1 This reason was admitted even by Calvin, and has been well supported by Hengstenberg (Diss. ii. pp. 13 sqq.). The arguments adduced by Kurtz in opposition to this view are altogether unfounded. We have already observed that the reason for the suspension is not given in ver. 7; and the further remark, that in ver. 5 (" all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised ") the book of Joshua dates the suspension not from the sentence of rejection, but expressly and undoubtedly (?) from the departure from Egypt, has no force whatever, unless we so press the word all (uall the people that were born in the desert")
not commence till the second year of their journey, viz. at the time when the murmuring nation was rejected at Kadesh (Num. xiv.); so that by "all the people that were born in the wilderness" we aro to understand those who were born after that time, and during the last, thirty-eight years of their wanderings, just as "all the people that came out of Egypt" are to be understood as signifying only those men who were twenty years old and upwards when they came out. Consequently circumcision was suspended as long as the nation was under the ban of the divine sentence pronounced upon it at Kadesh. This sentence was exhausted when they crossed the brook Zared and entered the country of the Amorites (compare Deut. ii. 14 with Num. xxi. 12, 13). Why, then, was not the circumcision performed during the encampment in the steppes of Moab either as not to allow of the slightest exception. But this is decidedly precluded by the fact, that we cannot imagine it possible for God to have established His covenant with the people at a time when they had neglected the fundamental law of the covenant, the transgression of which was threatened with destruction (Gen. xvii. 14), by neglecting to circumcise all the children who had been born between the departure from Egypt and the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai. We are also prevented from pressing the little word " all" in this manner by the evident meaning of the words before us. In vers. 4 and 5 the Israelites are divided into two classes: (1) All the people that came out of Egypt and were circumcised; and (2) All the people that were born in the desert and were uncircumcised. The first of these died in the wilderness, the second came to Canaan and were circumcised by Joshua at Gilgal. But if we should press the word "all" in these clauses, it would follow that all the male children who were under twenty years of age at the time of the exodus, either died in the desert or were circumcised a second time at Gilgal. Lastly, it does not follow from ver. 6 that the circumcision was suspended for exactly forty years; for the forty years during which Israel journeyed in the desert until the murmuring generation was consumed, are to be interpreted by Num. xiv. 33, 34, and amounted, chronologically considered, to no more than thirty-eight years and a few months (see the commentary on Num. xxiv. 28 sqq.). On the other hand, the other very general view which Kurtz adopts — namely, that the circumcision was omitted during the journey through the desert on account of the hardships connected with travelling, and because it was impossible to have regard to particular families who might wish for longer rest on account of their children who had just been circumcised, and were suffering from the wound, just at the time when they had to decamp and journey onward, and they could not well be left behind — throws but little light upon the subject, as the assumption that the people were constantly wandering about for forty years is altogether an unfounded one. The Israelites were not always wandering about: not only did they stay at Sinai for eleven whole months, but even after that they halted for weeks and months at the different places of encampment, when they miglit have circumcised their children without the slightest danger of their suffering from the wound.
before or after the numbering, since all those who had been sentenced to die in the wilderness were already dead (Num. xxvi. 65)? The different answers which have been given to this question are some of them wrong, and others incomplete. For example, the opinion held by some, that the actual reason was that the forty years had not yet expired, is incorrect (see Deut. ii. 14). And the uncertainty how long they would remain in the steppes of Moab cannot be adduced as an explanation, as there were no circumstances existing that were likely to occasion a sudden and unexpected departure from Shittim. The reason why Moses did not renew the circumcision before the end of his own life, is to be sought for in the simple fact that he would not undertake an act of such importance without an express command from the Lord, especially as he was himself under sentence to die without entering the promised land. But the Lord did not enjoin the renewal of the covenant sign before Israel had been conducted into the promised land, because He saw fit first of all to incline the hearts of the people to carry out His commandment through this magnificent proof of His grace. It is the rule of divine grace first to give and then to ask. As the Lord did not enjoin circumcision as a covenant duty upon Abraham himself till He had given him a practical proof of His grace by leading him to Canaan, and by repeated promises of a numerous posterity, and of the eventual possession of the land; and just as He did not give the law to the children of Israel at Sinai till He had redeemed them with a mighty arm from the bondage of Egypt, and borne them on eagles' wings, and brought them to Himself, and had thereby made them willing to promise gladly to fulfil all that He should say to them as His covenant nation; so now He did not require the renewal of circumcision, which involved as the covenant sign the observance of the whole law, till He had given His people practical proofs, through the help afforded in the defeat of Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and in the miraculous division of the waters of Jordan, that He was able to remove all the obstacles that might lie in the way of the fulfilment of His promises, and give them the promised land for their inheritance, as He had sworn to their fathers.
Ver. 8. When the rite of circumcision had been performed upon them all, the people remained quietly in the camp till those who were circumcised had recovered. " They abode in their places" i.e. sat still as they were, without attempting anything, rrn, to revive (Gen. xlv. 27; Job xiv. 14), or recover (2 Kings I 2, viii. 8, etc.). The circumcision of the people could not be performed earlier than the day after the crossing of the Jordan, i.e., according to chap. iv. 19, not earlier than the 11th day of the first month. Now, as the passover was to be kept, and actually was kept, on the 14th (ver. 10), the two accounts are said to be irreconcilable, and the account of the circumcision has been set down as a later and unhistorical legend. But the objections made to the historical credibility of this account — viz. that the suffering consequent upon circumcision made a person ill for several days, and according to Gen. xxxiv. 25 was worst on the third day, so that the people could not have kept the passover on that day, and also that the people could not possibly have been all circumcised on one day — are founded upon false assumptions. In the latter, for example, the number of persons to be circumcised is estimated, most absurdly, at a million; whereas, according to the general laws of population, the whole of the male population of Israel, which contained only 601,730 of twenty years of age and upwards, besides 23,000 Levites of a month old and upwards, when the census was taken a short time before in the steppes of Moab, could not amount to more than a million in all, and of these between 280,000 and 330,000 were thirty-eight years old, and therefore, having been born before the sentence was pronounced upon the nation at Kadesh, and for the most part before the exodus from Egypt, had been already circumcised, so that there were only 070,000, or at the most 720,000, to be circumcised now. Consequently the proportion between the circumcised and uncircumcised was one to three or three and a half; and the operation could therefore be completed without any difficulty in the course of a single day. As regards the consequences of this operation, Gen. xxxiv. 25 by no means proves that the pain was most acute on the third day; and even if this really were the case, it would not prevent the keeping of the passover, as the lambs could have been killed and prepared by the 280,000 or 330,000 circumcised men; and even those who were still unwell could join in the meal, since it was only Levitical uncleanness, and not disease or pain, which formed a legal impediment to this (Num. ix. 10 sqq.).1 But if there were about 300,000 men of the age of forty and upwards who could not only perform the rite of circumcision upon their sons or younger brothers, but, if necessary, were able at any moment to draw the sword, there was no reason what-
1 For the basis upon which this computation rests, see KeiTi Commentary on Joshua, p 139 (Eng. trans. 1857).
ever for their being afraid of an attack on the part of the Canaanites, even if the latter had not been paralyzed by the miraculous crossing of the Jordan. — Ver. 9. When the circumcision was completed, the Lord said to Joshua, " This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you" " The reproach of Egypt" is the reproach proceeding from Egypt, as " the reproach of Moab," in Zeph. ii. 8, is the reproach heaped upon Israel by Moab (cf. Isa. li. 7; Ezek. xvi. 57). We are not to understand by this the Egyptian bondage, or the misery which still cleaved to the Israelites from Egypt, and the still further misery which they had suffered during their journey, on account of the displeasure of Jehovah \Knobel), but the reproach involved in the thoughts and sayings of the Egyptians, that Jehovah had brought the Israelites out of Egypt to destroy them in the desert (Ex. xxxii. 12; Num. xiv. 13-16; Deut. ix. 28), which rested upon Israel as long as it was condemned to wander restlessly about and to die in the wilderness. This reproach was rolled away from Israel with the circumcision of the people at Gilgal, inasmuch as this act was a practical declaration of the perfect restoration of the covenant, and a pledge that the Lord would now give them the land of Canaan for their inheritance. From this occurrence the place where the Israelites were encamped received the name of Gilgal^ viz. " rolling away," from?P3, to roll. This explanation and derivation of the name is not to be pronounced incorrect and unhistorical, simply because it merely preserves the subordinate idea of rolling, instead of the fuller idea of the rolling away of reproach. For the intention was not to form a word which should comprehend the whole affair with exhaustive minuteness, but simply to invent a striking name which should recall the occurrence, like the name Tomi, of which Ovid gives the following explanation: Inde Tomos dictus locus est quia fertur in illo membra soror fratris consecuisse sui (Trist, iii. 9, 33). Knobel is wrong in maintaining that the name should be explained in a different way, and that this Gilgal is the same as Geliloth (circles) in chap, xviii. 17 (see the explanation given at chap. xv. 7). The word gilgal, formed from \h), to roll, signifies primarily rolling, then a wheel (Isa. xxviii. 28); and if by possibility it signifies orbis also, like?v3, this is neither the original nor the only meaning of the word. According to Josephus (Ant. v. 1, 4), Israel encamped fifty stadia, i,e. two hours and a half, from the Jordan, and ten stadia, or half an hour, from Jericho, — that is to say, in the plain or steppe between Jericho and the Jordan, in an uninhabited and unculti- rated spot, which received the name of Gilgal for the first time, as the place where the Israelites were encamped. No town or village ever existed there, either at the period in question or at any later time. The only other places in which this Gilgal can be shown to be evidently referred to, are Micah vi. 5 and 2 Sam. xix. 16, 41; and the statement made by Euseblus in the Onom. s. v. Galgala, Seifcvvrai 6 t6tto<; eprjfjLos d>? [epos OprjcncevofjLevos, which Jerome paraphrases thus, " Even to the present day a deserted place is pointed out at the second mile from Jericho, which is held in amazing reverence by the inhabitants of that region," by no means proves the existence of a town or village there in the time of the Israelites. Consequently it is not to be wondered at, that in spite of repeated search, Robinson has not been able to discover any remains of Gilgal to the east of Jericho, or to meet with any Arab who could tell him of such a name in this locality (see Rob. Pal. ii. pp. 287-8 and 278). On the situation of the Grlgal mentioned in chap. ix. 6, x. 6, etc., see at chap. viii. 35.
