Joshua 10:8-11

The victory over the five kings.

The battle against the five kings is the most remarkable episode in the conquest of the Canaanites. Israel might well have had cause to tremble in presence of such allied enemies. But Divine aid gives it a signal victory. That aid comes under two forms:

1 . It consists, first, in a miraculous intervention of the Divine power, which sends down a fierce storm of hailstones upon the Canaanitish armies, and so lengthens out the day as to make the conflict decisive. No one believes now that the sun stood still. Holy Scripture speaks the popular language of the day, and makes no pretension to being scientific in its records. God reveals only that which man has no power to discover, and it was not the calling of Joshua to be a Galileo or Copernicus. Do we not still speak in common parlance of the rising and setting of the sun? All that is essential is, that we hold fast our faith in the miracle itself. Let us not marvel that such a prodigy was wrought for so small a nation; for that nation was the depository of the promise that in it should all nations of the earth be blessed. The God of nature may surely show Himself the King and Master of nature, and it is most fitting that the heavens which declare His glory should do His commandments. The supreme law of the universe is not the physical law, but the dependence of that law upon the sovereign will of the Almighty.

2 . This Divine aid was manifested, in the second place, by the heroic confidence and courage infused into the hearts of his people. "Fear them not," was the message to Joshua, who might well nave been dismayed at so powerful a league of enemies, "for I have delivered them into thine hands." "Therefore," as we read in the following verse, "Joshua came unto them suddenly." The Divine word alone gave him courage to go forward, and courage is in itself an irresistible power, even more formidable than the storm of hailstones from heaven. With more than redoubled force, Israel rushes on to certain victory. Thus the noble words of the Psalms 21:1-13 . are anticipated and fulfilled: "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God" ( Psalms 21:8 ). Did not Elisha describe Elijah as the chariot and the horsemen of Israel? Let us place unwavering trust in all our conflicts in this Divine aid, and that confidence will be the first condition of victory.—E. DE P.

HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY