Joshua 6

Extermination of the Idolatrous Cities of Canaan. Its Justification from Various Points of View.

1 (Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.) And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine 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 shalt thou 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

5 seven times, and the priests shall blow with 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 6 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 7 trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD. And they said unto the people, Pass on, 8 and compass the city, and let the armed men pass on before the ark of the LORD. And it was so, that when Joshua had spoken unto the people, the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the LORD passed on, and blew with the trumpets: and the ark of the 9 covenant of the LORD followed them. And the armed men went before the priests that blew the trumpets, and the rearward went after the ark; the priests blowing with the trumpets as 10 they went. And Joshua commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout, nor let your voice be heard, neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I bid you 11 shout; then shall ye shout. So he caused the ark of the LORD to compass the city, going about it once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the camp. 12 And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the LORD. 13 And the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD went on continually, and blew with the trumpets: and the armed men went before them; and the rearward came after the ark of the LORD, the priests blowing with the trumpets as they went. 14 And the second day they compassed the city once, and returned into the camp: so they did 15 six days. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early at the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they com- 16 passed the city seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given you the city. 17 And the city shall be devoted, even it and all that is therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers 18 that we sent. And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the devoted thing, lest when ye have devoted it, ye take of the devoted thing; so should ye make the camp of Israel accursed, and 19 trouble it. But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are holy unto the 20 LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD. So the people shouted, and the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, that the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went 21 up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, both young and old, and ox, and sheep, 22 and ass, with the edge of the sword. And Joshua said unto the two men that had spied out the land, Go into the harlot’s house, and bring out thence the woman, and all that she hath, 23 as ye sware unto her. And the young men the spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had, all her kindred also they 24 brought out; and they set them without the camp of Israel. And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of 25 iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD. But Rahab the harlot, and her father’s household, and all that she had, did Joshua save alive; and she dwelt in the midst of Israel, unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. 26 And Joshua charged them with an oath at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of his firstborn shall he lay the foundation thereof, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it. 27 So the LORD was with Joshua; and his fame was in all the land.

1. This verse, as noted by E. V. in previous section, is a parenthesis. And the second verse has a close connection with the last verse of the preceding chapter. It simply continues the colloquy between the Angel Jehovah and Joshua. The interview closes with the instructions of Jehovah to his servant, extending through the fifth verse. B.

Jericho was situated in the deep depression of the Jordan Valley, six miles north of the Dead Sea, and about eight miles west of the river Jordan. It lay upon the western limit of the Valley, which is here bordered by a steep and lofty range of mountains, presenting a barrier to the interior country seemingly impenetrable. The plain of Jericho is well watered from copious springs which burst from the mountains’ base; and the region of the old city, even at the present time, shows a luxuriance of vegetable growths. N. C. B.

Jericho, “the city of palm-trees,” was beautifully situated at the foot of a lofty limestone range, close by a number of prolific fountains, that still spread beauty and fertility as far as the eye can reach. In the days of Joshua, a glorious palm forest—now, like the balsam-trees, utterly gone—stretched along the vale about eight miles in length and three in breadth, Jericho being situated on the west side and Gilgal (it is believed) on the east of this forest. As the Israelites came up toward Gilgal, emerging from the forest of palms, they would see the lofty battlements of Jericho rising proudly to heaven; and behind, the steep mountain cliffs where the two men who were sent to spy the city had lain concealed. It was a sight to appall any heart where faith did not triumph; and it is a proof of the extraordinary courage with which they were now inspired, that they advanced calmly and confidently to an enterprise seemingly so desperate. W. G. B.

2. See, I have given into thine hand Jericho.** Not, “I will do it, but, I have done it; it is all thine own, as sure as if it were already in thy possession.” It was designed that this city, being the first-fruits of Canaan, should be entirely devoted to God, and that neither Joshua nor Israel should ever be one mite the richer for it, and yet it is here said to be given into their hand, for we must reckon that most our own, which we have an opportunity of honoring God with and employing in his service. H.

3. Jehovah appointed this method of besieging the city, (1) To show both to the Canaanites and to Israel that Omnipotence alone had achieved the work, that he was infinitely above the need of the ordinary means of obtaining a victory, and to render those of his enemies inexcusable who should withstand his resistless arm. (2) To try the faith and obedience of Joshua and his people, by prescribing a course of conduct that seemed to human wisdom the height of folly and absurdity. (3) To put honor upon the ark as the appointed token of his presence, and to confirm still more fully that veneration and awe with which they had always been taught to regard it. Bush.

4. It is the pleasure of God to hold us both in work and in expectation, and though he require our continual endeavors for the subduing of our corruptions, during the six days of our life, yet we shall never find it perfectly effected till the very evening of our last day.

12-14. There was never so strange a siege as this of Jericho: here was no mount raised, no sword drawn, no engine planted, no pioneers undermining; here were trumpets sounded, but no enemy seen; here were armed men, but no stroke given: they must walk and not fight; seven several days must they pace about the walls, which they may not once look over to see what was within. Ep. II.

Here also, as in the crossing of the Jordan, the ark of the covenant appears in the foreground. Seven priests surround it with rams’ horns. Its place is assigned between the battalions that precede and those that follow and bring up the rear. The whole armed host of Israel is put in motion—one half to precede and the other to follow the sacred ark and its attendant priests. The first day they march around the city once, the priests blowing their rams’ horns, but every human tongue silent; and return to their camp for the night. Five more days they encompass the city daily in the same marching order—all silent save the horn-blowing. H. C.