Vers. 10-14. The Passover at Gilgal. — When the whole nation had been received again into covenant with the Lord by circumcision, they kept the passover, which had no doubt been suspended from the time that they left Sinai (Num. ix. 1 sqq.), on the 14th of the month (Nisan), in the evening (according to the law in Ex. xii. 6, 18, Lev. xxiii. 5, Num. xxviii. 16, Deut. xvi. 6). The next day, i.e. on the 16th, or the day after the first feast-day, they ate unleavened loaves and parched corn (" roasted grains," see at Lev. ii. 14) of the produce of the land ("^V,1 which only occurs in vers. 11 and 12, is synonymous with n^un2 in ver. 12), i.e. corn that had grown in the land of Canaan, as the manna entirely ceased from this day forwards. " The morrow after the passover" is used in Num. xxxiii. 3 for the 15th Nisan; but here it must be understood as signifying the 16th, as the produce of the land, of which they ate not only on that day, but, according to ver. 12, throughout that year, cannot mean the corn of the previous year, but the produce of this same year, i.e. the new corn, and they were not allowed to eat any of that till it had been sanctified to the Lord by the presentation of the wave sheaf on the second day of the passover (Lev. xxiii. 11). According to Lev. xxiii. 11, the presentation was to take place on the day after the Sabbath, i.e. the first clay of the feast of Mazzoth, which was kept as a Sabbath, or the 16th of Nisan, as the seven days' feast of Mazzoth commenced on the 15th (Lev. xxiii. 6; Num. xxviii. 17). " On the morrow after the passover" is the same as " on the morrow after the Sabbath" in Lev. xxiii. 11, the term passover being used here not in its original and more restricted sense, in which it applies exclusively to the observance of the paschal meal, which took place on the evening of the 14th, and is expressly distinguished from the seven days' feast of Mazzoth (Ex. xii. 23, 27; Lev. xxiii. 5; Num. xxviii. 16), but in the broader sense, which we have already met with in Deut. xvi. 2, in which the name was gradually extended to the whole of the seven days' feast. The writer assumed that the facts themselves were already well known from the Mosaic law, and therefore did not think it necessary to give any fuller explanation. Moreover, the words, " they did eat of the fruit of the land," etc., are not to be understood as signifying that they began to eat unleavened bread for the first time on the 16th Nisan (they had already eaten it as an accompaniment to the paschal lamb); but unleavened bread of the produce of the land, the green corn of that year, was what they ate for the first time on that day. Especial prominence is given to this by the words, " in the selfsame day," because not only did the eating of the new corn commence on that day, but from that day forward " the children of Israel had manna no moreV This statement is evidently related to Ex. xvi. 35, and must be understood, according to that passage, as merely signifying, that on that day the gift of the manna entirely ceased (see Pentateuch, vol. ii. pp. 70 sqq.).
APPEARANCE OF THE ANGEL OF THE LORD, AND CONQUEST OF JERICHO. — CHAP. V. 13-VI. 27.
Having been confirmed and fortified in the covenant with the Lord through the observance of the passover, Joshua determined to proceed at once to the work entrusted to him, viz. the conquest of the land of Canaan. But the town of Jericho, which was surrounded with strong walls, as the border defence of Canaan against any foe approaching from the east, had its gates shut before the children of Israel. And whilst Joshua was deep in meditation concerning its capture, the angel of the Lord appeared to him to announce that the Lord had given Jericho and its king into his power, and would miraculously throw down its walls.
Chap. v. 13-vi. 5. Appearance and Message op the Angel of the Lord. — Vers. 13-15. When Joshua was by Jericho, ^nn^ lit. in Jericho (3 expressing immediate proximity, the entrance as it were into some other object, vid. JEwald, § 217), — that is to say, inside it in thought, meditating upon the conquest of it, — he saw, on lifting up his eyes, a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand; and on going up to him, and asking, " Dost thou belong to us or to our enemies?" he received this reply: "Nay (yb is not to be altered into V, which is the reading adopted in the Sept., Syr. y and a few MSS.), but I am the prince of the army of Jehovah; now I am come." The person who had appeared neither belonged to the Israelites nor to their enemies, but was the prince of the army of Jehovah, i.e. of the angels. u The LoroVs host" does not mean u the people of Israel, who were just at the commencement of their warlike enterprise," as v. Hofmann supposes; for although the host of Israel who came out of Egypt are called " the hosts of the Lord" in Ex. xii. 41, the Israelites are never called the host or army of Jehovah (in the singular). "The host of Jehovah" is synonymous with "the host of heaven" (1 Kings xxii. 19), and signifies the angels, as in Ps. cxlviii. 2 and ciii. 21. With the •words "now I am come" the prince of the angels is about to enter upon an explanation of the object of his coming; but he is interrupted in his address by Joshua, who falls down before him, and says, " What saith my lord to his servant?" so that now he first of all commands Joshua to take off his shoes, as the place on which he stands is holy. It by no means follows that because Joshua fell down upon the ground and *nriK* (Eng. Ver. "did worship"), he must have recognised him at once as the angel of the Lord who was equal with God; for the word njnjwrij which is connected with the falling down, does not always mean divine worship, but very frequently means nothing more than the deep Oriental reverence paid by a dependant to his superior or king (e.g. 2 Sam. ix. 6, xiv. 33), and Joshua did not address the person who appeared to him by the name of God, ^"W, but simply as tfW, " My lord." In any case, however, Joshua regarded him at once as a superior being, i.e. an angel. And he must have recognised him as something more than a created angel of superior rank, that is to say, as the angel of Jehovah who is essentially equal with God, the visible revealer of the invisible God, as soon as he gave him the command to take off his shoes, etc., — a command which would remind him of the appearance of God to Moses in the burning bush, and which implied that the person who now appeared was the very person who had revealed himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (On the meaning of the command to take off the shoes, see the exposition of Ex. iii. 5.) The object of the divine appearance was indicated by the drawn sword in the hand (cf. Num. xxii. 31) by which he manifested himself as a heavenly warrior, or, as he describes himself to Joshua, as prince of the army of Jehovah. The drawn sword contained in itself this practical explanation: " I am now come with my heavenly army, to make war upon the Canaanites, and to assist thee and thy people" (Seb. Schmidt). It was not in a vision that this appearance took place, but it was an actual occurrence belonging to the external world; for Joshua saw the man with the drawn sword at a certain distance from himself, and went up to him to address him, — a fact which would be perfectly incompatible with an inward vision.
Chap. vi. 1-5. When Joshua had taken off his shoes, the prince of the army of God made known to him the object of his comino- (vers. 2-5). But before relating the message, the historian first of all inserts a remark concerning the town of Jericho, in the form of an explanatory clause, for the purpose of showing the precise meaning of the declaration which follows.1 This meaning is to be found not merely in the fact that the Lord was about to give Jericho into the hands of the Israelites, but chiefly in the fact that the town which He was about to give into their hands was so strongly fortified. — Ver. 1. "Jericho was shutting its gates (via1. Judg. ix. 51), and closely shut." The participles express the permanence of the situation, and the combination of the active and passive in the emphatic form rnSDp (LXX. o-vyfcefcketo-fievn kol ao^vpco/Mevrj; Vulg. clausa erat atque munita) serves to strengthen the idea, to which still further emphasis is given by the clause, " no one was
1 If there is any place in which the division of chapters is unsuitable, it is so here; for the appearance of the prince of the angels does not terminate with chap. y. 15, but what he had come to communicate follows in chap. vi. 2-5, and chap. vi. 1 merely contains an explanatory clause inserted before his message, which serves to throw light upon the situation (vid. Ewald, § 341). If we regard the account of the appearance of the angel as terminating with chap. v. 15, as Knobel and other commentators have done, we must of necessity assume either that the account has come down to us in a mutilated form, or that the appearance ceased without any commission being given. The one is as incredible as the other. The latter especially is without analogy; for the appearance in Acts x. 9 sqq., which 0. v. Gerlach cites as similar, contains a very distinct explanation in vers. 13-16.
going out and in" i.e. so firmly shut that no one could go out or in. — Ver. 2. " And the Lord said to Joshua:" this is the sequel to chap. v. 15, as ver. 1 is merely a parenthesis and Jehovah is the prince of the army of Jehovah (chap. v. 14), or the angel of Jehovah, who is frequently identified with Jehovah (see Pentateuch, vol. i. pp. 184 sqq.). " See, I have given into thy hand Jericho and its king, the mighty men of valour? (" Have given," referring to the purpose of God, which was already resolved upon, though the fulfilment was still in the future.) " The mighty men of valour" (brave warriors) is in apposition to Jericho, regarded as a community, and its king. In vers. 3-5 there follows an explanation of the way in which the Lord would give Jericho into the hand of Joshua. All the Israelitish men of war were to go round the town once a day for six days. nnK DVB... spgn, " going round about the city once," serves as a fuller explanation of E^D ("ye shall compass"). As they marched in this manner round the city, seven priests were to carry seven jubilee trumpets before the ark, which implies that the ark itself was to be carried round the city in solemn procession. But on the seventh day they were to march round the town seven times, and the priests to blow the trumpets; and when there was a blast with the jubilee horn, and the people on hearing the sound of the trumpet raised a great cry, the wall of the town should fall down " under itself" The " jubilee trumpets" (Eng. Ver. " trumpets of rams' horns") are the same as the " jubilee horn" (Eng. Ver. " rams' horn") in ver. 5, for which the abbreviated form shophar (trumpet, ver. 5; cf. Ex. xix. 16) or jobel (jubilee: Ex. xix. 13) is used. They were not the silver trumpets of the priests (Num. x. 1 sqq.), but large horns, or instruments in the shape of a horn, which gave a loud far-sounding tone (see at Lev. xxiii. 24, xxv. 11). For ff^3 ygn, blow the trumpet (lit. strike the trumpet), in ver. 4, pips "H^O, draw with the horn, i.e. blow the horn with long-drawn notes, is used in ver. 5 (see at Ex. xix. 13). The people were then to go up, i.e. press into the town over the fallen wall; " every one straight before him" i.e. every one was to go straight into the town without looking round at his neighbour either on the right hand or on the left (vid. ver. 20).
