Ver. 12-14. Then spake Joshua, &c.— We may refer all that is necessary to say on this remarkable passage to the five following heads. I. The miracle itself, and the manner in which it is described. To facilitate the Israelites obtaining a complete victory over the five kings of the Amorites, God, at the prayer of Joshua, caused the sun and the moon to stand still, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies: there are the words of the historian, confirmed by Habakkuk 3:11. But as, in the opinion of all modern philosophers, it is the earth which rolls round the sun, and not the sun round the earth, how is it possible to reconcile this system with the expressions of the sacred writer? To answer this question, without entering into discussions foreign to the design of a commentary, we content ourselves with remarking, that nothing is more common in Scripture than to express things, not according to the strict rules of philosophy, but according to their appearances, and the vulgar apprehension concerning them. For instance, Moses calls the sun and moon two great lights; but, however this appellation may agree with the sun, it cannot in the same sense signify the moon, which is now well known to be but a small body, and to have no light at all but what it borrows by a reflection of the rays of the sun; appearing to us larger than the other planets, merely because it is placed nearer to us. From this appearance it is, that the Holy Scriptures give it the title of a great light. In like manner, because the sun seems to us to move, and the earth to be at rest, the Scriptures represent the latter as placed on pillars, bases, and foundations, compare the former to a bridegroom issuing from his chamber, and rejoicing as a giant to run his course, and speak of his arising and going down, and hastening to the place from whence he arose, &c. when it is certain, that if the sun were made to revolve round the earth, the general laws of nature would thereby be violated, the harmony and proportion of the heavenly bodies destroyed, and the oeconomy of the universe thrown into confusion and disorder. On the contrary, supposing the earth to turn upon its own axis within the space of twenty-four hours, and to go round the sun in the compass of a year, it will then be easily conceived to move according to the same laws of motion which impel the other planets round one common centre, and the execution whereof constitutes the order and harmony admired in the whole frame of nature. The general design of God when he inspired the sacred writers, having been to form mankind to holiness and virtue, not to make them philosophers; it no way derogates from the respect due to the Holy Spirit, or from the consideration which the writings of those holy men merit, whose pens he directed, to suppose, that in order to accommodate themselves to the capacity, the notions and language of the vulgar, they have purposely spoken of the phaenomena of nature in terms most conformable to the testimony of the senses. In the present case, Joshua seems to have had in view the modern system, when he commanded the moon as well as the sun to stand still; for, of what use could the presence of the moon be to him, while favoured with that of the sun? What he required, without doubt, was, that the sun and moon might lend him their light till he had completed the overthrow of his enemies. Now he could not be ignorant, that if the earth stood still, the sun, the moon, and the rest of the planets, must also seem to stand still: he chose, therefore, to speak the common language of the people, in order to be generally understood. II. The second thing which here presents itself to our consideration is, the place or places where Joshua desired and obtained that the sun and moon might appear to stand. Sun, said he, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon! "Let those two great lights seem stopped and immoveable in that part of the heavens where they at this instant appear to be; the one upon Gibeon, the other over Ajalon." Supposing the modern system of the sun's motion to be accurate, Joshua could not speak this in a proper and philosophical sense. The sun, near a million times bigger than the earth, is many millions of miles distant from it. To justify, therefore, its being literally upon Gibeon, a line drawn perpendicularly from the centre of the sun to that of the earth must exactly take Gibeon in its way; now this is impossible, in as much as the Holy Land does not lie between the tropics. We must, therefore, necessarily conclude, that Joshua here speaks in the popular and figurative style; which is very intelligible, on a supposition that the earth moves round the sun. Those who would enter more philosophically into this subject, we refer to Scheuchzer, tom. 4: p. 37. III. Our third observation respects the time of the miracle. The text imports, that the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day; or more simply, for the whole day. The words, in the midst of heaven, always signify the place of the sun and moon. Accordingly there it stood still, appearing to remain for a whole day, or twelve hours, in the same position. The account of the sacred historian necessarily leads us to understand it in this manner. The various transactions here recorded could not have been brought about in the compass of an ordinary day. The notion of Maimonides is so absurd, that it is inconceivable how Grotius and Masius could have approved it; for he makes the whole miracle to consist, not in God's having granted to Joshua's request really a longer day than was common at this season of the year, but in his giving that general and his soldiers powers sufficient for the effecting in one day what would otherwise have required two: whereas the historian expressly declares that the sun stood still, and that there was no day like that, before it or after it; and, indeed, never before, or since, was there so great a victory as this of Joshua obtained in a single day. It has been asked, why did not Joshua, instead of desiring God to arrest the sun in his mid-day course, delay his request till it was just upon its decline? Now it appears very evident from the event, how greatly it concerned the certainty and splendour