Joshua 10:12

12. Then spake Joshua to the Lord What Joshua said to the Lord we do not know, unless we are to construe the command to the sun and moon as Joshua’s prayer, “O Lord, let the sun stand still.” But it is more probable that the great captain, standing on the mountain summit, and seeing his fugitive enemies hastening for their lives far down in the valley below, ejaculated a prayer to Jehovah for supernatural aid, and that he was, in answer to prayer, suddenly endowed with the gift of faith to believe that the laws of the universe would be suspended at his command. The difference between the grace of faith and the gift of faith is this: The trust which Joshua reposed in God’s promise at Gilgal, Joshua 10:8, was an exercise of the grace of faith, which has a moral character, inasmuch as its opposite, a disbelief of God’s word, would have been sin; while the gift of faith is an extraordinary endowment, enabling the possessor to ask for things for which he has no specific promise, the non-exercise of which faith would not be sinful, inasmuch as it does not discredit God’s word. The Lord had never promised to arrest the sun in answer to Joshua’s command. Hence it would have been the highest presumption for Joshua to command a thing so extraordinary on the ground of God’s general promises. But being endowed with this miraculous gift of faith, the act of Joshua in giving orders to the sun and moon to halt in their march through the heavens given, doubtless, in the name of Jehovah becomes perfectly proper.

He said in the sight of Israel That is, in their presence, or in sight of the army. This was done in their presence, in order that they might know to what cause to attribute so remarkable an occurrence, and might glorify God, who had given such power to a man. They could afterward attest to their children the truth of an event of which they had been eye-witnesses.

Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon [Joshua 10:12 and the first part of Joshua 10:13 may be thus poetically rendered:

Then spake Joshua to Jehovah.

In the day of Jehovah’s giving the Amorite

In the presence of the sons of Israel;

And he said in the eyes of Israel:

Sun, in Gibeon be still,

And moon, in the valley of Aijalon.

Then still was the sun,

And the moon stood,

Until a nation should take vengeance on its enemies.]

Various have been the theories devised to explain the manner of this stupendous miracle. Some assert that the passage is merely a poetical interpolation to adorn the narrative and heighten its effect. They allege that it is never quoted in the catalogues of Old Testament miracles. To this we reply, that, as we never find any exhaustive catalogues of those miracles, the omission of this proves nothing. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews omits the striking and unquestioned miracle of the passage of the Jordan. See Hebrews 11:29-30. Others explain this miracle as merely a poetical statement of the fact that the Israelites, in answer to Joshua’s prayer, were endowed with power to do two days’ work in one; a theory too absurd to call for sober refutation. There are others who insist that the earth’s motion on its axis was actually arrested, causing a cessation of the apparent diurnal revolution of the sun and moon. Our objection to this theory is, that it involves several secret miracles. A sudden check in the velocity of rotation of the earth on its axis would violently throw down objects on its surface, especially near the equator. If a resisting force were gradually applied, like a brake to a car-wheel, Prof. Mitchell has ascertained that “in forty seconds the motion might cease entirely, and the change would not be sensible to the inhabitants of the earth, except from the appearance of the heavens.” But this would require a direct interposition of a secret miracle to keep the ocean, which is sustained at a higher level in the equatorial regions by the centrifugal force, from flowing toward the poles, and from submerging much of the continents, and to keep the Mediterranean Sea from dashing over Palestine. Again: By the recent discovery of the correlation of forces it has been demonstrated that a force requisite to arrest the revolution of the earth must convert momentum into heat equal to that generated by the burning of a mass of anthracite coal fourteen times as large as the globe itself. Another secret miracle would be required to prevent this universal conflagration. But secret miracles, so far as we know, have no place in the divine system, since they cannot authenticate a revelation, or demonstrate to man the interposition of God’s hand in the course of nature. We, therefore, with a large number of commentators and Christian philosophers, adopt the theory that the standing still of the sun and moon was optical, and not literal that we have a description of phenomena as presented to the eyes of the spectators. The language of the Scriptures is evidently popular, and not scientific; as when they speak of the earth as standing still and the sun as rising and setting. By the supernatural refraction, or bending of the rays of light, the sun and moon might maintain a stationary appearance for several hours. Even by natural refraction we daily see the sun before he has risen above, and after he has gone below, the horizon. The miraculous receding of the shadow on the dial of Ahaz (2 Kings 20:11; Isaiah 38:8) was probably caused by a similar supernatural refraction of the sun’s rays. This explanation of these astronomical miracles involves the principle which is found in nearly all miracles, namely, the intensifying of some natural agency rather than the violation of any natural laws. As in the case of the widow’s cruse and the feeding of the multitudes, new oil and new loaves were not created, but that which was in existence was multiplied, so do we believe that instead of a new and strange force brought to bear on nature the natural law of refraction was intensified in both of these miracles.

There is no astronomical difficulty in the statement of the positions of the sun and the moon at that time. To Joshua, standing at Upper Beth-horon, the direction of Gibeon was southeast, which would also be the direction of the sun in the early part of the day, at which time the moon might have been in the southwest, above the valley of Aijalon, approaching its setting. See map of the scene of the battle, page 74. To the question why Joshua should ask for the day to be lengthened while more than half the day was still unspent, we reply that the account does not say that he asked for such a miracle. He “spake to the Lord.” We are left to supply the subject-matter of his prayer, which would most naturally be for aid to annihilate God’s foes. He receives no answer, but is suddenly endowed with the gift of faith that at his command to the sun and moon God will work an unheard-of miracle, for the demonstration of his sovereignty over physical law, and of his interest in his people.

It is quite probable that the sun and the moon, the gods of so many pagan nations, were the divinities of the Canaanites, to whom they were then appealing for aid against the victorious Hebrews. If this be true, there is a peculiar appropriateness in this miracle, strikingly demonstrating to both armies the superiority of the God of Joshua.

The absence of any account of this miracle in the annals of other nations should have little weight with us, since the records of nearly all the contemporaneous nations have perished, and none of them have histories containing complete accounts of that early period.