Vers. 6-27. Taking of Jericho. — In the account of this we have first of all a brief statement of the announcement of the divine message by Joshua to the priests and the people (vers. 6, 7); then the execution of the divine command (vers. 8-20); and lastly the burning of Jericho and deliverance of Rahab (vers. 21-27). — Vers. 6, 7. In communicating the divine command with reference to the arrangements for taking Jericho, Joshua mentions in the first place merely the principal thing to be observed. The plural 1"IDNS1 (" they said"), in ver. 7, must not be altered, but is to be explained on the ground that Joshua did not make the proclamation to the people himself, but through the medium of the shoterim, who were appointed to issue his commands (see chap. i. 10, 11, iii. 2, 3). In this proclamation the more minute instructions concerning the order of march, which had been omitted in vers. 3-5, are given; namely, that P?nn was to march in front of the ark. By P^nri, " the equipped (or armed) man" we are not to understand all the fighting men, as Knobel supposes; for in the description of the march which follows, the whole of the fighting men (" all the men of war," ver. 3) are divided into fvnn and *lBtttsn (Eng. Ver. " the armed men" and " the rereward," vers. 9 and 13), so that the former can only have formed one division of the army. It is very natural therefore to suppose, as Kimchi and Rashi do, that the former were the fighting men of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh (fcOifn "wrij chap. iv. 13), and the latter the fighting men of the rest of the tribes. On the meaning of *lE>Np, see at Num. x. 25. If we turn to the account of the facts themselves, we shall see at once, that in the report of the angel's message, in vers. 3-5, several other points have been passed over for the purpose of avoiding too many repetitions, and have therefore to be gathered from the description of what actually occurred. First of all, in vers. 8-10, we have the appointment of the order of marching, namely, that the ark, with the priests in front carrying the trumpets of jubilee, was to form the centre of the procession, and that one portion of the fighting men was to go in front of it, and the rest to follow after; that the priests were to blow the trumpets every time they marched round during the seven days (vers. 8, 9, 13); and lastly, that it was not till the seventh time of going round, on the seventh day, that the people were to raise the war-cry at the command of Joshua, and then the walls of the town were to fall (vers. 10, 16). There can be no doubt that we are right in assuming that Joshua had received from the angel the command which he issued to the people in vers. 17 sqq., that the whole town, with all its inhabitants and everything in it, was to be given up as a ban to the Lord, at the time when the first announcement concerning the fall of the town was made.
Vers. 8-20. Execution of the divine Command. — Vers. 8—11. The march round on the first day; and the instructions as to tho. war-cry to be raised by the people, which are appended as a supplement in ver. 10. u Before Jehovah" instead of " before the ark of Jehovah," as the signification of the ark was derived entirely from the fact, that it was the medium through which Jehovah communi cated His gracious presence to the people. In ver. 9, U*i?n is in the perfect tense, and we must supply the relative IWj, which is sometimes omitted, not only in poetry, but also in prose, after a definite noun in the accusative (e.g. Ex. xviii. 20; see Ewald, § 332, «.). There is not sufficient ground for altering the form of the word into "Ti?h, according to the Keri, as VPJ} is construed in other cases with the accusative "lBi#n, instead of with 3, and that not only in poetry, but also in prose (e.g. Judg. vii. 22, as compared with vers. 18-20). $pT\\ W\}y u trumpeting continually" (Eug. Ver. "going on and blowing"). SJvH is used adverbially, as in Gen. viii. 3, etc. — Ver. 11. u So the ark of the Lord compassed the city" not " Joshua caused the ark to compass the city." The Hiphil has only an active, not a causative, meaning here, as in 2 Sam. v. 23, etc. — Vers. 12—14. The march on each of the next five days resembled that on the first. " So they did six days." In ver. 13, Wi?™ does not stand for SHpni, but corresponds to Wprn in ver. 8; and the participle SJTin is used interchangeably with the inf. abs. jJvTJ, as in Gen. xxvi. 13, Judg. iv. 24, etc., so that the Keri iJvH is an unnecessary emendation.— Vers. 15-19. On the seventh day the marching round the town commenced very early, at the dawning of the day, that they might go round seven times. BBBtoj in the manner prescribed and carried out on the previous days, which had become a right through precept and practice. On the seventh circuit, when the priests had blown the trumpet, Joshua commanded the fighting men to raise a war-cry, announcing to them at the same time that the town, with all that was in it, was to be a ban to the Lord, with the exception of Rahab and the persons in her house, and warning them not to take of that which was laid under the ban, that they might not bring a ban upon the camp of Israel. The construction in ver. 1G, " it came to pass at the seventh time the p?iests had blown the trumpets, then Joshua said,..." is more spirited than if the conjunction "Ifcta had been used before U'pfi, or Jfipna had been used. Because the Lord had given Jericho into the hands of the Israelites, they were to consecrate it to Him as a ban (cherem), i.e. as a holy thing belonging to Jehovah, which was not to be touched by man, as being the first-fruits of the land of Canaan. (On cherem) see the remarks at Lev. xxvii. 28, 29.) Rahab alone was excepted from this ban, along with all that belonged to her, because she had hidden the spies. The inhabitants of an idolatrous town laid under the ban were to be put to death, together with their cattle, and all the property in the town to be burned, as Moses himself had enjoined on the basis of the law in Lev. xxvii. 29. The only exceptions were metals, gold, silver, and the vessels of brass and iron; these were to be brought into the treasury of the Lord, i.e. the treasury of the tabernacle, as being holy to the Lord (ver. 19; vid. Num. xxxi. 54). Whoever took to himself anything that had been laid under the ban, exposed himself to the ban, not only because he had brought an abomination into his house, as Moses observes in Deut. vii. 25, in relation to the gold and silver of idols, but because he had wickedly invaded the rights of the Lord, by appropriating that which had been laid under the ban, and had wantonly violated the ban itself. The words, u beware of the ban, that ye do not ban and take of the ban" (ver. 18), point to this. As Lud. de Dieu observes, " the two things were altogether incompatible, to devote everything to God, and yet to apply a portion to their own private use; either 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. xxxiv. 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 ver. 5. The position of Byn JHJ 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 ver. 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 trumpet-blast.
As far as the event itself is concerned, the different 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 Red Sea." That this was in part the intention of the miracle, we learn from the close of the narrative (ver. 27). 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 tne 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 trumpetblast 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 ver. 8 Jehovah himself is mentioned in the place of the ark of Jehovah. Seven priests went before the ark, bearing jubilee trumpets and blowing during the march. The first time that we read of a trumpetblast is at Sinai, where the Lord announced His descent upon the mount to the people assembled at the foot to receive Him, not only by other fearful phenomena, but also by a loud and long-continued trumpet-blast (Ex. xix. 16, 19, xx. 14 (18)). After this we find the blowing of trumpets prescribed as part of the Israelitish worship in connection with the observance of the seventh new moon's day (Lev. xxiii. 24), and at the proclamation of the great year of jubilee (Lev. xxv. 9). Just as the trumpet-blast heard by the people when the covenant was made at Sinai was as it were a herald's call, announcing to the tribes of Israel the arrival of the Lord their God to complete His covenant and establish His kingdom upon earth; so the blowing of trumpets in connection with the round of feasts was intended partly to bring the people into remembrance before the Lord year by year at the commencement of the sabbatical month, that He might come to them and grant them the Sabbath rest of His kingdom, and partly at the end of every seven times seven years to announce on the great day of atonement the coming of the great year of grace and freedom, which was to bring to the people of God deliverance from bondage, return to their own possessions, and deliverance from the bitter labours of this earth, and to give them a foretaste of the blessed and glorious liberty to which the children of God would attain at the return of the Lord to perfect His kingdom (vid. Pentateuch, vol. ii. pp. 466-7). But when the Lord comes to found, to build up, and to perfect His kingdom upon earth, He also comes to overthrow and destroy the worldly power which opposes His kingdom. The revelation of the grace and mercy of God to His children, goes ever siae by side with the revelation of justice and judgment towards the ungodly who are His foes. If therefore the blast of trumpets was the signal to the congregation of Israel of the gracious arrival of the Lord its God to enter into fellowship with it, no less did it proclaim the advent of judgment to an ungodly world. This shows clearly enough the meaning of the trumpet-blast at Jericho. The priests, who went before the ark of the covenant (the visible throne of the invisible God who dwelt among His people) and in the midst of the hosts of Israel, were to announce through the blast of trumpets both to the Israelites and Canaanites the appearance of the Lord of the whole earth for judgment upon Jericho, the strong bulwark of the Canaanitish power and rule, and to foretel to them through the falling of the walls of this fortification, which followed the blast of trumpets and the war-cry of the soldiers of God, the overthrow of all the strong bulwarks of an ungodly world through the omnipotence of the Lord of heaven and earth. Thus the fall of Jericho became the symbol and type of the overthrow of every worldly power before the Lord, when He should come to lead His people into Canaan and establish His kingdom upon earth. On the ground of this event, the blowing of trumpets is frequently introduced in the writings of the prophets, as the signal and symbolical omen of the manifestations of the Lord in great judgments, through which He destroys one worldly power after another, and thus maintains and extends His kingdom upon earth, and leads it on towards that completion to which it will eventually attain when He descends from heaven in His glory at the time of the last trump, with a great shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, to raise the dead and change the living, to judge the world, cast the devil, death, and hell into the lake of fire, create a new heaven and new earth, and in the new Jerusalem erect the tabernacle of God among men for all eternity (1 Cor. xv. 51 sqq.; 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17; Rev. xx. and xxi.).
The appointment of the march round Jericho, which was to be continued for seven days, and to be repeated seven times on the seventh day, was equally significant. The number seven is a symbol in the Scriptures of the work of God and of the perfection already produced or to be eventually secured by Him; a symbol founded upon the creation of the world in six days, and the completion of the works of creation by the resting of God upon the seventh day. Through this arrangement, that the walls of Jericho were not to fall till after they had been marched round for seven days, and not till after this had been repeated seven times on the seventh day, and then amidst the blast of the jubilee trumpets and the war-cry of the soldiers of the people of God, the destruction of this town, the key to Canaan, was intended by God to become a type of the final destruction at the last day of the power of this world, which exalts itself against the kingdom of God. In this way He not only showed to His congregation that it would not be all at once, but only after long-continued conflict, and at the end of the world, that the worldly power by which it was opposed would be overthrown, but also proved to the enemies of His kingdom, that however long their power might sustain itself in opposition to the kingdom of God, it would at last be destroyed in a moment
Vers. 21-27. After the taking of Jericho, man and beast were banned, i.e. put to death without quarter (ver. 21; cf. ver. 17); Rahab and her relations being the only exceptions. Joshua had directed the two spies to fetch them out of her house, and in the first instance had them taken to a place of safety outside the camp of Israel (vers. 22, 23). " Her brethren" i.e. her brothers and sisters, as in chap. ii. 13, not her brothers only. " All that she had " does not mean all her possessions, but all the persons belonging to her house; and " all her kindred " are all her relations by birth or marriage, with their dependants (cf. chap. ii. 13). Clericus is correct in observing, that as Rahab's house was built against the town-wall, and rested partly upon it (chap. ii. 15), when the wall fell down, that portion against or upon which the house stood cannot have fallen along with the rest, "otherwise when the wall fell no one would have dared to remain in the house." But we must not draw the further inference, that when the town was burned Rahab's house was spared.1 'til pnp DVIW (ver. 23; cf. Gen. xix. 16), " they let them rest" i.e. placed them in safety, "outside the camp of Israel" sc. till they had done all that was requisite for a formal reception into the congregation of the Lord, viz. by giving up idolatry and heathen superstition, and turning to the God of Israel as the only true God (to which circumcision had to be added in the case of the men), and by whatever lustrations and purifications were customary at the time in connection with reception into the covenant with Jehovah, of which we have no further information.— Vers. 24, 25. After man and beast had been put to death,
1 The statements made by travellers in the middle ages, to the effect that they had seen Rahab's house {Rob. Pal. ii. pp. 295-6), belong to the delusions of pious superstition.
