Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
the thing should not have been devoted, or having been devoted, it was their duty to
abstain from it." Any such appropriation of what had been laid under the ban would
make the camp of Israel itself a ban, and trouble it, i.e., bring it into trouble (
conturbare , cf. Gen 34:30). In consequence of the trumpet-blast and the war-cry
raised by the people, the walls of the town fell together, and the Israelites rushed into
the town and took it, as had been foretold in v. 5. The position of haa`aam (OT:5971)
wayaara` (OT:7321) is not to be understood as signifying that the people had raised
the war-cry before the trumpet-blast, but may be explained on the ground, that in his
instructions in v. 16 Joshua had only mentioned the shouting. But any
misinterpretation is prevented by the fact, that it is expressly stated immediately
afterwards, that the people did not raise the great shout till they heard the trumpetblast.
As far as the event itself is concerned, the difference attempts which have been made
to explain the miraculous overthrow of the walls of Jericho as a natural occurrence,
whether by an earthquake, or by mining, or by sudden storming, for which the
inhabitants, who had been thrown into a false security by the marvellous procession
repeated day after day for several days, were quite unprepared (as Ewald has tried to
explain the miracle away), really deserve no serious refutation, being all of them
arbitrarily forced upon the text. It is only from the naturalistic stand-point that the
miracle could ever be denied; for it not only follows most appropriately upon the
miraculous guidance of Israel through the Jordan, but is in perfect harmony with the
purpose and spirit of the divine plan of salvation. "It is impossible," says Hess , "to
imagine a more striking way, in which it could have been shown to the Israelites that
Jehovah had given them the town. Now the river must retire to give them an entrance
into the land, and now again the wall of the town must fall to make an opening into a
fortified place. Two such decisive proofs of the co-operation of Jehovah so shortly
after Moses' death, must have furnished a pledge, even to the most sensual, that the
same God was with them who had led their fathers so mightily and so miraculously
through the Read Sea." That this was in part the intention of the miracle, we learn
from the close of the narrative
(v. 27).
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