Joshua 10:12-15

THE SUN AND MOON STAND STILL, Joshua 10:12-15.

We are not to regard these remarkable verses as giving an unauthentic and merely poetical description of the victory, as rationalistic expositors teach, but rather a parenthesis thrown into the narrative, by the author himself, or by a later hand, and taken from the book referred to in Joshua 10:13. This may be clearly seen from the statement, in Joshua 10:15, that Joshua returned to Gilgal, which he did not do until the close of the campaign, as stated in Joshua 10:43. On the supposition that Joshua 10:15 is the conclusion of the quotation all the confusion is cleared up. We may admit that this quotation from the Book of Jasher was inserted here some time after the Book of Joshua was otherwise completed. The Book of Jasher was not completed, possibly not composed, until the time of David. See note on Joshua 10:13. But from this admission it does not follow that the passage is unhistorical, or to be explained merely as poetry.