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now in question, if understood literally, or as indicating a discontinuance of the earth's motion, very far exceeded all the miracles wrought by the hand of Moses. They were ere local; and for the most part limited to the particular occasions which rendered them necessary; but this stupendous miracle must have extended to the whole world, and must have been felt even at the antipodes as the greatest prodigy that could possibly happen. It is also singular that if the miracle had been by the Hebrews themselves understood in this extent, there is no allusion to it in any subsequent passage of Scripture. There is no early miracle which is not mentioned repeatedly-to magnify the greatness, the mercy, or the judgment of God-by the psalmists and the prophets; but to this, the greatest of them all, and the one by which, at least, the power of God would be the most magnified, no reference is made. Even the apostle, when, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, enumerating the examples of faith which the old saints afforded, takes particular notice of the destruction of Jericho, and the stay of Rahab, both of which belong to the time, and were connected with the history of Joshua, and are recorded in the same book, passes by this astonishing event, although it is recorded in the same book in which he found these far less important instances of what he wished to illustrate. The inference from this is, that although there certainly was a miracle in the matter, it was understood by the later sacred writers to be something far less stupendous than later and more literal interpreters have been led to imagine.

Considering all these circumstances, it is deemed probable that the words of Joshua and the context are to be regarded as an example of those bold metaphors and poetical forms of expression with which the Scriptures abound. Further, we are reminded, in confirmation of this opinion, that the historian refers to the Book of Jasher, in which this transaction had been previously recorded. Now this book (which is also referred to in 2 Sam. i. 18) appears to have been a collection of contemporary songs or poems, in celebration of remarkable events; or, perhaps, a poetical chronicle, of which there are examples in most early histories. In such a work we might expect to find examples of those bold figures for which the Hebrew and all other Oriental poetry is celebrated; and in reading which it would be productive of very serious mistakes if we fettered our judgment to that literal sense to which, in other cases, we are right to adhere. Would we understand literally such expressions as, "The deep uttered his voice,

and lifted up his hands on high." (Hab. iii. 10). -"Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together." (Ps. xcviii. 8).-"The valleys shout for joy, they also sing." (Ps. lxiii. 13)." I will make mine arrows drunk with blood." (Deut. xxxiii. 42).-"The mountains melted." (Judg. v. 5).-"The stars in their courses fought against Sisera" (verse 20). "The mountains shall be melted with their blood, and all the host of heaven shall be dissolved."? (Isa. xxxiv. 3, 4). After being accustomed to such sublimity of metaphor, we should not refuse to entertain the idea, that some bard made Joshua speak in the same lofty strain; and that the few words here quoted from the Book of Jasher, consisting of two hemistichs, formed only part of an ode celebrating the defeat of the five kings. The historian, in repeating to an audience contemporary with the event, the well-known words of a contemporary poet, is not liable to be misunderstood, however figurative may be the terms employed. To such an audience it would have seemed an impertinence to explain the sense in which the familiarly-known figure was to be understood.

Under such impressions various writers have thought themselves at liberty to inquire what these expressions, supposed by them to be figurative, might really denote.

*

Josephus only says that the day was lengthened, that the night might not come on too soon. Maimonides interprets the passage to mean that Joshua's wish only was that the sun might not go down till his victory was completed; and that this was heard, by his being enabled to do as much execution in one day as would otherwise have required two days.t Another Jewish writer, Spinosa, followed by more than one recent commentator, reduces the miracle to the application of a natural second cause, to the prolongation of the day, for the use, at the time wanted, and by the desire of Joshua. And this is supposed to have been effected by the refraction of the sun's rays by the atmosphere, which was then more than ordinarily charged with hail.

Grotius is so much influenced by the omission of any allusion to this stupendous event, as literally understood, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when it was so much to his purpose to have adduced it, that he is disposed to agree with Maimonides.§ Peirerius supposes the phenomenon which occasioned a prolonged daylight was local only,―confined to Palestine, or perhaps even to the territories * Antiq.' v. 1. 17.

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More Nevochim,' ii. 39.

Tract. Theologico-politic. c. 2. § Comment. in Josh. x. 14.

about Gibeon; which he imagines were enlightened by a kind of twilight, or something like our aurora borealis, which continued long enough to answer the purpose for which it was required.* Le Clerc, who argues the question generally, fortifies by additional arguments the theories of the two preceding writers, without proposing any new explanation of his

own.