The sacred writer continues to emphasize the precision with which the divine directions were followed day after day throughout each of the six days, and finally on the seventh. All this time elapsed without any apparent result. The walls of Jericho stood as firm at the end of the sixth day as at the beginning of the first, and so until the last circuit had been completed on the seventh day. It might have seemed to the incredulous among the people that all this wearisome marching to and fro was a useless expenditure of time and strength. And yet the Lord of set purpose postponed to the seventh day what he might with equal ease have accomplished on the first. And he required the people to make these numerous circuits about the city, when he might as easily have thrown down the walls of the city without their having compassed it at all. It was intended to test their faith and patience. Only by continuing steadfast to the end they obtained the blessing. It is further observable that the task assigned to each day was promptly performed, without postponement or procrastination. W. H. G.

Only the blare of the trumpets was heard. The host tramped on in grim silence, watched by wondering crowds on the walls, round whose hearts terror would begin to steal at the very strangeness of the thing. The apparent aimlessness, the restraint which confined itself to the one circuit as round a doomed thing daily, the dead silence of the ranks, the blare of the shrill trumpets, would all help to strike awe and kindle expectation of something terrible to follow these silent, slow, inexplicable parades. The morning sun of the seventh day (probably the Sabbath) had barely risen over the eastern hills, when the procession set out once more from the camp; for a long day’s work was before them. Six times the silent march was wound round the doomed city,—a task of many hours; and expectation would be beginning to flag, both among the watchers from the walls and the wearied Israelites, when suddenly, in the seventh circuit, Joshua’s voice, vibrating with excitement, rung out above the trumpets, “Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city!” From all the host one fierce triumphant shout made amends for a week of silence, and summoned the vultures to “cat the flesh of kings and captains.” Surely, never did faith speak in such strange tones as in that hoarse roar; but it did speak, and therefore the walls, which unbelief had reported as reaching well-nigh “up to heaven,” fell “in their place;” that is, in solid masses, so that each man of the encircling host had but to turn a quarter round and march straight on. A. M.

All suddenly the entire wall of the city is flat upon the ground. Wheeling toward the city from every point, armed men rush over the fallen walls; with sword and fire they lay the city utterly desolate. All its silver and gold, all its vessels of brass and of iron, are consecrated to the Lord and come into his treasury; all else was doomed to destruction. Jericho is no more! Its fall gave new impulse to the panic which shook the stoutest hearts among the men of Canaan. They could not but see that a new power was among them and that their city walls were of no particular account before this strange people. We may imagine how anxiously they are saying, Who can stand before this unknown enemy and their more wonderful and wonder-working God? H. C.—Vain worldlings think their ramparts and barricades can keep out the vengeance of God; their blindness suffers them to look no farther than the means: the supreme hand of the Almighty comes not within the compass of their fears. Every carnal heart is a Jericho shut up; God sits down before it, and displays mercy and judgment in sight of the walls thereof; it hardens itself in a wilful security, and saith, “I shall never be moved.” Bp. H.

Not till the seventh day, and not till they have compassed the city seven times on the seventh day, these walls come down. Here then is not only obedience rewarded and faith encouraged, here is patience honored, here is perseverance crowned. The God of heaven speaks to us from above that prostrate city, and tells us that not through faith only, but through faith and patience, we must inherit the promises. C. B.—It is not “ours to reason why,” but to obey. If we trust God, we shall do as he bids us, though little seems to come of it. The blood-cemented walls of many a robber city, which has long afflicted humanity, have to be compassed many weary times, and generations have to pass, before God says, “Now shout!” It is a slow task to leaven society with the principles of the Gospel, which will destroy deeply-rooted and long-continued abuses. But we have to “keep pegging away,” to use Abraham Lincoln’s homespun heroic phrase. If we can do no more, we can at least blow the trumpet which proclaims that God is here and summons Jericho to surrender. If we have to die before the seventh day comes, no matter. We shall have our share in the triumph all the same, and, wherever we are, shall hear the great shout which tells the fall of the bloody city, “to be found no more at all.” A. M.

“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down.” Faith, then, is a power. She plants her foot upon a sure foundation; she grapples with her difficulties, and, in the end, she conquers. The man who believes can trust: his faith sees God, and that sight creates confidence. The man who trusts can ignore or resist present and visible danger, through his clear perceptions of an Unseen Protector; and his trust is, of itself, a force, whether for purposes of action or purposes of resistance. Upon any supposition, the agency of faith on this occasion was limited to its determined reliance and hold upon the unseen agency of God, who, whether through some natural law or independently, effected the downfall of the walls. The power of faith is the same; if it does not itself act, it accepts the conditions of action which are prescribed by the real Agent; it thereby, we may dare to say it, puts His arm in motion; it acts—but through Him. H. P. L.

The one victorious power is that of absolute confidence in God’s help. Men in whom that burns go flaming through antagonism and consuming wickedness. There is nothing which silences opposition and kindles like confidence so surely as a soul all possessed by it. Eloquence, learning, strategy, organizing power, machinery, and wise methods, are all very good; but an ounce of faith is worth a ton of them when the question is how the walls of Jericho are to be got down. It will beget these qualities, they will never produce it. Mark how faith conquers. It does so by bringing the might of

God into the field. Faith is not the battering-ram which beats down the walls, but only the hand which swings the ram. God’s power is, if we may say so, set loose to work through our faith; and that faith is mighty, because it opens the door for the entrance of his omnipotence. The slow marches round and round the doomed city, and the war-cry, at last did not effect the capture; but they were the tokens of the faith which brought into play the power which did. A. M.

Faith in our days must be based on the Word of God. Then we may follow its guidance without fear. It will never lead us astray. But there is much that is called faith that has no better foundation than mere human opinion, or even folly. Spiritualism is of this type. Much of the “faith healing” of the day belongs to this category, and many of the singular faiths of the day are nothing more or less than credulity. That faith is always sure that has a “thus saith the Lord” before it goes ahead, but when it has this, it moves on without consulting with flesh and blood; in fact, it has to do this, for flesh and blood cannot see by the eye of faith. It is perfectly possible for us to have sometimes to act in a way that seems absurd to the natural man—as when we make great sacrifices for the cause of the Master. In matters of this kind, we are to study the Word carefully, to pray earnestly, and then to risk all boldly. Then our Jerichos will begin to come down on every hand. Until then they will stand as securely as when we first crossed the river into the land of promise. Schaeffler.

