Joshua 10:11

11. The Lord cast down great stones. Some have supposed that this was a shower of meteoric stones, but before the statement is concluded hailstones are mentioned. Neither of these, considered by itself, is a miraculous event; but either of them occurring at that particular crisis in the flight, and falling only on the foes of Israel, must be regarded as supernatural. Both meteoric stones and hail may have fallen. I have before me the account of a shower of stones in Normandy, in France, in 1803. The stones fell with a hissing noise from a small rectangular cloud, which did not seem to move, and they were scattered over a tract of country eight miles long by three broad. Above two thousand were collected, the largest weighing seventeen and a half pounds. In the Yale College cabinet may be seen a similar stone, weighing sixteen hundred and thirty-five pounds, which fell in Arkansas. Others are found in South America, one whose estimated weight is fifteen tons. The most reasonable hypothesis is, that these stones are fragments of small invisible planets moving through space, drawn within the sphere of the earth’s attraction. That a shower of such projectiles may have been directed by the Ruler of the universe to fall on the descent to Lower Beth-horon while his foes were fleeing from Joshua is not an incredible supposition to one who believes in a personal God. There are many instances of hail storms so violent as to be destructive of life, aside from that recorded in Exodus, (Exodus 9:23-26,) a plague so destructive to all who were unsheltered. In our own country, in Jackson, La., 1834, within ten minutes, a little after midnight, a great number of cattle were killed by the hailstones, and much damage was done to the houses and woods. Sir Robert Wilson describes a terrible thunder and hail-storm at Marmorice Bay, Asia Minor, while the British fleet were at anchor there in February, 1801. It continued, at intervals, two days and nights to pour hailstones as large as walnuts, deluging the camps with a torrent of them till the earth was covered two feet deep. In August, 1831, there was a hail-storm so violent that two boatmen in a village on the Bosphorus were killed, and many others were severely wounded, by balls of ice of a pound weight. Sudden showers of hail are not unusual in Palestine. The destructiveness of this shower of hail to the Amorites only, and its occurrence at this time, mark it as a miraculous event. The Lord cast down great stones from heaven, by intensifying and controlling natural agencies.