Ver. 20. And—when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and—shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat— When therefore the priests blew the trumpets, the people, hearing the sound thereof, shouted with a great shout, and the walls, &c. Houb. The miraculous nature of this event is so palpable, that one cannot conceive how it could come into the minds of any to contest it, or even to endeavour to assign natural reasons for it. The horrid art of war was in its infancy at the time of Joshua; and it does not appear that any of the means found out in subsequent ages for overthrowing the walls of cities, or making breaches in them, were then in use. The invention of the battering ram is much later. Pliny seems to attribute it to Epeus during the siege of Troy; but, in all probability, Ezekiel is the oldest author who has mentioned this formidable machine, and Nebuchadnezzar the first person who used it, in the siege of Jerusalem, many ages after the Trojan war. See Ezekiel 4:1-2; Ezekiel 21:27. As to gunpowder, every one knows that that fatal composition was not found out till the 14th century of the Christian aera; and even could we suppose the Israelites to have known any thing bordering on the art of undermining the walls and ramparts of a city, and blowing them up by means of any ingredient like gunpowder, would any one venture to say, upon mere conjecture, that such was the practice before Jericho? Could they, in the little time that had elapsed since they passed over the Jordan and invested Jericho, have undermined that city? Besides, what are the steps they take there? What can we find out in them that has the appearance of a siege? And who, on the contrary, sees not in the promises of the general, and the processions of the soldiery, that a miracle was expected? It is God who orders, God who directs every thing. The city is attacked afar off: at the sound of the trumpets, and at the cries of the people, the walls fall down. What machines, what warlike instruments, what a way of besieging and taking a strong place! But, say some, Is it not possible for the walls of Jericho to have fallen without any extraordinary operation of Divine power, and by the mere sound of the voices and trumpets of the Hebrews? The rabbi, Levi Ben-Gershom, hath started such a conjecture, though, notwithstanding, he acknowledges here the miracle in the way we see it.
Amongst the moderns too this opinion hath been strongly defended, particularly by the learned father Mersenne and Morhoff. They observe, that a violent noise is sufficient to break to pieces the most solid bodies, or to agitate them at a considerable distance; and they have collected together some curious particulars to prove it: insisting, among others, on that related by Borelli, a celebrated mathematician, as an eye-witness, that being at Taormina, a city in Sicily, about thirty miles from mount AEtna, that volcano made an eruption, the noise of which shook every house in the city, with circumstances which would not allow him to doubt that this agitation proceeded from the mere trembling of the air, which communicated itself to the houses. To facts these writers have added suppositions; they have represented all the priests sounding the horns, and all the people blowing the trumpets before the walls of Jericho; they have remarked upon the situation of the city, placed in the midst of mountains, where the sound must consequently have a greater effect than in plains: in a word, they have collected whatever might give any colour to the paradox which they chose to maintain; and then they have themselves concluded, that nothing of all this could satisfy them, and that they were, at all events, obliged to acknowledge the Divine hand in the falling of the walls of Jericho. How, indeed, the case being properly stated, can the fact be denied? The question is not, whether walls may fall down by reason of sound, whatever it be; but whether those of Jericho were overturned by the sound of the horns, by the priests, and by the shouts of the people, as from a natural cause. We do not ask, whether God could beat down these walls by the concurrent sounds of the horns and voices of the Israelites, but whether the event so happened: and the Scripture says nothing like it. Besides, divers reasons destroy the conjectures of Mersenne and Morhoff: 1. However powerful we may suppose the noise made by the Israelites before Jericho; yet, that city being so far distant as to be out of the reach of arrows and stones (as interpreters reasonably presume they were), that noise could not but have lost much of its force, and have considerably decreased on reaching the walls. 2. It must have lost so much more of its strength, as it bursts into the open air; for Jericho was situated, not in a narrow valley, but in a plain, overlooked by a mountain. See Joseph. Bell. Jud. l. v. c. 4. 3. For the noise of the horns and voices of the Israelites to overturn the walls of this city, it was necessary that it should be exactly proportioned to the situation of those walls, and the matter of which they were composed. Now, the precise knowledge of this exact proportion, and the issuing of a noise well adapted thereto, though effected by the concurrence of never so many instruments, and never so many voices, would alone be a great miracle. Nay, 4 could this noise alone have been able to overturn the walls of Jericho; yet it is much more difficult to conceive why the trees in the neighbourhood, the tents of the Israelites, and even all the people, should not have been thrown down in like manner. 5. Can it only appear probable to ingenious men, that things so wonderful should be effected by a violent sound, and without a miracle, though we see at this day, when the art of war is brought to so high a pitch of perfection, how much money, labour, and blood it costs, to attack and master well-defended places? Is it in the least probable, that so much pains would be taken, so many skirmishes held, so many risks run, if, by the noise of trumpets in a numerous army, the walls of the cities they attacked could be thrown down. 6. And to conclude, How comes it to pass, that we never see the frightful clamour of so many cannons, mortars, guns, which swallow up the sound of the loudest instruments, and whose horrible din shakes the air as with thunder round the besieged city,—how happens it, I ask, that we never see this noise alone open breaches to the besiegers, and spare them the trouble of trenches, mines, and assaults? But it is too much to stop to confute a supposition, which has engaged the notice of the learned, merely because they are learned who have ventured to advance it. We add but one word more: if any of the ancient fathers seem to have attributed the falling of the walls of Jericho to the sound of the instruments and voices of the people of Israel, it was from a supposition, that God had given to that sound a supernatural and miraculous power. See Scheuchzer, vol. 4: p. 102.