The two features, so vividly brought out here, of the protracted preparations and of the sudden final catastrophe, mark all God’s temporal and national judgments. The materials for the explosion are slowly gathered, grain by grain, and centuries may pass before the pile is complete; at every moment of which his pleading voice might be heard, and repentance and reformation might disperse the dangerous accumulation. But when the match is applied, the flash and clap and ruin are crowded into a moment. The slow minute-hand creeps round the dial for a long silent hour; but when it reaches the sixtieth of the seconds, in each of which it might have been stopped, the bell rings out, and all is over. God waits, that men may turn; but if they do not turn, God strikes, and the stroke is mortal. Now, all this is as true under the Gospel as it was in the days of Joshua. The message of love does not contradict the divine justice, from destructive contact with which Christ delivers by his death. Nor does the Gospel only confirm the teaching of judgment, but it intensifies it, revealing a “much sorer punishment” as impeding over us than that which overwhelmed the men of Jericho. The imagery under which Paul prophesies the day of final judgment sounds like an intentional allusion to this narrative when he says that the Lord himself shall come “with a shout . . . and with the trump of God.” But, however that may be, the truth concerning God, which the fall of the little city among its palm-trees taught so long ago, is a truth to-day, confirmed and heightened by the perfect revelation in Christ, . . . The sweep of the revelation then given discloses a side of the divine nature of which this generation is impatient; namely, his punitive destructive energy. The men of Jericho, like all the inhabitants of the land, were corrupt beyond recovery. Their “iniquity was full,” and the hour of retribution had struck. Therefore God’s hand let loose this fiery torrent on them, as truly as he did the lava and bitumen on Sodom. It is a sad and solemn sight, but it is part of the long history by which God makes himself known to us; and its teaching is of a permanent, not of a transient nor antiquated, phase of his activity. Many a time since, though not in the same directly miraculous way, he has done similar things. The long agony of the Gothic invasion, the triumphant rush of Mohammedanism in a century from Delhi in the east to Cordova in the west, and later catastrophes, preach the same message, that “the history of the world is the judgment of the world.” If God makes himself known by his doings as men do, the dream of a God whose love is so flaccid that he cannot punish is baseless. A. M.

What is the historical manifestation of Christianity but one long procession around the walls of Jericho, in which the means employed seem to be altogether unequal to achieving that which nevertheless they do in a measure achieve? What is it but a prolonged contrast between the ideal and the actual, between the anticipated and the real? That traceable order and proportion of cause and effect, that array of powerful influences and of commanding personages who achieve striking and magnificent results in the field of secular history, seems constantly to be wanting in the history of the Church, which thus presents us with a continual paradox, that we may look for its explanation beyond the realm of sense. Yes; now, as at the first, “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are” mighty. H. P. L.

17. The city must be burned, and all the lives in it sacrificed without mercy to the justice of God. All this they knew was included in the words (verse 17). The city shall be a cherem, a devoted thing, it and all therein, to the Lord; no life in it might be ransomed upon any terms, they must all be surely put to death (Lev. 27 : 29). So He appoints, from whom as creatures they had received their lives, and to whom as sinners they had forfeited them; and who may dispute his sentence? There was more of God seen in the taking of Jericho, than of any other of the cities of Canaan, and therefore that must be more than any other devoted to him. And the severe usage of this city would strike a terror upon all the rest, and melt their hearts yet more before Israel. H.—This city was the first fruits of Canaan, and as such wholly devoted to the Lord. The spoil of other cities, subsequently taken, was allowed to be divided among the captors, but this was to be an exception to the general rule. 18. And trouble it. Bring distress upon it by provoking the divine displeasure. This is spoken as if in foresight of the sin of Achan, to whom Joshua afterward said (ch. 7 : 25), “Why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day.” From hence he is called Achar, trouble (1 Chron. 2 : 7). Bush.—We must learn of God that there is a punishing mercy. Cursed be that mercy that opposes the God of mercy.

22,23. Yet was not Joshua so intent upon the slaughter, as not to be mindful of God’s part, and Rahab’s: first, he gives charge (under a curse) of reserving all the treasure for God; then, of preserving the family of Rahab. Those two spies that received life from her, now return it to her and hers: they call at the window with the red cord; and send up news of life to her the same way which they received theirs: her house is no part of Jericho; neither may fire be set to any building of that city till Rahab and her family be set safe without the host. The actions of our faith and charity will be sure to pay us; if late, yet surely. Now Rahab finds what it is to believe God; while, out of an impure idolatrous city, she is transplanted into the Church of God and made a mother of a royal and holy posterity. Bp. H.—Joshua is a type of Christ in an act of grace which he exercised, and that to his enemy Rahab. Why have we at once a sinful woman spared and admitted into covenant on her faith, nay privileged in the event to become the ancestress of our Lord, except that in Joshua the reign of the Saviour is typified, and that the pardon of a sinner is its most appropriate attendant? Newman.

Dwelleth in Israel. As a communicant and partaker of all the distinguishing privileges of the chosen seed. Unto this day. A strong proof that the book was written in or near the time to which it refers, and in all probability by Joshua himself. Bush.—The blessing which followed Rahab for her conduct is recorded as the greatest example of faith and of the works which spring from faith, in the old heathen world. Her mind and heart received in simple faith the proofs of Jehovah’s power and purposes; she served his people with courage, ingenuity, and devotion; and so she “entered into the kingdom of God.” She was rewarded by a most distinguished place among the families of Israel. She married Salmon (perhaps one of the spies), and became the mother of Boaz, the great-grandfather of David. Hers is thus one of the four female names, all of them foreigners, recorded in the genealogy of Christ; and it is one of the profoundest moral, as well as spiritual, lessons of His Gospel, that He did not disdain such an ancestry.