and Rahab and her relatives had been placed in security, the Israelites set the town on fire with everything in it, excepting the metals, which were taken to the treasury of the tabernacle, as had been commanded in ver. 19. On the conquest of the other towns of Canaan the inhabitants only were put to death, whilst the cattle and the rest of the booty fell to the conquerors, just as in the case of the conquest of the land and towns of Sihon and Og (compare chap, viii. 26, 27, x. 28, with Deut. ii. 34, 35, and iii. 6, 7), as it was only the inhabitants of Canaan that the Lord had commanded to be put under the ban (Deut. vii. 2, xx. 16, 17). In the case of Jericho, on the contrary, men, cattle, and booty were all put under the ban, and the town itself was to be laid in ashes. This was because Jericho was the first town of Canaan which the Lord had given up to His people. Israel was therefore to sacrifice it to the Lord as the first-fruits of the land, and to sanctify it to Him as a thing placed under the ban, for a sign that they had received the whole land as a fief from his hand, and had no wish to grasp as a prey that which belonged to the Lord. — Ver. 25. But Rahab and all that belonged to her Joshua suffered to live, so that she dwelt in Israel " unto this day." It is very evident from this remark, that the account was written not very long after the event.1
Vers. 26, 27. But in order to complete the ban pronounced upon Jericho in perfect accordance with the command of God in Deut. xiii. 17, and to make the destruction of it a memorial to posterity of the justice of God sanctifying itself upon the ungodly, Joshua completed the ban with an oath: " Cursed be the man before the Lord that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho; he shall lay the foundation thereof at the price of his first-born, and set up its gates at the price of his youngest son" (3 denoting the price of a
1 Rahab is no doubt the same person as the Rachab mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, who married Salmon the tribe prince of Judah, to whom she bore Boaz, an ancestor of David (Matt. i. 5). The doubts which Theophylact expressed as to the identity of the two, and which J. Outhov has since sought to confirm, rest for the most part upon the same doctrinal scruples as those which induced the author of the Chaldee version to make Rahab an innkeeper, namely, the offence taken at her dishonourable calling. Jerome's view, on the other hand, is a very satisfactory one. u In the genealogy of the Saviour," he says, " none of the holy women are included, but only those whom the Scriptures blame, that He who came on behalf of sinners, being himself born of sinners, might destioy the sins of all." The different ways in which the name is written, viz. ij 'P«x;«/3 in Matthew, and 'Yxafi in the Sept. version of Joshua, and in Ileb. xi. 31 and James ii. 25, is not enough to throw thing). The rhythmical parallelism is unmistakeable in this curse. The two last clauses express the thought that the builder of the town would pay for its restoration by the loss of all his sons, from the first-born to the very youngest. The word " buildeth," however, does not refer to the erection of houses upon the site of the town that had been burnt to ashes, but to the restoration of the town as a fortification, the word HJ2 being frequently used to denote the fortification of a town (e.g. 1 Kings xv. 17; 2 Chron. xi. 6, xiv. 5, 6). This is evident in general from the fact that a town is not founded by the erection of a number of houses upon one spot, but by the joining of these houses together into an enclosed whole by means of a surrounding wall, but more particularly from the last words of the verse, in which HJ3 is explained as WTO^ (lay the foundation thereof) and ™nF\ TV? (set up the gates of it). Setting up the gates of a town is not setting up doors to the houses, but erecting town-gates, which can only be done when a town-wall has been built. But if setting up the gates would be a sign of the completion of the wall, and therefore of the restoration of the town as a fortification, the " founding" (laying the foundation) mentioned in the parallel clause can only be understood as referring to the foundation of the town-wall. This view of the curse, which is well supported both by the language and the facts, is also confirmed by the subsequent history. Joshua himself allotted Jericho to the Benjamites along with certain other towns (chap, xviii. 21), which proves that he intended them to inhabit it; and accordingly we find the city of palms, i.e. Jericho, mentioned afterwards as an inhabited place (Judg. iii. 13; 2 Sam. x. 5), and yet it was not till the time of Ahab that Joshua's curse was fulfilled, when Hiel the Bethelite undertook to make it into a fortified town (1 Kings xvi.
any doubt upon the identity of the two, as Josephus always calls the harlot Rahab q 'Vuy,cx.(iti. The chronological difficulty, that Salmon and Rahab lived much too soon to have been the parents of Boaz, which is adduced by Knobel as an argument against the identity of the mother of Boaz and the harlot Rahab, has no force unless it can be proved that every link is given in the genealogy of David (in Ruth iv. 21, 22; 1 Chron. ii. 11; Matt. i. 5), and that Boaz was really the great-grandfather of David; whereas the very opposite, viz. the omission from the genealogies of persons of no celebrity, is placed beyond all doubt by many cases that might be cited. Nothing more is known of Rahab. The accounts of the later Rabbins, such as that she was married to Joshua, or that she was the mother of eight prophets, and others of the same kind, are fables without the slightest historical foundation (see Lightfoot, hor. hebr. et talm. in Matt. i. 6).
34).1 — Vcr. 27. Thus the Lord was with Joshua, fulfilling His promise to him (chap. i. 5 sqq.), so that his fame spread through all the land.
Ver. 1. At Jericho the Lord had made known to the Canaanites His great and holy name; but before Ai the Israelites were to learn that He would also sanctify Himself on them if they transgressed His covenant, and that the congregation of the Lord could only conquer the power of the world so long as it was faithful to His covenant. But notwithstanding the command which Joshua had enforced upon the people (chap. vi. 18), Achan, a member of the tribe of Judah, laid hands upon the property in Jericho which had been banned, and thus brought the ban upon the children of Israel, the whole nation. His breach of trust is described as unfaithfulness (a trespass) on the part of the children of Israel in the ban, in consequence of which the anger of the Lord was kindled against the whole nation.?yfi?V"0, to commit a breach of trust (see at Lev. v. 15), generally against Jehovah, by purloining or withholding what was sanctified to Him, here in the matter of the ban, by appropriating what had been banned to the Lord. This crime was imputed to the whole people, not as imputatio moralis, i.e. as though the whole nation had shared in Achan's disposition, and cherished in their hearts the same sinful desire which Achan had carried out in action in the theft he had committed; but as imputatio civills, according to which Achan, a member of the nation, had robbed the whole nation of the purity and holiness which it ought to possess before God, through the sin that he had committed, just as the whole body is affected by the sin of a single member.2 Instead of
1 KnobeVs opinion, that the Jericho mentioned between the times of Joshua and Ahab in all probability did not stand upon the old site which Hiel was the first to build upon again, is at variance with 1 Kings xvi. 3-4, as it is not stated there that he rebuilt the old site of Jericho, but that he began to build the town of Jericho, which existed, according to 2 Sam. x. 5 and Judg. iii. 13, in the time of David, and even of the judges, i.e. to restore it as a fortified town; and it is not raised into a truth by any appeal to the statements of Strabo, Appian, and others, to the effect that Greeks and Romans did not choose places for building upon which any curse rested.
2 In support of this I cannot do better than quote the most important of the remarks which I made in my former commentary (Keil on Joshua, pp. 177-8, Eng. trans.): " However truly the whole Scriptures speak of each man as iudi-
Achan (the reading here and in chap. xxii. 20) we find Achar in 1 Chron. ii. 7, the liquids n and r being interchanged to allow of a play upon the verb "DJJ in ver. 25. Hence in Josephus the name is spelt Acharos, and in the Cod. Vat. of the LXX. Achar, whereas the Cod. Al. has Achan. Instead of Zabdi, we find Zimri in 1 Chron. ii. 6, evidently a copyist's error. Zerah was the twin-brother of Pharez (Gen. xxxviii. 29, 30). Matteh, from i"iDJ? to spread out, is used to denote the tribe according to its genealogical ramifications; whilst shebet (from an Arabic root signifying a uniform, not curled, but drawn out straight and long without any curvature at all ") was applied to the sceptre or straight staff of a magistrate or ruler (never to the stick upon which a person rested), and differed from matteh not only in its primary and literal meaning, but also in the derivative meaning tribe, in which it was used to designate the division of the nation referred to, not according to its genealogical ramifications and development, but as a corporate body possessing authority and power. This difference in the ideas expressed by the two words will explain the variations in their use: for example, matteh is used here (in vers. 1 and 18), and in chap. xxii. 1-14, and in fact is the term usually employed in the geographical sections; whereas shebet is used in vers. 14, 16, in chap. iii. 12, iv. 2, and on many other occasions, in those portions of the historical narratives in which the tribes of Israel are introduced as military powers.
