Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
But this does not explain the true object of the miracle, or the reason why God gave
up this town to the Israelites without any fighting on their part, through the
miraculous overthrow of their walls. The reason for this we have to look for in the
fact that Jericho was not only the first, but the strongest town of Canaan, and as such
was the key to the conquest of the whole land, the possession of which would open
the way to the whole, and give the whole, as it were, into their hands. The Lord
would give His people the first and strongest town of Canaan, as the first-fruits of the
land, without any effort on their part, as a sign that He was about to give them the
whole land for a possession, according to His promise; in order that they might not
regard the conquest of it as their own work, or the fruit of their own exertions, and
look upon the land as a well-merited possession which they could do as they pleased
with, but that they might ever use it as a gracious gift from the Lord, which he had
merely conferred upon them as a trust, and which He could take away again,
whenever they might fall from Him, and render themselves unworthy of His grace.
This design on the part of God would of necessity become very obvious in the case of
so strongly fortified a town as Jericho, whose walls would appear impregnable to a
people that had grown up in the desert and was so utterly without experience in the
art of besieging or storming fortified places, and in fact would necessarily remain
impregnable, at all events for a long time, without the interposition of God. But if this
was the reason why the Lord gave up Jericho to the Israelites by a miracle, it does not
explain either the connection between the blast of trumpets or the war-cry of the
people and the falling of the walls, or the reason for the divine instructions that the
town was to be marched round every day for seven days, and seven times on the
seventh day. Yet as this was an appointment of divine wisdom, it must have had some
meaning.
The significance of this repeated marching round the town culminates unquestionably
in the ark of the covenant and the trumpet-blast of the priests who went before the
ark. In the account before us the ark is constantly called the ark of the Lord, to show
that the Lord, who was enthroned upon the cherubim of the ark, was going round the
hostile town in the midst of His people; whilst in v. 8 Jehovah himself is mentioned
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