26. Joshua imprecated a solemn curse on the man who should rebuild Jericho. The curse was literally fulfilled in the fate of Hiel, the Bethelite, who rebuilt Jericho in the reign of Ahab: his first-born son, Abiram, died as he was laying the foundation, and his youngest son, Segub, while he was setting up the gates (1 K. 16 : 34). P. S.—He would have it to remain in its ruins a standing monument of his wrath against the Canaanites, when the measure of their iniquity was full; and of his mercy to his people, when the time was come for their settlement in Canaan. H.—This curse was pronounced on the builder of Jericho, not on those who might inhabit it after it was built: for in aftertimes it was inhabited without scruple. Indeed this place was afterward famous on many accounts. Here the prophet sweetened the waters of the spring that supplied it and the neighboring countries; here Herod built a sumptuous palace; this was the dwelling-place of Zacchaeus, and was honored with the presence of Christ, who vouchsafed to work some miracles here. Bp. Patrick, Stackhouse.

Joshua could not have preserved that simplicity and gentleness which, side by side with a soldier’s bold daring, make up his character, unless all mere earthly feelings had been wholly overpowered by the sense that, as directly as the earthquake or the pestilence, he was God’s simple instrument in sweeping from the earth a long-tried, long-endured, but incurably abominable race. This was the lesson Joshua had from the first to learn. This great truth, as a talisman for his own safety, sunk into his spirit as he gazed on those heaped-up streams of Jordan and stood unshaken amid the dust and din and terror of the falling walls of Jericho. He moved amid these scenes of blood as an avenging angel might hover over them—the doer of the Will of the Holy One, untainted by human passion, and full even in his unswerving zeal for God of a terrible gentleness. We read all that in his fatherly sympathy with the offending Achan, even while he condemned to be burned with fire the great transgressor, who had brought himself and his under the ban of God. Only in the spirit in which Joshua wrought them can we read aright his mighty deeds: and so read, they are rich in instruction which we most deeply need. We who live in these later days can see that the whole history of man hung upon the issue of those battles in the plain of Jericho and on the hills of Beth Horon. What other conflicts have ever decided so much for humanity? Joshua stood on those fields of blood, the very world-hero, bearing with him all its destinies. Wilberforce.

The fall of Jericho was an example of the power of simple obedience to plans of action prescribed by God, and an earnest of the conquests to be achieved by the same principle. And this is true also of the destruction of the city. Not only as the first which the Israelites took, but as perhaps the most conspicuous city of Canaan for the advantages of its position, its commerce, wealth, and luxury, and unquestionably also for the abominable vices that had now “filled up the iniquity of the Canaanites,” its doom was the pattern of that denounced on the cities of the land. P. S.

The ark of the covenant strongly symbolized the Gospel. There was the recognition of the personality and presence of God; there was his perfect law; there, too, was sinful and sinning man’s covenant to keep it; there the seat of mercy and pardon, approached only with ceremonies and offerings indicative of the principle of the cross in its subjective operations. And this ark is the focal point of interest in the siege of Jericho. The city yielded not to soldiers, but to priests; to priests, moreover, in the capacity of heralds blowing “trumpets of jubilee;” or, rather, to the ark of the covenant which they heralded; or, more strictly still, to the Gospel,—the covenant of grace proclaimed,—which the ark could only symbolize. Thus we see that the salvation of God’s truth to us is no mere natural evolution, but that even at Jericho, in the first aggressive step in the conconquest of Canaan, God through symbolic events testifies that this bloody conquest is but the prophetic shadow of a holy war whose consummation awaited only the growing spiritual possibilities of man, and that the Gospel plan was planned from the beginning? Cable.

The grand miracles of the dividing of the Jordan and the fall of Jericho’s walls formed part of the same series of miracles which began with the plagues of Egypt, and was continued in the dividing of the Red Sea, the guidance of the cloud, and the daily furnishing of the manna. It was the period of founding a great church by the God of Salvation, and he surrounded its founding with glorious evidences, as afterward he surrounded the founding of the Christian Church, its development, with like miraculous evidences for the conviction of mankind. We should look just to such epochs as those in which marvels from God’s hand should be dealt out to the world. Crosby.—This story is a story of national progress. It is also one of supernatural progress. For us the supernatural is, in the highest and truest sense of the word, natural, for it is the revelation of the nature of God. We accept the possibility of the supernatural and miraculous, but all the more for that do we hold that if God interferes in the affairs of men miraculously, He will not do it capriciously, unnecessarily, wantonly. Upon the whole story of these Jewish miracles there is stamped a character which marks distinctly the reason for which they were wrought; that reason was the religious education of the world. By these miracles the Jew was taught that for nations and men there is a God, an eternal and a personal Will above us and around us, that works for righteousness. This great fact was taught him by illustrated lessons, by pictures illuminated with the Divine light and so filled with the Divine color that they stand and last for all time. Bp. Magee.