Vers. 2-5. The anger of God, which Achan had brought upon Israel, was manifested to the congregation in connection with their attempt to take AL This town was situated near Bethaven, on the east of Bethel. Bethel was originally called Luz (see at Gen. xxviii. 19), a place on the border of Ephraim and Benjamin (chap.
vidually an object of divine mercy and justice, they teach just as truly that a nation is one organic whole, in which the individuals are merely members of the same body, and are not atoms isolated from one another and the whole, since the state as a divine institution is founded upon family relationship, and intended to promote the love of all to one another and to the invisible Head of all. As all then are combined in a fellowship established by God, the good or evil deeds of an individual affect injuriously or beneficially the welfare of the whole society. And, therefore, when we regard the state as a divine organization and not merely as a civil institution, a compact into which men have entered by treaty, we fail to discover caprice and injustice in consequences which necessarily follow from the moral unity of the whole state; namely, that the good or evil deeds of one member are laid to the charge of the entire body. Caprice and injustice we shall always find if we leave out of sight this fundamental unity, and merely look at the fact that the many share the consequences of the sin of one."
xvi. 2, xviii. 13). It is frequently mentioned, was well known at a later time as the city in which Jeroboam established the worship of the calves, and was inhabited again even after the captivity (see v. Raumer, Pal. pp. 178, 179). It has been preserved, in all probability, in the very extensive ruins called Beitln (see Robinson, Pal. ii. pp. 126 sqq.), about four hours' journey on horseback to the north of Jerusalem, and on the east of the road which leads from Jerusalem to Sichem (Nablus).1 No traces have ever been discovered of Bethaven. According to chap, xviii. 12, 13, the northern boundary of the tribe of Benjamin, which ran up from Jericho to the mountains on the west, passed on to the desert of Bethaven, and so onwards to Luz (Bethel). If we compare with this the statement in 1 Sam. xiii. 5, that the Philistines who came against Israel encamped at Michmash before (in front of) Bethaven, according to which Bethaven was on the east or north-east of Michmash (Mukhmas), the desert of Bethaven may very possibly have been nothing more than the table-land which lies between the Wady Mutyah on the north and the Wadys Fuwar and Suweinit (in Robinsons map), or Wady Tuwar (on Van de Veldes map), and stretches in a westerly direction from the rocky mountain Kuruntel to Abu Sebah (Subbah). Bethaven would then lie to the south or south-east of Abu Sebah. In that case, however, Ai (Sept. Gai or Aggai, Gen. xii. 8) would neither be found in the inconsiderable ruins to the south of the village of Deir Diwan, as Robinson supposes (Pal. ii. pp. 312 sqq.), nor on the site of the present Tell el Hajar, i.e. stone hill, three-quarters of an hour to tjie S.E. of Beitin, on the southern side of the deep and precipitous Wady Mutyah, as Van de Velde imagines; but in the ruins of Medinet Chai or Gai, which Krafft2 and Strauss3 discovered on the flat surface of a mountain that slopes off towards the east, about forty minutes on the eastern side of Geba (Jeba), where " there are considerable ruins surrounded by a circular wall, whilst the place is defended on the south by the valley of Farah, and on the north by the valley of Es Suweinit, with steep shelving walls of rock" (Strauss: vid. C. Ritter Erdk. xvi. pp. 526-7). On the advice of the men who were sent out to explore the land, and who
1 The statements of the Onomasticon of Eusebius s. v. ' kyyxl agree with this: Kilrxi WxtdriK x7tiovtuv tig Ai'Kixv d^ro Nfecj Tzokiug Iv "hxtolg tvjs 0Z0Z cclu(f)l to ^u^tKXTO!/ X7T1 Ai'hixg ari/xtlot/. Also s. v. Bot/^jjA: kxi vvv tori ku>/x,vi, A/A/*f oi7roQiv oyueiotg tft (twelve Roman miles are four or five hours' journey).
described the population on their return as small (" they are bat few"), Joshua did not send the whole of the fighting men against Ai, but only about 3000 men. As there were not more than 1*2,000 inhabitants (chap. viii. 25), there could hardly have been 3000 fighting men, who might easily have been beaten by 3000 Israelitish warriors. But when the Israelites attacked the town they fled before its inhabitants, who slew about thirty-six men, and pursued them before the gate, i.e. outside the town, to the stone quarries, and smote them on the sloping ground. The Shebarim, from shebery a breach or fracture, were probably stone quarries near the slope on the east of the town. Nothing more can be decided, as the country has not been thoroughly explored by travellers. On account of this repulse the people lost all their courage. i( The hearts of the people melted" (see chap. ii. 15): this expression is strengthened still further by the additional clause, " and became as water."
Vers. 6-9. Joshua and the elders of the people were also deeply affected, not so much at the loss of thirty-six men, as because Israel, which was invincible with the help of the Lord, had been beaten, and therefore the Lord must have withdrawn His help. In the deepest grief, with their clothes rent (see at Lev. x. 6) and ashes upon their heads, they fell down before the ark of the Lord (yid. Num. xx. 6) until the evening, to pour out their grief before the Lord. Joshua's prayer contains a complaint (ver. 7) and a question addressed to God (vers. 8, 9). The complaint, "Alas, O Lord Jehovah, wherefore hast Thou brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us f" almost amounts to murmuring, and sounds very much like the complaint which the murmuring people brought against Moses and Aaron in the desert (Num. xiv. 2, 3); but it is very different from the murmuring of the people on that occasion against the guidance of God; for it by no means arose from unbelief, but was simply the bold language of faith wrestling with God in prayer, — faith which could not comprehend the ways of the Lord, — and involved the most urgent appeal to the Lord to carry out His work in the same glorious manner in which it had been begun, with the firm conviction that God could neither relinquish nor alter His purposes of grace. The words which follow, " Would to God that we had been content (see at Deut. i. 5) to remain on the other side of the Jordan" assume on the one hand, that previous to the crossing of the river Israel had cherished a longing for the possession of Canaan, and on the other hand, that this longing might possibly have been the cause of the calamity which had fallen upon the people now, and therefore express the wish that Israel had never cherished any such desire, or that the Lord had never gratified it. (On the unusual form rruyn for Kiagn, see Ges. § 63, anm. 4, and Ewald, § 41, b.) The inf. abs. "^3yn (with the unusual i in the final syllable) is placed for the sake of emphasis after the finite verb, as in Gen. xlvi. 4, etc. The Amorites are the inhabitants of the mountains, as in Gen. xlvi. 4, etc. — Vers. 8, 9. The question which Joshua addresses to God he introduces in this way: " Pray (*3 contracted from \t>3), Lord, what shall I say V to modify the boldness of the question which follows. It was not because he did not know what to say, for he proceeded at once to pour out the thoughts of his heart, but because he felt that the thought which he was about to utter might involve a reproach, as if, when God permitted that disaster, He had not thought of His own honour; and as he could not possibly think this, he introduced his words with a supplicatory inquiry. What he proceeds to say in vers. 8, 9, does not contain two co-ordinate clauses, but one simple thought: how would God uphold His great name before the world, when the report that Israel had turned their back before them should reach the Canaanites, and they should come and surround the Israelites, and destroy them without a single trace from off the face of the earth.1 In the words, " the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land" there is involved the thought that there were other people living in Canaan beside the Canaanites, e.g. the Philistines. The question, " What wilt Thou do with regard to Thy great name?" signifies, according to the parallel passages, Ex. xxxii. 11, 12, Num. xiv. 13 sqq., Deut. ix. 28, " How wilt Thou preserve Thy great name, which Thou hast acquired thus far in the sight of all nations through the miraculous guidance of Israel, from being misunderstood and blasphemed among the heathen?" (" what wilt Thou do?" as in Gen. xxvi. 29).
Vers. 10-15. The answer of the Lord, which was addressed to Joshua directly and not through the high priest, breathed anger against the sin of Israel. The question, u Wherefore liest thou upon
1 Calovius has therefore given the correct interpretation: " When they have
destroyed our name, after Thou hast chosen us to be Thy people, and brought us hither with such great wonders, what will become of Thy name? Our name
f little moment, but wilt Thou consult the honour of Thine own name, if Thou destroyest us? For Thou didst promise us this land; and wrhat people is there that will honour Thy name if ours should be destroyed?"
thy face tn (" fallest," as in Deut. xxi. 1) involved the reproof that Joshua had no reason to doubt the fidelity of the Lord. Instead of seeking for the cause of the calamity in God, he ought to seek it in the sin of the people. — Ver. 11. Israel had sinned, and that very grievously. This is affirmed in the clauses which follow, and which are rendered emphatic by the repetition of D3 as an expression of displeasure. The sin of one man was resting as a burden upon the whole nation in the manner explained above (on ver. 1). This sm was a breach of the covenant, being a transgression of the obligation into which the people had entered in their covenant with the Lord, to keep His commandments (Ex. xix. 8, xxiv. 7); yea, it was a grasping at the ban, and a theft, and a concealment, and an appropriation of that which was stolen to their own use. The first three clauses describe the sin in its relation to God, as a grievous offence; the three following according to its true character, as a great, obstinate, and reckless crime. " They have put it among their own stuff" (house furniture), viz. to use and appropriate it as their own property. As all that had been stolen was a property consecrated to the Lord, the appropriation of it to private use was the height of wickedness. — Ver. 12. On account of this sin the Israelites could not stand before their foes, because they had fallen under the ban (cf. chap. vi. 18). And until this ban had been removed from their midst, the Lord would not help them any further. — Vers. 13-15. Joshua was to take away this ban from the nation. To discover who had laid hands upon the ban, he was to direct the people to sanctify themselves for the following day (see at chap. iii. 5), and then to cause them to come before God according to their tribes, families, households, and men, that the guilty men might be discovered by lot; and to burn whoever was found guilty, with all that he possessed. 2*]i??, " to come near" sc. to Jehovah, i.e. to come before His sanctuary. The tribes, families, households, and men, formed the four classes into which the people were organized. As the tribes were divided into families, so these again wrere subdivided into houses, commonly called fathers' houses, and the fathers' houses again into men, i.e. fathers of families (see the remarks on Ex. xviii. 25, 26, and my Bibl. Archaeology, § 140). Each of these was represented by its natural head, so that we must picture the affair as conducted in the following manner: in order to discover the tribe, the twelve tribe princes came before the Lord; and in order to discover the family, the heads of families of the tribe that had been taken and so on to the end, each one in turn being subjected to the lot. For although it is not distinctly stated that the lot was resorted to in order to discover who was guilty, and that the discovery was actually made in this way, this is very evident from the expression nri^peta {which the Lord taketh), as this was the technical term employed, according to 1 Sam. xiv. 42, to denote the falling of the lot upon a person (see also 1 Sam. x. 20). Moreover, the lot was frequently resorted to in cases where a crime could not be brought home to a person by the testimony of eyewitnesses (see 1 Sam. xiv. 41, 42; Jonah i. 7; Prov. xviii. 18), as it was firmly believed that the lot was directed by the Lord (Prov. xvi. 33). In what manner the lot was cast we do not know. In all probability little tablets or potsherds were used, with the names written upon them, and these were drawn out of an urn. This may be inferred from a comparison of chap, xviii. 11 and xix. 1, with xviii. 6, 10, according to which the casting of the lot took place in such a manner that the lot came up ("& chap, xviii. 11, xix. 10; Lev. xvi. 9), or came out (K£, chap. xix. 1, xvii. 24; Num. xxxiii. 54). 01^13 nsbn, the person taken in (with) the ban, i.e. taken by the lot as affected with the ban, was to be burned with fire, of course not alive, but after he had been stoned (ver. 25). The burning of the body of a criminal was regarded as heightening the punishment of death (yid. Lev. xx. 14). This punishment was to be inflicted upon him, in the first place, because he had broken the covenant of Jehovah; and in the second place, because he had wrought folly in Israel, that is to say, had offended grievously against the covenant God, and also against the covenant nation. " Wrought folly:" an expression used here, as in Gen. xxxiv. 7, to denote such a crime as was irreconcilable with the honour of Israel as the people of God.