of the miracle, that it should begin from the sun's being at the meridian of Gibeon. Had the retardation of the sun not happened till it was going to set, how many might have thought it plausible to attribute, with Spinosa, the extraordinary length of this day to the refraction of the rays from the clouds, which, at that time, were loaded with hail; or to maintain, with Piererius, that it was owing to some aurora borealis, or other similar phaenomenon, which, after the setting of the sun, might appear about Gibeon, and so be mistaken for the sun's standing still! See Spin. Tract. Theol. Polit. cap. 2. & Praeadam. lib. 4: cap. 6. But now, by supposing the sun arrested at noon-day, all these cavils are effectually removed; and God, no doubt, who heard Joshua so readily, inspired him to request the miracle at the very time he did so. See Calmet's Dissertation on the subject. IV. But what is that book of Jasher, or the righteous, to which that sacred historian refers for the truth of this fact? Some are of opinion, that it was a poetical work, in the taste of the Orientals, full of hyperboles, and which it would be absurd to understand in a literal sense: and they add, that perhaps the author, in singing the victory of Joshua, had, under an elegant fiction, represented the planets arrested and day lengthened, in order to render the victory more complete; in the same manner as a Greek poet said, that the sun was used to stay his chariot to hear the melody of a choir of nymphs (see Callim. Hym. ad. Dian. ver. 120.); or as another poet represents the course of this planet as suspended with horror at the offence of Atreus, bloody with the murder of the son of Thyestes, whom he gave to the unhappy father to eat. See Stat. Theb. lib. 1: ver. 289 and lib. 5: ver. 177. We find, say the defenders of this opinion, several passages in Scripture like this; which yet there is no necessity to understand literally, Judges 5:20. Isaiah 13:9-10; Isaiah 34:1-5. But those, who are inclined to see this method of interpretation defended to the utmost, may refer to a dissertation, intitled, "The Sun's standing still in the days of Joshua, rationally accounted for by A. O. LL. D. London, 1739:" an interpretation which appears to us in every respect ill-grounded, as there is nothing in the text of Joshua, which does not lead one to believe, that the historian spoke in the most simple and literal manner; and surely no examples in such cases should be drawn from the strongly figurative and metaphorical expressions of the classics. As to the passages brought in proof from Scripture, they are evidently figurative, and cannot be understood with propriety in a literal sense; those, for instance, in the song of Deborah, would be absurd in a literal sense: the sun may easily be supposed to stand still, but it cannot be supposed to sing; the stars may easily be retained by a divine course in their orbits, but they cannot fight. It is wonderful, that men should compare things which have so little resemblance. Though the Hebrew, according to some, may be translated, Sun, be silent upon Gibeon; it is no less true, that it may be translated with great propriety, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon. See 1 Samuel 14:9; 1 Samuel 5 Samuel 5. As to the objections raised against this miracle from St.
Paul's silence respecting it, Hebrews 11 and its being entirely unknown to heathen writers, the answer is easy: the argument with respect to St. Paul proves too much; for how came the apostle to omit other miraculous events? He speaks not, for example, of the plagues of Egypt, of the miracles of Moses in the wilderness, nor of the passage of the Jordan, &c. Designing only to give some notable examples of the efficacy of faith, he is neither curious in his choice, nor exact in his enumeration; of which there was the less need, as he wrote to Hebrews well acquainted with all these facts. And as to the silence of the heathen writers, that is nothing surprising; for the miracle of which we speak so long preceded every prophane writer of whom we have any remains, that there is no wonder that all remembrance of it was lost before the time of their writings: and yet, if one may be allowed to draw light out of darkness, it should seem very reasonable to conjecture, that the idea of the poets, that their heroes and demi-gods had the power of prolonging days and nights upon certain occasions, arose from this extraordinary event; nay, after all, should we find nothing in prophane history to confirm this fact, no conclusion can be drawn from thence against the literal sense of the words of the sacred writer, even setting aside his divine authority, if we would judge of him with the same candour as of every other historian. But see Huet, Demonstr. Evang. prop. 4: sect. 13. Quaest. Alnet. lib. 2: cap. 12 sect. 27 and Lucan, lib. 6: ver. 460, &c. Purver, in a note upon the passage, observes, that the Chinese History has a tradition, that the sun did not set for ten days, while the emperor Yao reigned. Days, says he, may be thought a mistake for hours, and both miracles to be the same, as the chronological computation exactly agrees.
In conclusion of this note we just observe, that it is easy to show that God, in the present case, interposed his sovereign power in a manner worthy his wisdom and greatness. I. The Gibeonites, now become subject to God, were to be protected against their unjust oppressors. 2. The best way of protecting them, was that which most powerfully evinced the superiority of the God of Israel, and his infinite might. Had the sword of the Israelites alone gained the victory, the success might have been attributed to their valour, to the courage and good conduct of their general, to the fortuitous arrangement of circumstances, or to other similar causes; whereas, the traces of the divine power gave incontestable splendor to the miracle thus wrought at the prayer of Joshua 3. The sun and the moon were the principal objects of adoration with the Canaanites: to arrest these great luminaries in their course, and to do this at Joshua's request, was to give idolatry the severest blow; was to teach idolaters, in the most striking manner, that their gods were but vanity, and their worship foolishness.