It lies on the surface of the Scriptural narrative that “a notable miracle,” unparalleled in history, had in this case been “wrought” by Jehovah for Israel. As a German writer puts it: It would have been impossible to show it more clearly, that Jehovah had given the city to Israel. First, the river was made to recede, to allow them entrance into the land; and now the walls of the city were made to fall, to give them admission to its first and strongest city. Now such proofs of the presence and help of Jehovah, so soon after Moses’ death, must have convinced the most carnal among Israel that the same God who had cleft the Red Sea before their fathers was still on their side. And in this light must the event also have been viewed by the people of Canaan. But, besides, a deeper symbolical meaning attached to all that had happened. The first and strongest fortress in the land Jehovah God bestowed upon His people, so to speak, as a free gift, without their having to make any effort, or to run any risk in taking it. A precious pledge this of the ease with which all His gracious promises were to be fulfilled. Similarly, the manner in which Israel obtained possession of Jericho was deeply significant. Evidently, the walls of Jericho fell, not before Israel, but before the Ark of Jehovah, or rather, as it is expressly said in verse 8, before Jehovah Himself, whose presence among His people was connected with the Ark of the Covenant. And the blast of those jubilee-horns all around the doomed city made proclamation of Jehovah, and was, so to speak, the summons of His kingdom, proclaiming that the labor and sorrow of His people were at an end, and they about to enter upon their inheritance. This was the symbolical cal and typical import of the blasts of the jubilee-horns, whenever they were blown. Hence also alike in the visions of the prophets and in the New Testament the final advent of the kingdom of God is heralded by the trumpet-sound of His angelic messengers (comp. 1 Cor. 15 : 52 ; 1 Thess. 4 : 16 ; Rev. 20 and 21). But, on the other hand, the advent of the kingdom of God always implies destruction to His enemies. Accordingly, the walls of Jericho must fall, and all the city be destroyed. Lastly, it was fitting that Jericho should have been entirely devoted unto the Lord ; not only that Israel might gain no immediate spoil by what the Lord had done, but also because the city, as the firstfruits of the conquest of the land, belonged unto Jehovah, just as all the first, both in His people and in all that was theirs, was His—in token that the whole was really God’s property, who gave everything to His people, and at whose hands they held their possessions. A. E.

EXTERMINATION OF THE IDOLATROUS CITIES OF CANAAN. ITS JUSTIFICATION FROM VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW.

CENTURIES before, Divine wisdom had made choice of this favored region as the abode of his people, among whom his name and worship should be perpetuated. In calling Abraham to this land, and giving it to him and his posterity, God claimed and exercised his right so to give it. That he might certify the gift to all, and himself as the giver, he recorded his name upon it. For Abraham, on his entrance into the land under Divine direction, and at his first halting-place, nearly in the geographical centre of the country, erected an altar to Jehovah (Gen. 12 : 7). Wherever he halted for a time in his subsequent journeyings, and fixed his temporary abode, he “built there an altar to Jehovah, and called on the name of Jehovah” (ch. 12 : 8. See chs. 13 : 4, 18 ; 21 : 33.) A like record is given of Isaac (26 : 25), and of Jacob (33 : 20). Centuries had now passed, and all was changed. The germs of idolatry had reached their complete development. They had effaced every vestige of Jehovah’s name and worship, and in place of them were the worst abominations of heathenism. Thus this favored land, chosen of God to perpetuate his name and worship, and hallowed by his altars, was now wrested from its purpose, and his altars everywhere supplanted by those of false gods. Idolatry, with its polluting and de-humanizing rites, had taken such hold of the popular mind, infusing its poison into all the relations and conditions of life, from infancy to age, that nothing short of extirpation would uproot and totally destroy the deadly evil. This was expressly commanded in Nu. 33 : 51-53, and De. 20 : 16-18. It is enough that God commanded it, and had the right to command it. But it was no arbitrary mandate. Its justice is clearly manifest from what has already been said. Its wisdom is no less evident, as the necessary means of the highest good, both to that age and to all succeeding ones. Conant.

The Old Testament knows no other ground for the assignment of the land to Israel than the free grace of Jehovah, to whom it belonged ; and no other ground for the blotting out of the Canaanite tribes than the divine justice, which, after these tribes have filled up the measure of their sins in unnatural abominations, breaks in at last in vengeance, after long waiting. But Israel is threatened with exactly the same judgment if it become guilty of the sins of the tribes on whom it executes the divine judgment with the sword. O.

In reading the Old Testament account of the Jewish wars and conquests in Canaan, and the terrible destruction brought upon the inhabitants, we are constantly to bear in mind that we are reading the execution of a dreadful but just sentence, pronounced by God against the intolerable and incorrigible crimes of these nations—that they were intended to be made an example to the whole world of God’s avenging wrath against sins of this magnitude and this kind; sins which, if they had been suffered to continue, might have polluted the whole ancient world, and which could only be checked by the signal and public overthrow of nations notoriously addicted to them, so addicted as to have incorporated them even into their religion and their public institutions; that the miseries inflicted upon the nations by the invasion of the Jews were expressly declared to be inflicted on account of their abominable sins—that God had borne with them long: that God did not proceed to execute his judgments till their wickedness was full: that the Israelites were mere instruments in the hands of a righteous providence for the extermination of a people whom it was necessary to make a public example to the rest of mankind: that this extermination, which might have been accomplished by a pestilence, by fire, by earthquakes, was appointed to be done by the hands of the Israelites as being the clearest and most intelligible method of displaying the power and righteousness of the God of Israel; his power over the pretended gods of other nations and his righteous hatred of the crimes into which they were fallen. Paley.

The character of the nations to be extirpated furnishes the reason of the Divine procedure toward them; and that the total extirpation of a pre-eminently wicked race is in no respect more opposed to Divine justice than was the destruction of the world by a deluge, and of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven, will hardly be questioned. Other instances of the destruction of tribes and nations, however different the agency by which it has been effected from that in the present case, and the others adverted to, are of frequent occurrence in the world’s history. Further, and more particularly, experience abundantly confirms the testimony of Scripture, that God employs men, as well as inferior agencies, for the accomplishment of his purposes, whether of good or evil. Individuals have a mission, and so also have nations, and God employs them often, unconsciously to themselves, and even contrary to their intentions, as the instruments of his wrath, and when they have fulfilled their destiny, arms in turn other powers against them. This is the voice of universal history, and of Scripture history in particular, which discovers the most hidden springs of actions, and the will which directs all affairs. In these matters God not merely permits—for this were to take a low view of the Divine government, one utterly inadequate to explain the various phenomena of Providence—He arranges all events, and regulates all their issues. If, then, God does employ men as the unconscious ministers of His will, can He not also legitimate a people as righteous instruments of punishment? If God can and does employ an instrumentality of destruction acting from its own will, and for the accomplishment of its own ends, without any respect to the Divine will, and which on that account is guilty, can He not also employ an instrumentality which, acting under his sole and supreme authority, shall be guiltless of wrong? This is the precise point to which the present question is reduced; and it is with this rather than with the assumed injurious consequences to the conscious instruments so employed, that the objector has to deal. D. M.