Vers. 16-26. Execution of the Command.— -Vers. 16-18. Dis covery of the guilty man through the lot. In ver. 17 we should expect "the tribe" (shebet) or "the families" (mishpachoth) of Judah, instead of "the family? The plural mishpachoth is adopted in the LXX. and Vulgate, and also to be met with in seven MSS., but this is conjecture rather than the original reading. Mishpachoh is either used generally, or employed in a collective sense to denote all the families of Judah. There is no ground for altering Dnafc (n^an by man) into Wji (house by house) in ver. 17, according to some of the MSS.; the expression " man by man" is used simply because it was the representative men who came for the lot to be cast, not only in the case of the fathers' houses, but in that of the families also.
— Vei\ 19. When Achan had been discovered to be the criminal, Joshua charged him to give honour and praise to the Lord, and to confess without reserve what he had done. It is not ironically, or with dissimulation, that Joshua addresses him as " my son," but with "sincere paternal regard."1 " Give glory to the Lord:19 this is a solemn formula of adjuration, by which a person was summoned to confess the truth before the face of God (cf. John ix. 24). "And give Him praise:" the meaning is not, "make confession," but give praise, as Ezra x. 11 clearly shows. Through a confession of the truth Achan was to render to God, as the Omniscient, the praise and honour that were due. — Vers. 20, 21. Achan then acknowledged his sin, and confessed that he had appropriated to himself from among the booty a beautiful Babylonish cloak, 200 shekels of silver, and a tongue of gold of 50 shekels weight. The form nanfctt is not to be abbreviated into &OKV according to the Keri, as the form is by no means rare in verbs rrt. UA Babylonish cloak" (lit, a cloak of Shinar, or Babylon) is a costly cloak, artistically worked, such as were manufactured in Babylon, and distributed far and wide through the medium of commerce.2 Two hundred shekels of silver was about £25. "A tongue of gold " (according to Luther, " ornaments made in the shape of tongues") was certainly a golden ornament in the form of a tongue, the use of which is unknown; it was of considerable size, as it weighed 50 shekels, i.e. 13,700 grains. It is not necessary to suppose that it was a golden dagger, as many do, simply because the ancient Romans gave the name liugula to an oblong dagger formed in the shape of a tongue. Achan had hidden these things in the ground in the midst of his tent, and the silver " under it" i.e. under these things (the suffix is neuter, and must be understood as referring to all the things with the exception of the silver). The Babylonish cloak and the tongue of gold were probably placed in
1 To these remarks Calvin also adds: " This example serves as a lesson to
judges, that when punishing crimes they should moderate their rigour, and not lose all the feelings of humanity; and, on the other hand, that whilst merciful they should not be careless or remiss."
2 Plinius h. n. viii. 48: Colores diversos picturas vestium intexere Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit. (See Heeren Ideen. i. 2, pp. 205 sqq., and Movers Phonizier, ii. 3, pp. 258 sqq.) The Sept. rendering is ^/X»j %oixi\^ i.e. a Babylonian cloak ornamented with pictures. It is called iJ/A»? because it was cut smooth, and Trotxfay) because it was covered with coloured figures, either of men or animals, sometimes woven, at other times worked with the needle (Fischer de vers. grxc. libr. V. T. pp. 87-8).
a chest; at any rate they would be carefully packed up, and the silver was placed underneath. The article in vfiNn which occurs twice, as it also does in chap. viii. 33, Lev. xxvii. 33, Micah ii. 12, is probably to be explained in the manner suggested by Hengstenberg, viz. that the article and noun became so fused into one, that the former lost its proper force. — Vers. 22, 23. Joshua sent two messengers directly to Achan's tent to fetch the things, and when they were brought he had them laid down before Jehovah, i.e. before the tabernacle, where the whole affair had taken place. pW, here and in 2 Sam. xv. 24, signifies to lay down (synonymous with Np})9 whilst the HipliiL form is used for pouring out. — Vers. 24, 25. Then Joshua and all Israel, i.e. the whole nation in the person of its heads or representatives, took Achan, together with the things which he had purloined, and his sons and daughters, his cattle, and his tent with all its furniture, and brought them into the valley of Achor, where they stoned them to death and then burned them, after Joshua had once more pronounced this sentence upon him in the place of judgment: " How hast thou troubled us" ("Oy, as in chap. vi. 18, to bring into trouble)! " The Lord will trouble thee this day." It by no means follows from the expression "stoned him" in ver. 25, that Achan only was stoned. The singular pronoun is used to designate Achan alone, as being the principal person concerned. But it is obvious enough that his children and cattle were stoned, from what follows in the very same verse: " They burned them (the persons stoned to death, and their things) with fire, and heaped up stones upon them." It is true that in Deut. xxiv. 16 the Mosaic law expressly forbids the putting to death of children for their fathers' sins; and many have imagined, therefore, that Achan's sons and daughters were simply taken into the valley to be spectators of the punishment inflicted upon the father, that it might be a warning to them. But for what reason, then, were Achan's cattle (oxen, sheep, and asses) taken out along with him? Certainly for no other purpose than to be stoned at the same time as he. The law in question only referred to the punishment of ordinary criminals, and therefore was not applicable at all to the present case, in which the punishment was commanded by the Lord himself. Achan had fallen under the ban by laying hands upon what had been banned, and consequently was exposed to the same punishment as a town that had fallen away to idolatry (Deut. xiii. 16, 17). The law of the ban was founded upon the assumption, that the conduct to be punished was not a crime of which the individual only was guilty, out one in which the whole family of the leading sinner, in fact everything connected with him, participated. Thus, in the case before us, the things themselves had been abstracted from the booty by Achan alone; but ho had hidden them in his tent, buried them in the earth, which could hardly have been done so secretly that his sons and daughters knew nothing of it. By so doing he had made his family participators in his theft; they therefore fell under the ban along with him, together with their tent, their cattle, and the rest of their property, which were all involved in the consequences of His crime. The clause D^1K3 Dnk vpp*\ does not refer to the stoning as a capital punishment, but to the casting of stones upon the bodies after they were dead and had been burned, for the purpose of erecting a heap of stones upon them as a memorial of the disgrace (vid. chap. viii. 29; 2 Sam. xviii. 17). — In ver. 26, the account of the whole affair closes with these two remarks: (1) That after the punishment of the malefactor the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger; and (2) That the valley in which Achan suffered his punishment received the name of Achor (troubling) with special reference to the fact that Joshua had described his punishment as well as Achan's sin as ^V (troubling: see ver. 25), and that it retained this name down to the writer's own time. With regard to the situation of this valley, it is evident from the word vJM in ver. 24 that it was on higher ground than Gilgal and Jericho, probably in one of the ranges of hills that intersect the plain of Jericho, and from chap. xv. 7, where the northern border of the possessions of Judah is said to have passed through this valley, that it is to be looked for to the south of Jericho. The only other places in which there is any allusion to this event are Hos. ii. 17 and Isa. lxv. 10.
Vers. 1-29. Conquest and Burning of Ai. — Vers. 1, 2. After the ban which rested upon the people had been wiped away, the Lord encouraged Joshua to make war upon Ai, promising him that the city should be taken, and giving him instructions what to do to ensure the success of his undertaking. With evident allusion to Joshua's despair after the failure of the first attack, the Lord commences with these words, " Fear not, neither be thou dismayed " (as in Deut. i. 21, xxxi. 8), and then commands him to go against
Ai with all the people of war. By " all the people of war" we are hardly to understand all the men out of the whole nation who were capable of bearing arms; but as only a third of these were contributed by the two tribes and a half to cross over into Canaan and take part in the war (see p. 32), the other tribes also are not likely to have levied more than a third, say about 160,000, which would form altogether an army of about 200,000 men. But even such an army as this seems out of all proportion to the size of Ai, with its 12,000 inhabitants (ver. 25). On the other hand, however, we must bear in mind that the expression " all the people of war" simply denotes the whole army, in contrast with the advice of the spies that only a portion of the army should be sent (chap. vii. 3), so that we are not warranted in pressing the word " all " too absolutely;x and also that this command of God was not given with reference to the conquest of Ai alone, but applied at the same time to the conquest of the whole land, which Joshua was not to attempt by sending out detachments only, but was to carry out with the whole of the force at his command. TO, to go up, is applied to the advance of an army against a hostile town, independently of the question whether the town was situated upon an eminence or not, as every town that had to be taken was looked upon as a height to be scaled, though as a fact in this instance the army had really to ascend from Jericho to Ai, which was situated up in the mountains. (On ver. 16, see chap. vi. 2.) " His land" is the country round, which belonged to the town and was under its king. — Ver. 2. Joshua wras to do the same to Ai and her king as he had already done to Jericho and her king, except that in this case the conquerors were to be allowed to appropriate the booty and the cattle to themselves. In order to conquer the town, he was to lay an ambush behind it.2 3?N> a collective noun, signifying the persons concealed in ambush; 2"[N£ (ver. 9), the place of ambush. " Behind it" i.e. on the west of the town.
Vers. 3-13. Accordingly Joshua set out with all the people of war against Ai, and selected 30,000 brave men, and sent them out in the night, with instructions to station themselves as an ambuscade
1 " As we have just before seen how their hearts melted, God consulted their weakness^ by putting no heavier burden upon them than they were able to bear, until they had recovered from their alarm, and hearkened readily to His commands."— Calvin.
