Is it true that the sun stood still?

SUN STANDING STILL, Joshua 10:12-27. No legitimate objection can be made to the statement that the sun 'stood still;' for though it is now known that it is the earth that moves, yet astronomers still speak of the sun rising and setting, and use the word 'solstice,' which signifies 'sun standing still.' They would doubtless say the same as Joshua said if they were placed in similar circumstances.

Sun, stand thou still!

As to the sun standing still (Joshua 10), a lady said to us lately, "Of course, that cannot be true, because it is entirely contrary to the laws of nature." To which we replied, "Let us read it: 'Then spake Joshua to Jehovah, in the day when Jehovah delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said, in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies … and there was no day like that before it, or after it, that Jehovah hearkened unto the voice of a man; for Jehovah fought for Israel.'" (Joshua 10:12-14.) "That would be an impossibility," repeated the lady, because it would be entirely opposed to the laws of nature." How sad to find people speaking of God as if He must be subject to any of these laws, for "with Him," we are told, "nothing shall be impossible." Again, we asked, "Was not the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ entirely contrary to that law of nature termed attraction of gravitation? And will not the resurrection and rapture of the saints, when the Lord comes, be also entirely contrary to all the laws of natural philosophy?" The fact is if, in our calculations, we leave out God who is omnipotent as well as omniscient and omnipresent, there is no knowing to what length of scepticism and infidelity we may go. Well did our Lord say of some, "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God."

(b) It is not indeed directly against Israel that they gather, but against Gibeon which has made peace with Israel. Satan often, as it were, sidles up to the attack. Gibeon, false all round, may well provoke the onslaught of the "lord of righteousness;" but Joshua, remembering the oath of the Lord, comes up against the Canaanite host with haste, and smites them with a great slaughter, pursuing them the way of Beth-horon (the "place of wrath"), as far as Azekah ("fencing round") and Makkedah ("bowing the head"). Thus God puts to defeat His enemies, and they are as cattle in the hands of the slaughterer. Beth-horon proves its title by the fall there of a great hail from heaven, slaying more than the swords of the Israelites.

(c) And here occurs the notable miracle which has awakened so much discussion and provoked so much the scorn of unbelief. The language of Scripture being so purely phenomenal every where, — dealing with things as they appear to us, rather than with the scientific explanation, — I see no reason for any actual stoppage of the sun and moon, which must in that case be rather of the earth's own revolution, and so not literally according to the description after all. The economy of miracle which the Bible shows to one who attentively considers it, notwithstanding the large actual amount, would suggest that, for the purpose Joshua desires to have accomplished, the extreme supposition need hardly be the fact. For him and for all beholders the sun and moon did actually stop, and that is all that the words fairly taken imply; and the miracle is mighty enough, if it were accomplished by means of refraction or mirage or what not: it is not worth the labor to speculate upon how it might be done. Whatever the means that might be used, the day stands alone in the world's history, — surely miracle enough. And there is no tampering with the record involved in this, no trifling with revelation, no giving way in the least to the infidelity of the day. It is to us the sun rises or sets, as to them it stood still in the heavens: why should language be pressed in the one case in a way which would be admitted to be straining it in the other?*

The spiritual lesson more concerns us here, and this seems to be the manifestation of divine power as acting for Israel. Sun and moon were both worshiped in many forms by the nations around them, Baal and Ashtoreth standing for them respectively among the Canaanite population. Hence Israel's God was proclaimed here to be "God of gods." The very deities of Canaan lengthened the day to accomplish their destruction! as indeed they had in every generation been the destruction of their worshipers. But Israel warred not in their own strength, and it was not their right hand saved them. If they or their enemies imagined this, the significance of their victories was wholly lost and turned to the glorification of man. Hebron could never in this way have been redeemed from the Anakim, but would have been Kirjath-arba still. Lachish would have kept its resplendent Japhia; and Eglon's wheel have revolved but to grind out "vanity of vanities." So important is it that Israel's victories should be seen not as their own but God's!

"It is astonishing that this fine passage has been so long misunderstood. Joshua attacked the Amorites in the early morning, and the battle continued till night; that is, for a long day, which seemed to protract itself into night, to complete the victory. The sun and moon were witnesses of Joshua's great deeds, and held their course in the midst of heaven till the triumph was perfect. Who does not recognize this as poetry, even if it had not been quoted from the Book of Poems on Heroes. In the usual language of the Hebrews such expressions were neither bold nor unusual."

These are the attempts of man, by which he tries to explain the supernatural by the natural. The occurrence is a miracle. It says the sun stood still. But how is that when science tells us the sun does not move? We give the answer from Kurtz in his Sacred History, because it is the most concise statement we have ever seen:

"A voucher from the Old Testament for the promise in Mark 11:23, 24, 'Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, etc..' is furnished by Joshua's bold word of faith with its fulfilment. It was his prayer that the light of day might be prolonged, and the darkness of night be retarded, until he had secured the object for which he pursued the enemy: he obtained the answer which he sought by the miraculous power of his faith. No investigation respecting the natural means which produced this supernatural effect can furnish valuable results. The command of faith is pronounced in the sense which Joshua assigns to the words; the divine answer is given in the sense in which God understands them. No arguments that are either favorable or unfavorable to any particular system of astronomy are furnished by the occurrence."