Far greater empires have been given to destruction than that of the Canaanites. In most cases they fell by their own vices as the prime cause. All historians are so agreed and have pointed the moral for succeeding nations. Instead of denouncing the arrangement by which nations die of profligacy as individual sinners do, they have noted the warning lesson and recognized its value. The Old Testament historian does precisely the same. He tells us the Canaanites were so dreadfully depraved they had to be destroyed. W. E. Knox.

God suffered the Canaanites to remain there until they had forfeited their title not to Canaan alone, but to life itself and to any further national existence. This point is too vital to be passed without careful attention. In Lev. 18 we meet with a series of crimes against moral purity—violations of the seventh commandment—culminating in sodomy and bestiality; and classed with these is the burning of children in the worship of Moloch (verse 21). Then God says—“Defile not yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you, and the land is defiled; therefore do I visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.” The same sentiments are repeated (verses 26–30). Unnatural lusts had sunk both men and women not only down to a level with beasts, but even below them. Idolatry had so far quenched the sweet humanities from the parental heart that fathers and mothers could burn their own sons and daughters to Moloch. These horrible, unnatural crimes were not only an outrage against the heart of God the Great Father; but, as he forcibly puts it, they defiled the very land itself. What could a holy and righteous God do with such a people but wipe them out of existence and wash the land they had defiled clean of such pollutions? Lev. 20 reiterates substantially the same list of abominations against which God warns his people. Perfectly definite and explicit is the repetition of the same point in De. 12 : 30, 31, and 18 : 9-14. A people so given up to devil-worship as to burn their own offspring at his supposed behest, must be too debased and corrupt to live! The earth itself cries out against them, demanding their utter extirpation!

Such a war as that of Israel against the Canaanites, waged in obedience to God, waged for the destruction of such sinners and to cleanse the earth from such unutterable abominations and pollutions, is not demoralizing—is not so either necessarily or even naturally; but if done in honest obedience to God and with a due sense of the grounds on which God commanded it, must have been the very opposite of demoralizing; must have educated the nation of Israel to a juster sense of the abominations of idolatry and of the righteous moral government of God over the wicked in the present world. It cannot be doubted that these were the ends which God sought to secure in putting this service upon Israel. A lower object to be reached was to vacate the land of Canaan for Israel to occupy; but the far higher object was to wash the land of its moral pollutions; to break down and blot out nations too corrupt to live. The Lord devolved this extirpation upon Israel that they might thereby get a deeper sense of his abhorrence of such sin—not to say also, a juster view of the intrinsic abominations which God commissioned them to punish. H. C.

“Defile not ye in any of these things,” God had said, “that the land spew not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spewed out the nations that were before you; I am the Lord your God!” How much more striking would this warning become for them from the fact that they had been the instruments of a judgment similar to that with which they themselves had been threatened! Did not each blow they dealt in this war with the Canaanites speak their own death sentence if they ever should morally assimilate themselves with the guilty nations? Godel.

That God is as severe in his dealings with sin in his own people as in his enemies is a point which is surely of great moment. If severe in punishing these wicked nations, God is not less sparing of Israel when it follows in their ways and does what is wrong. We think here of the destruction of thousands of their number for the sin of the golden calf, and for the sin of Baal-peor; of the plagues, fiery serpents, etc., which chastised them for disobedience; and of their defeat at Ai. There is with God no respect of persons; and if one can believe in his love to Israel notwithstanding these inflictions, he may believe in his love and justice notwithstanding the punishments inflicted on the sinful nations around. Orr.

This wholesale execution was not merely just as regards the irretrievably corrupted tribes which were the objects of it; it was equally indispensable on account of the state of moral weakness of the Hebrew nation that was called to take their place. On the one hand, inclined toward idolatry, like all the other nations; on the other, charged with the grand mission of maintaining and propagating monotheism, how could Israel have accomplished its task had it been forced to incorporate with itself all the Canaanites of the Holy Land? The work of God would thereby have become wholly impossible. Either the plan of God for the salvation of mankind was to fail, or those who were ripe for judgment were to perish. Godel.—The alternative was either an unrelenting hostility, or a compromise and a mingling of the Hebrews and idolaters, which must have resulted in the extinguishment of the light of truth, dim as it was, of which the former were possessed. Had the world been different from what it was, had the Hebrews been different—more firm in their faith, more enlightened—the alternative would not have existed. But it did exist; and the preservation of true religion in its germs, our Christian civilization to-day, are dependent upon the course that was actually taken, revolting as it would be to humane feeling, if repeated at a later day and under altered circumstances. Had the Canaanites been spared, the historic stream, narrow and turbid as it then was, would have been choked up or turned out of its channel, instead of flowing on in a broader and clearer current, until, at a point far remote from its source, it issued in a pure Christian theism, the life of our civilization.

All this is clear to the historical student, whatever may be his creed, who values the Christian religion, and discerns the genetic connection of events. We must conclude that the extirpation of the Canaanites, the only means by which the contagion of their idolatry and sensuality could be avoided—“terrible surgery” though it was, to borrow language of Carlyle in speaking of another matter—was yet a part of the wise and beneficent order of Providence. We must conclude, also, that it was the fruit of the highest religious impulses of the people who were charged with the seed of what is most precious in modern religion and civilization. Were this the whole case, we should have to say that the excesses springing from the untamed religious zeal of an uncivilized people were overruled by Providence, educating good out of partial evil, in subservience to a far-sighted plan for the salvation of the human race. But if we bring in, as an additional element, the manifested will of God, as the warrant for their proceeding, they are raised to the level of executioners, not merely of a permissive, providential appointment, but of a direct commandment. It becomes an instance where human agency is employed for the infliction of divine judgment, the agent consciously acting as the instrument of divine justice.