2 The much agitated question, whether it could be worthy of God to employ stratagem in war, to which different replies have been given, has been answered behind the town, and at no great distance from it. As the distance from Gilgal to Ai was about fifteen miles, and the road runs pretty straight in a north-westerly direction from Jericho through the Wady Faran, the detachment sent forward might easily accomplish the distance in a night, so as to arrive on the western side of Ai before the break of day. They were then to hold themselves in readiness to fight. He (Joshua) himself would approach the town with the people of war that remained with him; and if the inhabitants of Ai should come out against him as they did before, they would flee before them till they had drawn them quite away from their town (ver. 5). This was to be expected; "for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first: and we will flee before them" (ver. 6). When this was done, the warriors were to come forth from their ambush, fall upon the town, and set it on fire (vers. 7, 8). Having been sent away with these instructions, the 30,000 men went into ambush, and posted themselves " between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai" (ver. 9), i.e., according to Strauss, in the Wady es Suweinit, to the north-west of Ai, where it forms almost a perpendicular wall, near to which the ruins of Chai are to be found, though u not near enough to the rocky wady for it to be possible to look down its almost perpendicular wall " {Hitter, Erdk. xvi. p. 528). Joshua remained for the night in the midst of the people, i.e. in the camp of that portion of the army that had gone with him towards Ai; not in Gilgal, as Knobel supposes. — Ver. 10. The next morning he mustered the people as early as possible, and then went, with the elders of Israel, " before the people of Ai." The elders of Israel are not " military tribunes, who were called elders because of their superiority in military affairs," as Masius supposes, but, as in every other case, the heads of the people, who accompanied Joshua as counsellors. — Ver. 11. The whole of the people of war also advanced with him to the front of the town, and encamped on the north of Ai, so that the valley was between it (13"Q, as in chap. iii. 4) and Ai. This was probably a side valley branching off towards the south from the eastern continuation of the Wady es Suweinit. — In vers. 12, 13, the account of the prepara-
qmte correctly by Calvin. " Surely," he says, " wars are not carried on by striking alone; but they are considered the best generals who succeed through art and counsel more than by force.... Therefore, if war is lawful at all, it is beyond all controversy that the way is perfectly clear for the use of the customary arts of warfare, provided there is no breach of faith in the violation of treaty or truce, or in any other way."
tions for the attack is rounded off by a repetition of the notice as to the forces engaged, and in some respects a more exact description of their disposition. Joshua, it is stated in ver. 12, took about 5000 men and placed them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west of the town. As the place where this ambuscade was posted is described in precisely the same terms as that which was occupied, according to ver. 9, by the 30,000 men who were sent out to form an ambuscade in the night before the advance of the main army against Ai (for the substitution of u the city" for Ai cannot possibly indicate a difference in the locality), the view held by the majority of commentators, that ver. 12 refers to a second ambuscade, which Joshua sent out in addition to the 30,000, and posted by the side of them, is even more than questionable, and is by no means raised into a probability by the expression UpjrriN {Eng. u their Hers in wait") in ver. 13. The description of the place, "on the west of the city," leaves no doubt whatever that " their liers in wait " are simply the ambuscade (2?K) mentioned in ver. 12, which was sent out from the whole army, i.e. the ambuscade that was posted on the west of the town. 3£V signifies literally the lier in wait (Ps. xlix. 5), from Spy, insidiari, and is synonymous with 2>~\j&. The meaning which Gesenius and others attach to the word, viz. the rear or hinder part of the army, cannot be sustained from Gen. xlix. 19. If we add to this the fact that ver. 13a is obviously nothing more than a repetition of the description already given in ver. 11 of the place where the main army was posted, and therefore bears the character of a closing remark introduced to wind up the previous account, we cannot regard ver. 12 as anything more than a repetition of the statements in vers. 3, 9, and can only explain the discrepancy with regard to the number of men who were placed in ambush, by supposing that, through a copyist's error, the number which was expressed at first in simple letters has in one instance been given wrongly. The mistake, however, is not to be found in the 5000 (ver. 12), but in the 30,000 in ver. 3, where n has been confounded with h. For a detachment of 5000 men would be quite sufficient for an ambuscade that had only to enter the town after the soldiers had left it in pursuit of the Israelites, and to set it on fire, whereas it hardly seems possible that 30,000 men should have been posted in ambush so near to the town.1 — In ver. 13a, Dyn
1 We need have no hesitation in coming to the conclusion that there is a mistake in the number given in ver. 3, as the occurrence of such mistakes in the historical books is fully established by a compari m of the numbers give^:
(the people) is to be taken as the subject of the sentence: " The veople had set all the host, that ivas on the north of the city, and its ambuscade on the zoest of the city." In the night, namely the night before the army arrived at the north of the town, Joshua went through the midst of the valley, which separated the Israelites from the town, so that in the morning he stood with all the army close before the town.
Vers. 14-23. When the king of Ai saw the Israelites, he hurried out in the morning against them to battle at the (previously) appointed place pJAB?, in locum condictum, as in 1 Sam. xx. 35) before the steppe (Arabah, not the valley of the Jordan, but the steppe or desert of Bethaven; see at chap. vii. 2), as he knew nothing of the ambuscade behind the town. — Yer. 15. But the Israelites let them beat them, and fled along the desert (of Bethaven). — Vers. 16, 17. And all the people in the town were called together to pursue the Israelites, and were drawn away from the town, so that not a man, i.e. not a single soldier who could take part in the pursuit, remained either in Ai or the neighbouring town of Bethel, and the town stood open behind them. It is evident from ver. 17 that the inhabitants of Bethel, which was about three hours' journey from Ai, took part in the battle, probably in consequence of a treaty which the king of Ai had made with them in the expectation of a renewed and still stronger attack on the part of the Israelites. Nothing further is known upon this point; nor can anything be inferred from the fact that the king of Bethel is included in the list of the kings slain by Joshua (chap. xii. 16). Consequently, we cannot decide whether the Bethelites came to the help of the Aites in the books of Samuel and Kings with those in the books of Chronicles, and is admitted by every commentator. In my earlier commentary on Joshua, I attempted to solve the difficulty by the twofold assumption: first, that ver. 12 contains a supplementary statement, in which the number of the men posted in ambush is given for the first time; and secondly, that the historian forgot to notice that out of the 30,000 men whom Joshua chose to make war upon Ai, 5000 were set apart to lie in ambush. But, on further examination of the text, I have come to the conclusion that the second assumption is irreconcilable with the distinct words of ver. 3, and feel obliged to give it up. On the other hand, I still adhere to the conviction that there is not sufficient ground either for the assumption that vers. 12, 13, contain an old marginal gloss that has crept into the text, or for the hypothesis of Ewald and Knobel, that these verses were introduced by the last editor of the book out of some other document. The last hypothesis amounts to a charge of thoughtlessness against the latest editor, which is hardly reconcilable with the endeavour, for which he is praised in other places, to reconcile the discrepancies in the different documents.
for the first time on the day of the battle itself, or, what is more probable, had already sent men to Ai, to help to repulse the expected attack of the Israelites upon that town. — Vers. 18, 19. At the command of God Joshua now stretched out the javelin in his hand towards the town. At this sign the ambuscade rose hastily from its concealment, rushed into the town, and set it on fire. tfT33 riBJ signifies to stretch out the hand with the spear. The object T, which is missing (cf. vers. 19, 26), may easily be supplied from the apposition T£? "^K. The raising of the javelin would probably be visible at a considerable distance, even if it was not provided with a small flag, as both earlier and later commentators assume, since Joshua would hardly be in the midst of the flying Israelites, but would take his station as commander upon some eminence on one side. And the men in ambush would have scouts posted to watch for the signal, which had certainly been arranged beforehand, and convey the information to the others. — Vers. 20, 21. The men of Ai then turned round behind them, being evidently led to do so by the Israelites, who may have continued looking round to the town of Ai when the signal had been given by Joshua, to see whether the men in ambush had taken it and set it on fire, and as soon as they saw that this had been done began to offer still further resistance to their pursuers, and to defend themselves vigorously against them. On looking back to their town the Aites saw the smoke of the town ascending towards heaven: " and there were not hands in them to flee hither and thither" i.e. they were utterly unable to flee. " Hands" as the organs of enterprise and labour, in the sense of u strength," not " room," for which we should expect to find D^v instead of D[t2. There is an analogous passage in Ps. Ixxvi. 6, u None of the men of might have found their hands." For the people that fled to the wilderness (the Israelitish army) turned against the pursuers (the warriors of Ai), or, as is added by way of explanation in ver. 21, when Joshua and all Israel saw the town in the hands of the ambuscade, and the smoke ascending, they turned round and smote the people of Ai; and (ver. 22) these (i.e. the Israelites who had formed the ambuscade) came out of the town to meet them. u These" {Eng. the other), as contrasted with u the people that fled " in ver. 20, refers back to " the ambush" in ver. 19. In this way the Aites were in the midst of the people of Israel, who came from this side and that side, and smote them to the last man. u So that they let none of them remain;" as in Num. xxi. 35 and Deut. iii. 3, except that in this case it is strengthened still further by ByEl, " or escape" — Ver. 23. The king of Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua.
Vers. 24-29. When all the men of Ai, who had come oi>t to pursue the Israelites, had been slain upon the field (namely) in the desert, all Israel returned to Ai and smote it (the town, i.e. the inhabitants), so that on that day there fell of men and women 12,000, all the people of Ai: for Joshua did not draw back his hand, which had been stretched out with the javelin, till all the inhabitants of Ai were smitten with the ban, i.e. put to death; according to the common custom of war, that the general did not lower the warsignal till the conflict was to cease (see Suidas in ^/xeta, and Lipsius de militia, Rom. iv. dial. 12). — Ver. 27. Only the cattle and the rest of the booty the conquerors retained for themselves, according to the word of the Lord (ver. 2). — Ver. 28. Joshua had the town burnt down and made into a heap of rubbish for ever. — Ver. 29. He had the king of Ai hanged upon a tree, i.e. put to death, and then suspended upon a stake (see Num. xxv. 4) until the evening; but at sunset he had him taken down (in accordance with Deut. xxi. 22, 23), and thrown at the entrance of the towngate, and a heap of stones piled upon him (as in the case of Achan, chap. vii. 26).
