10 As soon as Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction,[a] doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, 2 he[b] feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were warriors. 3 So Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent to Hoham king of Hebron, to Piram king of Jarmuth, to Japhia king of Lachish, and to Debir king of Eglon, saying, 4 “Come up to me and help me, and let us strike Gibeon. For it has made peace with Joshua and with the people of Israel.” 5 Then the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon, gathered their forces and went up with all their armies and encamped against Gibeon and made war against it.
6 And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying, “Do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.” 7 So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. 8 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you.” 9 So Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal. 10 And the Lord threw them into a panic before Israel, who[c] struck them with a great blow at Gibeon and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon and struck them as far as Azekah and Makkedah. 11 And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, the Lord threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword.
12 At that time Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
“Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.
Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. 14 There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel.
15 So Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp at Gilgal.
Second, the God who called into existence out of nothing every particle of physical matter and who continually upholds and sustains it in being would have no problem pulling off a miracle of this magnitude.
Third, this isn’t the only occurrence of a miracle of this sort. In 2 Kings 20:1-11 Hezekiah falls sick and is told he will die. He prays to the Lord to extend his life, who says basically, “Yes, I’ll give you an additional 15 years.” Hezekiah asks for a sign that God will truly heal him. The prophet says, “O.K., the shadow will go backwards ten steps.” He’s referring to something like a sundial, which consisted of a series of steps across which the shadow cast by the sun would move. The sign was that the shadow would reverse itself ten steps, the equivalent of about 5 hours. The point being that the sun appeared to move eastward instead of westward across the sky. If this was a global miracle, it means that God not only stopped the rotation of the earth but actually reversed it! But we are told in 2 Chronicles 32:24-31 that ambassadors from Babylon traveled to Palestine to gain information about “the sign that had been done in the land.”
Fourth, think about any of Jesus’ miracles. He turned water to wine, stopped a storm, and healed someone instantaneously. He created new eyes for a congenitally blind person. Jesus raised Lazarus and Himself from the dead. Every one of these miracles breaks the laws of physics. Let’s look at Jesus turning water to wine. In this time, the best wine was considered to be wine that had aged and mellowed. Bacteria cannot ferment at any rate instantaneously. This tells us that God’s supernatural power was at play. He broke all the laws of nature. Everything He did in a miraculous way broke what we would call the laws of repeatable, observable, science, physics, and chemistry. He does not have to work within the constraints of the physical world or laws.
The most likely natural explanation:
What happened isn’t that Joshua prayed that sunlight be extended at the end of the day but that he prayed that darkness be extended at the beginning of the day, that is to say, early in the morning hours.
1) The Hebrew verb translated “stand still” in v. 12 literally means “to be dumb” or “to be silent” and “still.” This could easily refer to the sun and moon ceasing to shine their light rather than to any cessation of apparent movement. The same is true again in v. 13 where the word translated “stopped” could mean that the radiance or light from the sun and moon ceased to shine.
2) According to v. 9 Joshua and his armies had been marching “all night,” which implies he attacked while it was still dark. Thus the battle may have occurred just before dawn. So, what Joshua prays for is that God would somehow block the light of the rising sun as well as that of the moon to prolong the darkness and thus aid the surprise attack Joshua was about to launch.
3) Look at v. 12. “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” Aijalon was about 10 miles west of Gibeon. This suggests that the sun was to the east over Gibeon and the moon to the west over Aijalon, which would require that the time be early morning. This argues against the idea that what happened was a prolonging of sunlight at the end of the day and argues for the idea that it was a prolonging of darkness at the beginning of the day.
4) In v. 13b it says that the sun “did not hurry to set for about a whole day” Scholars point out that this could as easily be rendered, “as on an ordinary day.” Thus, if the sun was not visible because God somehow miraculously blocked its light, this text would simply be describing the situation in terms of how it appeared to those on earth. Since the sun was blacked out, one could not see it run its course across the sky “as they typically watched it on any ordinary day.”
But if this all refers to God somehow preventing the sun from normally shining as it does at the beginning of each day, how did God do it? Some argue that God did this by employing a cloud cover resulting from the hailstorm or perhaps by a solar eclipse. But it’s difficult to see an eclipse here in that the sun and moon are described in opposition to each other, not in conjunction. Another major problem with the solar eclipse interpretation is that astronomers know precisely when solar eclipses occurred in central Palestine between 1500 and 1000 b.c. and none of the dates fits the time when we know Joshua lived.
1) The Hebrew verb translated “stand still” in v. 12 literally means “to be dumb” or “to be silent” and “still.” This could easily refer to the sun and moon ceasing to shine their light rather than to any cessation of apparent movement. The same is true again in v. 13 where the word translated “stopped” could mean that the radiance or light from the sun and moon ceased to shine.
2) According to v. 9 Joshua and his armies had been marching “all night,” which implies he attacked while it was still dark. Thus the battle may have occurred just before dawn. So, what Joshua prays for is that God would somehow block the light of the rising sun as well as that of the moon to prolong the darkness and thus aid the surprise attack Joshua was about to launch.
3) Look at v. 12. “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” Aijalon was about 10 miles west of Gibeon. This suggests that the sun was to the east over Gibeon and the moon to the west over Aijalon, which would require that the time be early morning. This argues against the idea that what happened was a prolonging of sunlight at the end of the day and argues for the idea that it was a prolonging of darkness at the beginning of the day.
4) In v. 13b it says that the sun “did not hurry to set for about a whole day” Scholars point out that this could as easily be rendered, “as on an ordinary day.” Thus, if the sun was not visible because God somehow miraculously blocked its light, this text would simply be describing the situation in terms of how it appeared to those on earth. Since the sun was blacked out, one could not see it run its course across the sky “as they typically watched it on any ordinary day.”
But if this all refers to God somehow preventing the sun from normally shining as it does at the beginning of each day, how did God do it? Some argue that God did this by employing a cloud cover resulting from the hailstorm or perhaps by a solar eclipse. But it’s difficult to see an eclipse here in that the sun and moon are described in opposition to each other, not in conjunction. Another major problem with the solar eclipse interpretation is that astronomers know precisely when solar eclipses occurred in central Palestine between 1500 and 1000 b.c. and none of the dates fits the time when we know Joshua lived.
So even if one grants that God, the Creator of the universe, is somehow constrained by this view works and does not defy the law of physics.
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