only a miracle from God will get the nation into Canaan. God’s instructions to Joshua are simple. Tell the people to prepare themselves. Send the Levite priests out first, carrying the Ark of the Covenant. The people are to stay back 1000 yards and watch the miracle. When the priests, carrying the ark, step foot in the water, the water will stop flowing. The people will cross the river on dry ground while the priests stand in the middle of the river with the ark.

And this is exactly what occurred. See verses 15-17 below:

Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.

Now that the Israelites have crossed the Jordan, they must conquer the city of Jericho, and this is where the story picks up in chapter 6. How would Israel defeat a heavily fortified city with thick outer walls? God would provide a way. Here are his instructions to Joshua in verses 3-5:

March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.

Notice that the ark would lead the way around the city. The ark represented God’s presence among the people, so the clear message to Israel, and to us, is that God gets the glory! He enabled Israel to enter the city. Joshua and his army could have never conquered Jericho on their own.

Verses 8-20 describe, in detail, the Israelites following Joshua’s orders exactly as commanded. Once the city walls fell, Joshua gave further instructions. They were to destroy all of the people and livestock within the city, and they were to remove any valuable items, objects made of gold, silver, bronze, or iron, and place them into the treasury of the Lord. The people were not to take any valuables for themselves. God warns them that if they take any valuables for themselves, they will be destroyed just as the people of Jericho.

Everything in the city was to be dedicated to God. Dedication, in the context of the conquest of the Promised Land, means either total destruction or donation to the treasury of God. The people of Israel were not to benefit from the destruction of Jericho, for they were serving as God’s instrument of justice.

Before we finish chapter 6, let’s review why God is giving Canaan to Israel. Is it because they are deserving of the land? Because they are a righteous people who are morally superior to all other nations of the world? No. Deuteronomy 9:1-6 gives the rationale for God driving out the Canaanites and giving the land to Israel: the sinfulness and wickedness of the Canaanites (their sins are catalogued in Leviticus 18:1-20:27). God was judging the Canaanites with Israel. That is why every bit of Canaanite culture needed to be destroyed.

The only people in Jericho who believed in God, who trusted Him for their salvation, were Rahab and her family. They were rescued by the two spies and taken to safety outside the camp of Israel. Joshua then cursed the city and anyone who would try to rebuild it.

Finally, we see that “the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.” Thus the conquest of the Promised Land had begun.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

Who Did Joshua Kill in Jericho?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Many Christians, as they read the book of Joshua, are uncomfortable with the accounts of conquest that are recorded there.  The conquest of Jericho is the first in Canaan for the Israelites.  The biblical writer describes the battle of Jericho this way in Josh. 6:20-21:

When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.  They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

What causes many of us discomfort is the phrase “men and women, young and old.”  It seems that we must understand Joshua’s conquest of Jericho as a complete annihilation of a major population center, including non-combatants who are women, children and the elderly.

Christian scholar Paul Copan strongly disagrees with this understanding of the attack on Jericho in his book Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God.  Copan marshals a case to dispute the traditional view of Jericho being a major population center with loads of non-combatants living in it.

His argument rests on two primary points.  First, the language found in Josh. 6:21 should be understood as Near Eastern warfare rhetoric.  In other words, Joshua’s original audience would not have understood the sentence, “They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” as literally meaning that.  Instead, they would have heard Joshua describing a decisive military victory.

Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia BC.  The language is typically exaggerated and full of bravado, depicting total devastation.  The knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized this as hyperbole; the accounts weren’t understood to be literally true.

Copan cites several examples of Near Eastern warfare accounts which used hyperbole to describe their victories, including accounts originating from Egyptians, Hittites, and Assyrians.  This historical data casts new light on how we should understand biblical warfare accounts, especially those recorded in Joshua.

Copan’s second point is that the city of Jericho is not a large population center containing numerous non-combatants which were killed in the assault.  According to Copan, the language used in Joshua 6 is “stereotypical Near Eastern language [which] actually describes attacks on military forts or garrisons, not general populations that included women and children.  There is no archaeological evidence of civilian populations at Jericho or Ai” (emphasis added).

Copan goes on to explain:

Given what we know about Canaanite life in the Bronze Age, Jericho and Ai were military strongholds.  In fact, Jericho guarded the trade routes from the Jordan Valley up to population centers in the hill country. . . . That means that Israel’s wars here were directed toward government and military installments; this is where the king, the army, and the priesthood resided.  The use of ‘women’ and ‘young and old’ was merely stock ancient Near Eastern language that could be used even if women and young and old weren’t living there. . . .  The text doesn’t require that women and young and old must have been in these cities.

If this is true, then what of Rahab?  According to Copan, “Rahab was in charge of what was likely the fortress’s tavern or hostel.”  Evidently it was common for a fortress to have a tavern where “traveling caravans and royal messengers would . . . stay overnight.”  Most of Jericho would have consisted of soldiers, priests, and political leaders.

Copan’s argument is compelling, as it cites ancient Near Eastern historical data to place in context what the original readers of Joshua’s book would have understood.  This is exactly what the historical-grammatical method of biblical interpretation calls us to do.  As we gather more data about the ancient Near East, we must constantly refine our understanding of the biblical texts.