How can such a commandment, enjoining indiscriminate massacre, be consistent with the divine attributes? As far as the consequences are concerned, the destruction of life, there is no greater difficulty than exists in the case of a hurricane or a plague, which sweeps away myriads of both sexes and of all ages. As far as the effect upon the actors is concerned there is no offence done to the moral sense; there is no such departure from the common ideas, the accepted laws of war and conquest in that age, as would produce a moral deterioration in the Israelites themselves. Rather is it true, that feeling themselves to be deputies of the Supreme Power for the execution of penalties and for the carrying out of a plan not their own, they would perform their stern work with a kind of sacred enthusiasm, unlike the base feeling of malice and revenge, as for a private injury, and impressed at every step with their own exposure to a like retribution in case they trod in the path of those whom they were commanded to destroy. If they were used as a flail and a scourge, the victims of their hostility suffered no heavier calamity than has been visited by the will of Providence upon many a corrupt and enervated nation, which has been crushed under the foot of the invader; while for the Israelites themselves a wall was built up around them against the pollutions of heathenism, and a sense of the guilt and peril of apostasy was gained, which their whole subsequent history proves that they could not afford to spare. Fisher.

Seen historically—estimated in the light of the facts of the case, this method was morally impressive, instructive, elevating, wholesome. That man reads the history of the heroic age of Israel very imperfectly who does not see in it ample demonstration that staunch obedience to God in this matter of war against the idolatrous, corrupt Canaanites, fostered piety, developed Christian heroism and toned up the standard of morality. When they compromised, accepted tribute, and tried their own policy of living side by side with such idolaters instead of God’s policy of vigorous extermination, then came disaster, religious decline, and most perilous moral corruption. The great conflict of those early ages between God and Satan was fought on the point of idolatry—the real question being whether God or the devil should have the worship of men; whether the supremacy and the moral right to rule the world are with God or with Satan. This being the great conflict of the ages, it should not surprise us that God should let Israel’s land of promise be in a sort the battle-ground, and should bring into play the physical force of arms and let his covenant people come into the fight hand to hand against the hosts of his foes. H. C.

Let us but think what might have been our fate, and the fate of every other nation under heaven at this hour, had the sword of the Israelites done its work more sparingly. Even as it was, the small portions of the Canaanites who were left, and the nations around them, so tempted the Israelites by their idolatrous practices, that we read continually of the whole people of God turning away from his service. But had the heathen lived in the land in equal numbers, and, still more, had they intermarried largely with the Israelites, how was it possible, humanly speaking, that any sparks of the light of God’s truth should have survived to the coming of Christ? Would not the Israelites have lost all their peculiar character? and if they had retained the name of Jehovah as of their God, would they not have formed as unworthy notions of his attributes, and worshipped him with a worship as abominable, as that which the Moabites paid to Chemosh, or the Philistines to Dagon? But this was not to be, and therefore the nations of Canaan were to be cut off utterly. The Israelites’ sword, in its bloodiest executions, wrought a work of mercy for all the countries of the earth to the very end of the world. They seem of very small importance to us now, those perpetual contests with the Canaanites, and the Midianites, and the Ammonites, and the Philistines, with which the Books of Joshua, and Judges, and Samuel, are almost filled. But in these contests, on the fate of one of these nations of Palestine, the happiness of the human race depended. The Israelites fought, not for themselves only, but for us. They did God’s work; they preserved, unhurt, the seed of eternal life, and were the ministers of blessing to all other nations, even though they themselves failed to enjoy it. Arnold.

Popular critics of the morality of the Old Testament apply the coarsest possible arguments to this subject. They think it enough to point to a rude penal law, to a barbarous custom, to an extirpating warfare, and it at once follows that this is the morality of the Bible; but this is to judge the sculptor from the broken fragment of stone. It was not the morality of the Bible unless it was the morality of the Bible as a whole, and the whole is tested by the end and not by the beginning. Scripture was progressive: it went from lower stage to higher, and as it rose from one stage to another it blotted out the commands of an inferior standard and substituted the commands of a higher standard. This was the nature of the dispensation as being progressive; it was the essential operation of the Divine government as it acted in that period of the world. The dispensation, then, as a whole, did not command the extermination of the Canaanites, but a subordinate step did; and this step passed from use and sight as a higher was attained. The fact, though instructive as past history, became obsolete, and was left behind as a present lesson; and the dispensation in its own nature was represented by its end. The very lower steps led to the end, and were for the sake of leading to it. The critic adheres to a class of commands which existed for the moment, as facts of the day; but the turning point is the issue, and the whole can only be interpreted by the event. The morality of Scripture is the morality of the end of Scripture; it is the last standard reached, and what everything else led up to. Mozley.

Principles involved identical with those of the New Testament.

