Ver. 26. And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, &c.— As soon as the city of Jericho was razed and destroyed, Joshua convened the chiefs and elders of the tribes, to signify to them the divine intention that this idolatrous city should never be rebuilt. Accordingly, he engaged them by oath never to raise it again; and these, certainly, bound the people in like manner, on pain of the divine malediction. This prudent general thought himself unable to erect a monument better adapted to the greatness of God, than to leave Jericho for ever buried in its ruins, thereby to announce to posterity his justice against wicked and incorrigible idolaters, and his beneficent power in favour of his people, whom he had caused to triumph over the inhabitants of Jericho in the most miraculous manner.
Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho!— It is not of himself, but in the name and by the order of Jehovah, that Joshua here pronounces an anathema upon whoever shall dare to raise again the walls of Jericho. The view in which we have placed this command was pointed out by Maimonides. Joshua, says he, pronounced a curse against those who should build up Jericho, that the remembrance of the miracle which God had wrought by destroying it might never be effaced; for all who looked on these ruins thus sunk into the earth, clearly saw them to be the ruins of a city destroyed by a miracle, and not by the hand of men. More Nev. p. ii. c. 5. We may see from this passage, that Maimonides thought the walls of Jericho were swallowed up by the earth, rather than overthrown. In ancient history we meet with repeated instances of like imprecations and prohibitions to rebuild cities, whose perfidy or violence it was intended to punish, and whose power it was feared should be again revived. Thus Agamemnon cursed every one who should dare to build again the walls of Troy, Strabo, lib. xiii. p. 898; Croesus those who should rebuild Sidena. Ibid. and Scipio Africanus those who should attempt to repair Carthage. Zonar. Annal. lib. ix. p. 149. Cicero de Leg. Agr. Orat. 2.
He shall lay the foundation, &c.— i.e. "All the children of such a man, from the greatest even to the least, shall be smitten with a premature death before the enterprise be finished; his first-born shall die when he begins to rear up the walls of this city, and his younger when he setteth up the gates thereof!" This prophetic malediction was literally accomplished about five hundred and fifty years after, in the person of Hiel, the Beth-elite, who, under the reign of Ahaz, laid the foundation of Jericho, in Abiram his first-born; and set up the gate, thereof, in his youngest son Segub. When, tempted by the situation of the territory in which Jericho lay, Hiel had ventured, through a criminal ignorance of Joshua's prediction, or rather through unbelief, to rebuild this city at a small distance from the spot where it was originally placed, no one made any scruple of settling there; and the design of God seemed not to have been for prohibiting it. We see there a college of prophets; Elijah and Elisha frequented it (2 Kings 2:15-18.); and after that our Saviour honoured it with his presence and miracles. Luke 19:1; Luke 19:48. Long before Hiel's time, some one had already raised some of the ruins of Jericho. We should at least apprehend so, if Jericho was the same as the city of palm-trees; for this last subsisted in the time of Eglon, Judges 3:13.; and it was at Jericho that David ordered his ambassadors to remain till their beards, which had been cut off by the command of king Hanun, were grown again; 2 Samuel 10:4-5. Jericho, at present, is almost entirely deserted; having but thirty or forty little houses in it, which serve as a retreat for some poor Moors and Arabs who live there like the beasts. The plain of Jericho produces hardly any thing more than some few wild trees, and bad fruit, which grow spontaneously without cultivation. We must not, however, pass over the roses of Jericho, or its oil, so excellent for wounds, which they extract from a fruit called by the Arabs za-cho-ne.
REFLECTIONS.—Now is the hour of Jericho's destruction come. At Joshua's command, the hosts of Israel shout aloud; at the signal given by the trumpet's long blast, and according to their faith, this proud city's walls fall down before them. Such will be the triumphant shout of the Israel of God, when, under the conduct of the divine Joshua, they shall, in the last hour of their warfare, see all their foes laid low before them, and with their expiring breath triumph over death, their last enemy, and march through the breaches of the grave to the possession of the city of the living God.