Joshua 6:2

"And Jehovah said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thy hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valor. And ye shall compass the city, all the men of war, going about the city once. Thus thou shalt do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. And it shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall go up every man straight before him. And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests, and said unto them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of Jehovah. And they said unto the people, Pass on, and compass the city, and let the armed men pass on before the ark of Jehovah."

"Jehovah" in Joshua 6:2 is identical with "The Prince of the Hosts of Jehovah" in Joshua 5:14; and these are the instructions for which Joshua made request. This description of the manner in which Joshua is to proceed against Jericho must have shocked Joshua. If there had ever been anything in the history of the world more calculated to invite the contempt and merriment of the citizens of Jericho, we have never heard of it. "The people of Jericho must have made themselves merry with the spectacle."[16] Notice too that all of this must have been very difficult for Israel also. Think of the frustrations, day after day, from all that ceremonial marching, and all the taunts and gleeful laughter that must have been hurled at them by the citizens of Jericho. It is a wonder then, as suggested by Pink, that some of the Israelites, at least did not cry out, "What is the use of prolonging this business?"[17] It was a crucial test of the faith of Joshua when he confronted a set of Divine orders such as those "the Prince" conveyed to him here. Longacre's comment shows how unwilling men are, even today, to BELIEVE that God said this. "The story does not read convincingly to men whose thoughts move NATURALLY in the world as it is known today."[18]

The ASV and many other recent versions have mistranslated the words here given as "rams' horns." "There is no mention of rams' horns in the original Hebrew."[19] The horns used were the jubilee trumpets, long metal devices that were also used in the Feast of Trumpets. "The word from which trumpets comes here means loud trumpets or trumpets of jubilee, and is the same word found in Leviticus 25:9."[20]

Critics have been frustrated trying to find something wrong with this narrative. Holmes stated that, "It is so skillfully compiled that at first sight there is not much fault to find."[21] Of course, there are peculiarities in the construction of this narrative, but these are indications of the ancient style in which it is written. "These minor peculiarities mostly relate to the trumpets and to the ark, but these do not argue against the unity of the passage."[22] The kind of criticisms usually resorted to are merely exclamations of unbelief. Boling, for example, SUPPOSED the story to be INCREDIBLE because of all the outbuildings and dwellings that usually surrounded ancient cities, declaring that, "These instructions presuppose that Jericho is already mostly in ruins at the outset."[23] Such a criticism is illogical. All of the people had already moved inside the walls preparatory to the beginning of the assault upon the city which they expected.

The exact order of the march can be determined here by a careful study of the first eleven verses. Woudstra gave this as follows: (1) A military contingent goes around the city; (2) the heavily armed go first (Joshua 6:7,9); (3) then the priests with the horns (Joshua 6:8); (4) the ark also carried by priests; and (5) finally the rear guard.[24]

Continuing exactly in the style of ancient Hebrew writing, these verses give additional instructions scattered throughout the narrative and not concentrated at the beginning of an episode, as we might have expected. We have noticed this so often in the Bible that the absence of it would be cause for question.