We affirm that, if contemplated in the broad and comprehensive light in which Scripture itself presents them to our view, there is not an essential element belonging to these statements which does not equally enter into the principles of the Gospel dispensation; and that any difference which may here present itself between the Old and the New is, as in all other cases, a difference merely in form, but founded upon an essential agreement. This will appear whether it is viewed in respect to the Canaanites, to the Israelites, or to the times of the Gospel dispensation. Viewed, first of all, in respect to the Canaanites as the execution of deserved judgment on their sins (in which light Scripture uniformly represents it, so far as they are concerned), there is nothing in it to offend the feelings of any well-constituted Christian mind. From the beginning to the end of the Bible, God appears as the righteous Judge and avenger of sin, and does so not unfrequently by the infliction of fearful things in righteousness. If we can contemplate Him bringing on the cities of the plain the vengeance of eternal fire, because their sins had waxed great and were come up to heaven; or, at a later period, even in Gospel times, can reflect how the wrath was made to fall on the Jewish nation to the uttermost;—if we can contemplate such things entering into the administration of God, without any disturbance to our convictions that the Judge of all the earth does only what is right, it were surely unreasonable to complain of the severities exercised on the foul inhabitants of Canaan. Their abominations were of a kind that might be said emphatically to cry to Heaven—such idolatrous rites as tended to defile their very consciences, and the habitual practice of pollutions which were a disgrace to humanity. The land is represented as incapable of bearing any longer the mass of defilements which overspread it, as even “vomiting out its inhabitants;” and “therefore,” it is added, “the Lord visited their iniquity upon them.” Nor was this vengeance taken on them summarily: the time of judgment was preceded by a long season of forbearance, during which they were plied with many calls to repentance. But as all proved in vain, mercy at length gave place to judgment, according to the principle common alike to all dispensations: “He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall be suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy.” In plain terms, whenever iniquity has reached its last stage, the judgment of Heaven is at hand. This principle was as strikingly exemplified in the case of the Jews after our Lord’s appearing as in the case of these Canaanites before. In the parables of the barren fig-tree and the wicked husbandmen in the vineyard, the same place is assigned it in the Christian dispensation which it formerly held in the Jewish. And in the experience of all who, despite of merciful invitations and solemn threatenings, perish from the way of life, it must find an attestation so much more appalling than the one now referred to, as a lost eternity exceeds in evil the direst calamities of time. In fine, the very same may be said of the objections brought against the destruction of the Canaanites, which was said by Richard Baxter of many of the controversies started in his day: “The true root of all the difference is, whether there be a God and a life to come.” Grant only a moral government and a time of retribution, and such cases as those under consideration become not only just, but necessary.

Again, let the judgment executed upon the Canaanites be viewed in respect to the instruments employed in enforcing it—the Israelites—and in this aspect also nothing will be found in it at variance with the great principles of truth and righteousness. The commission given to the Israelites was limited to the one task of sweeping the land of Canaan of its original occupants. But this manifestly conferred on them no right to deal out the same measure of severity to others; and so far from creating a thirst for human blood, in cases where they had no authority to shed it, they even fainted in fulfilling their commission to extirpate the people of Canaan. This, however, is only the negative side of the question; and viewed in another and more positive aspect, the employment of the Israelites to execute this work of judgment was eminently calculated to produce a salutary impression upon their minds, and to promote the ends for which the judgment was appointed. For what could be conceived so thoroughly fitted to implant in their hearts an abiding conviction of the evil of idolatry and its foul abominations—to convert their abhorrence of these into a national, permanent characteristic—as their being obliged to enter on their settled inheritance by a terrible infliction of judgment upon its former occupants for polluting it with such enormities? Thus the very foundations of their national existence raised a solemn warning against defection from the pure worship of God; and the visitation of divine wrath against the ungodliness of men accomplished by their own hands, and interwoven with the records of their history at its most eventful period, stood as a perpetual witness against them, if they should ever turn aside to folly. Happy had it been for them, if they had been as careful to remember the lesson as God was to have it suitably impressed upon their minds.

But the propriety and even moral necessity of the course pursued become manifest, when we view the proceeding in its typical bearing—the respect it had to Gospel times. There were reasons, as we have seen, connected with the Canaanites themselves and the surrounding nations, sufficient to justify the whole that was done; but we cannot see the entire design of it, or even perceive its leading object, without looking further, and connecting it with the higher purposes of God respecting His kingdom among men. What He sought in Canaan was an inheritance,—a place of rest and blessing for His people, but still only a temporary inheritance, and as such a type and pledge of that final rest which remains for the people of God. All, therefore, had to be arranged concerning the one, so as fitly to represent and image the higher and more important things which belong to the other; that the past and the temporary might serve as a mirror in which to foreshadow the future and abiding; and that the principles of God’s dealing toward His Church might be seen to be essentially the same, whether displayed on the theatre of present or of eternal realities. Since the place chosen for the inheritance of Israel had become in a peculiar sense the region of pollution, this region required to be sanctified by an act of divine judgment upon its corrupt possessors, and thereby fitted for becoming the home and heritage of saints. In this way alone could the things done concerning it shadow forth and prepare for the final possession of a glorified world,—an inheritance which also needs to be redeemed from the powers of darkness that meanwhile overspread it with their corruptions, and which must be sanctified by terrible acts of judgment upon their ungodliness, before it can become the meet abode of saints in glory. The spirit of antichrist must be judged and cast out; woes of judgment and executions of vengeance must precede the Church’s occupation of her purchased inheritance, similar in kind to those which put Israel in possession of the land of Canaan. What, indeed, are the scenes presented to our view in the concluding chapters of Revelation, but an expansion to the affairs of a world, and the destinies of a coming eternity, of those which we find depicted in the wars of Joshua? In these awful scenes we behold, on the one hand, the Captain of Salvation, of whom Joshua was but an imperfect type, going forth to victory with the company of a redeemed and elect Church, supported by the Word of God, and the resistless artillery of heaven; while, on the other hand, we see the doomed enemies of God and the Church long borne with, but now at last delivered to judgment— the wrath falling on them to the uttermost,— and, when the world has been finally relieved of their abominations, the new heavens and the new earth rising into view, where righteousness, pure and undefiled, is to have its perennial hab- itation. Fairbairn.

ACHAN’S SACRILEGIOUS THEFT. ISRAEL’S PUNISHMENT BY DEFEAT AT AI, ACHAN’S DETECTION AND PUNISHMENT. TAKING AND DESTRUCTION OF AI.