It is evident from what has been said, that, as usually understood and translated, the text, if not figurative, must indicate the discontinued motion of the earth, and, with it, of the moon. Bishop Gleig, whose additions and elucidations have given a fresh value to a rather indifferent book,+ after contending with great earnestness and ability for the fitness of our belief in this, and stating the reasons for such belief, if it be required; goes on to intimate his impression, or rather to state the alternative, that the text is open to other interpretation. He says:

which

"It does not, however, appear that an actual cessation of the motion of the earth was necessary to produce all that happened according to the narrative of the sacred historian. The radical import of the word some take to be silence, and others, as our translators, stillness, is equable, level, uniform, even, parallel; and the words 'n na which, in our version, are rendered in the midst of heaven,' signifying in that division of the heavens which is made by the visible horizon; from all which it follows, that the sun must have been in the horizon, just ready to set, when Joshua issued the command which appeared to arrest him in his course. The word D, which we render sun, signifies rather the solar light than the orb of the sun; and therefore the whole passage might be thus rendered :-'Solar light, remain thou upon Gibeon; and be thou, moon, stayed, or supported, over the valley of Ajalon: and the solar light remained, and the moon was stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? So the solar light lingered in the division of the heavens, or in the horizon, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.'

"But all this may have been produced, not indeed without a miracle, and a great miracle, but certainly without stopping the rotatory motion of the earth. We know that the sun. by one of the present laws of Nature, appears

Præadamit. iv. 6.

+ Stackhouse's History of the Bible:' Bishop Gleig's edition is in three quarto volumes. London, 1817.

to be in the horizon, after he has actually sunk a degree or two below it. What is the cause of this phenomena? The common reply is, the refractive power of the atmosphere; but this, like the words attraction and repulsion in astronomy, is nothing more than metaphorical language; for, in the proper sense of the word, the atmosphere can have no power. The fact is simply this, that by the will of God, which first brought the universe into being, and now supports it in its present form, a ray of light, passing obliquely out of a rare medium into a denser, is bent at the point of incidence towards the perpendicular, and bent more or less according to the density of the medium into which it passes. If the rays of the setting sun be so bent at present as to make him appear visible in the horizon, when we know him to be a certain number of degrees below it, might not He, who by a mere act of volition, produces regularly this effect, by a different act of volition, so order matters, that a ray of light, passing from the sun to this earth, should be so bent at the angle of incidence, and during its progress through the atmosphere, which is of unequal density, as to make the sun visible at once over half the globe, or even over the whole? No man of reflection will say that He could not; and if so, the solar light might have been made to linger on the temples of Gibeon, and the moon to appear in the valley of Ajalon, without stopping the diurnal rotation of the earth, and producing that violent re-action which is commonly urged as an insuperable objection to the Scriptural account of this miracle. The objection in itself is, indeed, of no force; for He who could make the rotation of the earth to cease for a few hours could, at the same time, prevent the natural consequences of such a sudden cessation of motion so rapid; and to Almighty power it was as easy to do all this as to bend a ray of light round half the surface of our globe, which would have equally served the only purpose for which the miracle appears to have been wrought. The bending of the ray would have been just as great a miracle as suspending the motion of the earth; for by either means the duration of the light of day would have been so protracted, as to render that day without a parallel in the annals of the world; and I have stated the alternative only to show the unlearned reader that there is nothing in this stupendous miracle more difficult to be conceived than there is in every other work of Almighty power -even in the ordinary works carried on according to what is called the laws of Nature."

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FROM Joshua to Samuel (a period of about 474 years) the condition of the Israelites varied according as the fundamental law of the state was observed or transgressed, exactly as Moses had predicted, and as the sanctions of the law had determined.

The last admonitions of Joshua, and the solemn renewal of the covenant with Jehovah, failed to produce all the effect intended. That generation, indeed, never suffered idolatry to become predominant, but still they were very negligent with respect to the expulsion of the Canaanites. Only a few tribes made war upon them, and even they were soon weary of the contest. They spared their dangerous and corrupting neighbours, and, contrary to express statute, were satisfied with making them tributary. They even became connected with them by unlawful marriages, and then it was no longer easy for them to exterminate or banish the near relatives of their own families. The Hebrews thus rendered the execution of so severe a law in a manner impossible, and wove for themselves the web in which they were afterwards entangled. Their Canaanitish relatives invited them to their festivals, where not only lascivious songs were sung in honour of the gods, but fornication and unnatural lusts were indulged in as part of the Divine service. These debaucheries, then consecrated by the religious customs of all nations, were gratifying to the sensual appetites; and the subject of