Vers. 30-35. Blessings and Curses upon Gerizim and Ebal. — After the capture of Ai, Israel had gained so firm a footing in Canaan that Joshua was able to carry out the instructions of Moses in Deut. xxvii., that, after crossing the Jordan, he was to build an altar upon Mount Ebal for the setting up of the covenant. The fulfilment of these instructions, according to the meaning of this solemn act, as a symbolical setting up of the law of the Lord to be the invariable rule of life to the people of Israel in the land of Canaan (see at Deut. xxvii.), was not only a practical expression of thanksgiving on the part of the covenant nation for its entrance into this land through the almighty assistance of its God, but also a practical acknowledgment, that in the overthrow of the Canaanites thus far it had received a strong pledge of the conquest of the foes that still remained and the capture of the whole of the promised land, provided only it persevered in covenant faithfulness towards the Lord its God. The account of this transaction is attached, it is true, to the conquest of Ai by the introduction, il Then Joshua built," etc. (ver. 30); but simply as an occurrence which had no logical connection with the conquest of Canaan and the defeat of its kings. The particle TN (sequ. imperf.) is used, for example, in cases where the historian either wishes to introduce contPinporaneous facts, that do not carry forward the main course of the history, or loses sight for the time of the strictly historical sequence and simply takes note of the occurrence of some particular event (vid. Ewald, § 136, b.). The assertion of modern critics, which Knobel repeats, that this account is out of place in the series of events as contained in chap, vi.-xii., is so far correct, that the promulgation of the law and the renewal of the covenant upon Ebal form no integral part of the account of the conquest of Canaan; but it by no means proves that this section has been interpolated by the Jehovist from his first document, or by the last editor of this book from some other source, and that what is related here did not take place at the time referred to. The circumstance that, according to chap, vi.-viii. 29, Joshua had only effected the conquest of Jericho in the south of the land from Gilgal as a base, and that even in chap. ix. and x. he was still engaged in the south, by no means involves the impossibility or even the improbability of a march to Shechem, which was situated further north, where he had not yet beaten the Canaanites, and had not effected any conquests. The distance from Ai to Shechem between Gerizim and Ebal is about thirty miles in a straight line. Robinson made the journey from Bireh (Beeroth) to Sichem on mules in eleven and a half hours, and that not by the most direct route (Pal. iii. pp. 81-2), and Ai was not more than an hour to the south of Beeroth; so that Joshua could have gone with the people from Ai to Gerizim and Ebal in two days without any excessive exertion. Now, even if the conquests of the Israelites had not extended further north than Ai at that time, there was no reason why Joshua should be deterred from advancing further into the land by any fear of attack from the Canaanites, as the people of war who went with him would be able to repulse any hostile attack; and after the news had spread of the fate of Ai and Jericho, no Canaanitish king would be likely to venture upon a conflict with the Israelites alone. Moreover, Shechem had no king, as we may gather from the list of the thirty-one kings who were defeated by Joshua. To the further remark of Knobel, that " there was no reason for their hurrying with this ceremony, and it might have been carried out at a later period in undisturbed security," we simply reply, that obedience to the command of God was not a matter of such indifference to the servant of the Lord as Knobel imagines. There was no valid reason after the capture of
Ai for postponing any longer the solemn ceremony of setting up the law of Jehovah which had been enjoined by Moses; and if we consider the reason for this solemnity, to which we have already referred, there can be no doubt that Joshua would proceed without the least delay to set up the law of the Lord in Canaan as early as possible, even before the subjugation of the whole land, that he might thereby secure the help of God for further conflicts and enterprises. The account of this religious solemnity is given very briefly. It presupposes an acquaintance with the Mosaic instructions in Deut. xxvii., and merely gives the leading points, to show that those instructions were carefully carried out by Joshua. Of the three distinct acts of which the ceremony consisted, in the book of Deuteronomy the setting up of the stones with the law written upon them is mentioned first (Deut. xxvii. 2-4), and then (vers. 5-7) the building of the altar and the offering of sacrifice. Here, on the contrary, the building of the altar and offering of sacrifice are mentioned first (vers. 30, 31), and then (ver. 32) the writing of the law upon the stones; which was probably the order actually observed. — In ver. 30 Jehovah is called " the God of Israel" to show that henceforth no other god was to be worshipped in Canaan than the God of Israel. On Mount Ebal, see at Deut. xi. 29 and xxvii. 4. — Ver. 31. " As Moses commanded:" namely, Deut. xxvii. 5. " As it is written in the book of the law of Moses:" viz. in Ex. xx. 22 (25). On the presentation of burnt-offerings and slainofferings, see at Deut. xxvii. 6, 7. — In ver. 32 nothing is mentioned but the writing of the law upon the stones; all the rest is presupposed from Deut. xxvii. 2 sqq., to which the expression "the stones" refers. " Copy of the law:" as in Deut. xvii. 18; see the explanation at Deut. xxvii. 3. In connection with the third part of the ceremony, the promulgation of the law with the blessing and cursing, the account of the Mosaic instructions given in Deut. xxvii. 11 sqq. is completed in ver. 33 by the statement that u all Israel, and their elders (i.e. with their elders), and shoterim, and judges" stood on both sides of the ark before the Levitical priests, the stranger as well as the native, i.e. without any exception, one half (i.e. six tribes) towards Mount Ebal, and the other half towards Mount Gerizim. For further remarks, see at Deut. xxvii. 11 sqq. "As Moses commanded to bless the people before:" i.e. as he had previously commanded. The fact that the thought itself does not suit the context is quite sufficient to show that the explanation given by many commentators, viz. that they were to commence with the blessings, is incorrect. But if, on the other hand, we connect the word " before" with the principal verb of the sentence, u commanded," the meaning will be that Moses did not give the command to proclaim the blessings and cursings to the people for the first time in connection with these instructions (Deut. xxvii.), but had done so before, at the very outset, namely, as early as Deut. xi. 29. — Ver. 34. " And afterwards (after the people had taken the place assigned them) he read to them all the words of the law" i.e. he had the law proclaimed aloud by the persons entrusted with the proclamation of the law, viz. the Levitical priests. N"}P, lit. to call out or proclaim, then in a derivative sense to read, inasmuch as reading aloud is proclaiming (as, for example, in Ex. xxiv. 7). The words " the blessing and the curse11 are in apposition to " all the words of the law,11 which they serve to define, and are not to be understood as relating to the blessings in Deut. xxviii. 1-14, and the curses in Deut. xxvii. 15-26 and xxviii. 15-68. The whole law is called " the blessing and the curse" with special reference to its contents, inasmuch as the fulfilment of it brings eo ipso a blessing, and the transgression of it eo ipso a curse. In the same manner, in Deut. xi. 26, Moses describes the exposition of the whole law in the steppes of Moab as setting before them blessing and cursing. In ver. 35 it is most distinctly stated that Joshua had the whole law read to the people; whilst the expression " all Israel," in ver. 33, is more fully explained as signifying not merely the congregation in its representatives, or even the men of the nation, but a all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were in the midst of it."
Nothing is said about the march of Joshua and all Israel to Gerizim and Ebal. All that we know is, that he not only took with him the people of war and the elders or heads of tribes, but all the people. It follows from this, however, that the whole of the people must have left and completely vacated the camp at Gilgal in the valley of the Jordan. For if all Israel went to the mountains of Gerizim and Ebal, which were situated in the midst of the land, taking even the women and children with them, it is not likely that they left their cattle and other possessions behind them in Gilgal, exposed to the danger of being plundered in the meantime by the Canaanites of the southern mountains. So again we are not informed in what follows (chap. ix. sqq.) in which direction Joshua and the people went after these solemnities at Ebal and Gerizim were over. It is certainly not stated that he went back to Gilgal in the Jordan valley, and pitched his tent again on the old site. No doubt we find Gilgal still mentioned as the encampment of Israel, not only in chap. ix. 6, x. 6, 9, 15, 43, but even after the defeat and subjugation of the Canaanites in the south and north, when a commencement was made to distribute the land (chap. xiv. 6). But when it is asked whether this Gilgal was the place of encampment on the east of Jericho, which received its name from the circumcision of the whole nation which took place there, or the town of Gilgal by the side of the terebinths of Moreh, which is mentioned in Deut. xi. 30, and by which Moses defines the situation of Gerizim and Ebal, this question cannot be answered unhesitatingly according to the traditional view, viz. in favour of the encampment in the Jordan valley. For when not only the army, but all the people with their wives and children, had once proceeded from the Jordan valley to the mountains of Gerizim and Ebal, we cannot imagine any reason why Joshua should go back again to the plain of Jericho, that is to say, to the extreme corner of Canaan on the east, for the purpose of making that the base of his operations for the conquest and extermination of the Canaanites. And there is just as much improbability in the assumption, that after Joshua had not only defeated the kings of southern Canaan, who had allied themselves with Adonizedek of Jerusalem in the battle fought at Gibeon (chap, x.), but had also overthrown the kings of northern Canaan, who were allied with Jabin of Hazor at the waters of Merom above the Sea of Galilee (chap, xi.), he should return again to Gilgal in the Jordan valley, and there quietly encamp with all the people, and commence the distribution of the land. The only thing that could bring us to assent to such extremely improbable assumptions, would be the fact that there was no other Gilgal in all Canaan than the encampment to the east of Jericho, which received the name of Gilgal for the first time from the Israelites themselves. But as the other Gilgal by the side of the terebinths of Moreh — i.e. the present Jiljilia, which stands upon an eminence on the south-west of Shiloh at about the same distance from Jerusalem as from Sichem — was a well-known place even in Moses' days (Deut. xi. 30), and from its situation on a lofty ridge, from which you can see the great lowlands and the sea towards the west, the mountains of Gilead towards the east, and far away in the north-east even Hermon itself (Rob. Pal. iii. p. 81), was peculiarly well adapted for a place of encampment, from which Joshua could carry on the conquest of the land toward both the north and south, we can come to no other conclusion than that this Gilgal or Jiljilia was the Gilgal mentioned in chap. ix. 6, x. 6, 9, 15, 43, and xiv. 6, as the place where the Israelites were encamped. We therefore assume, that after the setting up of the law on Gerizim and Ebal, Joshua did not conduct the people with their wives and children back again to the camp which thev had left in the Jordan valley on the other side of Jericho, but chose the Gilgal which was situated upon the mountains, and only seven hours' journey to the south of Sichem, as the future place of encampment, and made this the central point of all his further military operations; and that this was the place to which he returned after his last campaign in the north, to commence the division of the conquered land among the tribes of Israel (chap. xiv. 6), and where he remained till the tabernacle was permanently erected at Shiloh, when the further distribution was carried on there (chap. xviii. 1 sqq.). This view, which even Van de Velde (Memoir, p. 316) has adopted as probable, is favoured still further by the fact that this Gilgal or Jiljilia, which is still a large village, is frequently mentioned in the subsequent history of Israel, not only in 2 Kings ii. 1 and iv. 38, as the seat of a school of the prophets in the time of Elijah and Elisha, and in Hos. iv. 15, ix. 15, xii. 12, Amos iv. 4, v. 5, as a place which was much frequented for the purpose of idolatrous worship; but even at an earlier date still, namely, as one of the places where Samuel judged the people (1 Sam. vii. 16), and as the place where he offered sacrifice (1 Sam. x. 8; cf. xiii. 7-9), and where he gathered the people together to confirm the monarchy of Saul (1 Sam. xi. 14, 15), at a time when the tabernacle at Shiloh had ceased to be the only national sanctuary of Israel, on account of the ark having been taken away. Gilgal had no doubt acquired this significance along with Bethel, which had been regarded as a holy place ever since the time of Jacob, from the fact that it was there that Joshua had established the camp of Israel with the ark of the covenant, until the land was divided, and Shiloh was appointed as the site for the national sanctuary.