Jehovah too readily submitted himself to such deities, so highly honoured by his connections, and worshipped in all the neighbouring nations. At first, probably, a symbolical representation of Jehovah was set up, but this was soon transferred to an idol, or was invoked as an idol by others. Idolatrous images were afterwards set up, together with the image of Jehovah, and the Israelites fondly imagined that they should be the more prosperous if they rendered homage to the ancient gods of the land. The propensity to idolatry, which was predominant in all the rest of the world, thus spread itself among the chosen people like a plague. From time to time idolatry was publicly professed, and this national treachery to their king, Jehovah, always brought with it national misfortunes.

However, it does not appear that any form of idolatry was openly tolerated until that generation was extinct, which, under Joshua, had sworn anew to the covenant with Jehovah. After that the rulers were unable or unwilling any longer to prevent the public worship of pagan deities. But the Hebrews, rendered effeminate by this voluptuous religion, and forsaken by their king, Jehovah, were no longer able to contend with their foes, and were forced to bend their necks under a foreign yoke. In this humiliating and painful subjection to a conquering people, they called to mind their deliverance from Egypt, the ancient kindnesses of Jehovah, the promises and threatenings of the law: then they forsook their idols, who could afford them no help,—they returned to the sacred tabernacle, and then found a deliverer who freed them from their bondage. The reformation was generally of no longer duration than the life of the deliverer. As soon as that generation was extinct, idolatry again crept in by the same way, and soon became predominant. Then followed subjection and oppression under the yoke of some neighbouring people, until a second reformation prepared them for a new deliverance. Between these extremes of prosperity and adversity, the consequences of their fidelity or treachery to their Divine king, the Hebrew nation was continually fluctuating until the time of Samuel. Such were the arrangements of Providence, that as soon as idolatry gained the ascendancy, some one of the neighbouring nations grew powerful, acquired the preponderance, and subjected the Hebrews. Jehovah always permitted their oppressions to become sufficiently severe to arouse them from their slumbers, to remind them of the sanctions of the law, and to turn them again to their God and king. Then a hero arose, who inspired the people with courage, defeated their enemies, abolished idolatry, and re-established the authority of Jehovah. As the Hebrews, in the course of time, became more obstinate in their idolatry, so each subsequent oppression of the nation was always more severe than the preceding. So difficult was it, as mankind were then situated, to preserve a knowledge of the true God in the world, although so repeatedly and so expressly revealed, and in so high a degree made manifest to the senses.

After this general view of the whole period to which the remainder of the present book is devoted, we may proceed to the historical details from which that view is collected.

Soon after the death of Joshua, and while the contemporary elders still lived, the Israelites made some vigorous and successful exertions to extend their territory. The most remarkable of these exertions was that made by the tribe of Judah, assisted by that of Simeon. They slew 10,000 Canaanites and Perizzites in the territory of Bezek, the king of which, Adoni-bezek (literally, "my lord of Bezek"), contrived to make his escape; but he was pursued and taken, when the conquerors cut off his thumbs and great toes. Now this, at the first view, was a barbarous act. It was not a mode in which the Hebrews were wont to treat their captives; and the reason for it-that it was intended as an act of just retaliation, or, as we should say, of poetic justice-appears from the bitter remark of Adoni-bezek himself: "Three score and ten kings, having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me." This proves that, as we have already on more than one occasion intimated, the war practices of the Israelites-especially in the treatment of their captives-was not more barbarous, and, in many respects, less barbarous, than those of their contemporaries; and that even their polished neighbours, the

Jahn, b. iii. sect. 20.

Egyptians, were not in this respect above them, we shall endeavour to show in a note at the end of the chapter. Meanwhile we introduce in this and the following page some cuts by

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which the manner in which that nation treated their captives will be illustrated. Adoni-bezek died soon after at Jerusalem, to which place he was taken by the conquerors. They at this time had possession of the lower part of that town, and soon after succeeded in taking the

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upper city, upon Mount Zion, which the Jebusites had hitherto retained. They sacked it and burned it with fire. But as we afterwards again find it in the occupation of the Jebusites, down to the time of David, it seems they took advantage of some one of the subsequent oppressions of Israel, to recover the site and rebuild the upper city.

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