The great miracle of the standing still of the sun and the moon occurred then. The way this miracle has been held up to ridicule is known to everybody. Infidels of all generations have sneered at it. Critics have followed, as they always do, close in their footsteps. But even good men have found difficulties here and tried to explain it with their human wisdom. One explanation given is that the Hebrew word dum, to stand, means rather that the sun was to cease to give its light. Upon this the statement is made, that Joshua's command was that the sun and moon should cease giving their light, and not that they should cease continuing their apparent motion. Herder in his "Hebraische Poesie" says:

Next, as regards the miracle of the sun and moon being arrested in Joshua 10, Mr. N. says, "It has long been felt as too violent a derangement of the whole globe, to be used by the Most High as a means of discomfiting an army." Long felt by whom? It is a very stale objection of infidels, like most, for they generally copy one another, so that, in the sense of its repetition usque ad nauseam, it has been long felt. But the object was not simply a means of discomfiting the army; it was a public testimony before the world that God interfered for His people, and would answer and put honour upon Joshua. And the sacred writer speaks of it in this way; "The like was never known," he says, "that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel." The miracle is as plainly stated as physically true. But Mr. N., who always shuts God out of everything, forgets that it was as easy for Him who created the world to stop it as to make it go — to hold it in equipoise for a moment in its place, as to create the laws which kept it in its course. Joshua thought much more of God and His power; Mr. N. (as if there were neither) much more of the earth and its ordinary course, because it went naturally on. It seems to me that Joshua's was a higher, truer, nobler thought than that of Mr. N. The thought that counted on God's goodness to His people and His almighty power was nobler and truer than that which excludes Him out of His own creation, and forgets that, if God did make these admirable general laws, He must sustain their power every moment, and can never abrogate His own rights for a mass of earth. The earth was stopped turning round, and the sun and moon are spoken of just as we do, and as Joshua must have done. We know well it is the earth which turns round, and yet we say, the sun rises, sets, &c.

Joshua 10:12-13, p. 122. — The earth was stopped turning round, and the sun and moon are spoken of just as we do, and as Joshua must have done. We know well it is the earth which turns round, and yet we say "the sun rises, sets," etc. It is remarkable that he should have claimed not the stopping of the sun but of sun and moon, the necessary effect of that which was wholly unknown to him, and yet he asks for that which, unless indeed God had disturbed the whole creation by unnecessary miracle, must have been the effect of the intervention of His power. Untaught by God, Joshua would have said, "Sun stand still." Taught of God he asks for sun and moon to do so, which is just what God's power acting in the simplest way would do. He could not have answered, as to a man fully taught of God, if Joshua had asked for the sun to stop and not the moon, without a very extraordinary derangement of the celestial system. To make the moon go on in its just apparent course when the earth was stopped, would have put the moon really out of its place. To have stopped the moon unasked, as well as the sun, would not have been the same testimony to Joshua, though a wonder. But Joshua is taught to ask both. The rotation of the earth is arrested, and all is done at his word, though Joshua never knew the earth turned round, and that sun and moon would thus stop together. — Irrationalism of Infidelity, pp. 209, 210.

But mark the beauty of the truth. It was to Jehovah Joshua spoke, not to the creature, for Him only did he honour. How admirably clear of all creature worship even when creation was to be used marvellously! "And he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies." A memorable day it was in every point of view — the cavil no doubt of the infidel, but the joy of every believer. I grant you that the men of science have their difficulties, as they usually have in what is above them; and I am afraid that we shall not be able to help them much. The truth is that the main, yea, only thing which lifts out of every difficulty, is confidence in God and in His word. Let us not essay to measure God by difficulties, but measure difficulties by God. Alas! it is the last thing that man thinks of doing.

Another thing not a little remarkable is that on this occasion Joshua addresses not merely the sun (a bold enough thing to do, to bid the sun stand still), but the moon also. It was not that the moon could give any appreciable increase of light when the sun thus ruled the prolonged day. There must therefore have been some other and worthy motive why the moon should be joined along with the sun in Joshua's command, if, as I have not the slightest doubt, Joshua was guided by God in so singular an appeal to the sun and moon, when divine power was exerted to arrest the apparent course of the sun. We all know, of course, that it is the earth that moves; but Scripture does not speak in the technical language of science, which not only would have been unintelligible to those for whom it was intended, but unnatural in the ordinary language of the greatest philosophers. Sir Isaac Newton talked about the sun's rising and setting just as much as the simplest countryman, and quite right. The man who does otherwise has no common sense. Here then Joshua employed so far the only language proper to his purpose. But this does not explain his call to the moon. Not only was no knowledge then possessed by Jews or Gentiles, but one may doubt whether our men of science would have thought of it even now: at any rate one has never heard it from them. Yet, if there had not been an action of the power of God with regard to the moon as well as the sun, the whole course of nature must have been deranged. How could Joshua, or any Jew who wrote Scripture, have known this? There was no astronomic science for two thousand years afterwards adequate to put the two things together; and mere observation of phenomena would certainly have been content with the light of the sun alone. But so it was. He whose power wrought in answer to the call guided his voice and the pen of the writer of the book. If there could have been an interference with the sun without the moon; if the moon's course had not been arrested as well as the earth's, so as to give this appearance to the sun, there would have been confusion in the system. It seems to me therefore that, so far from the sentence affording a just ground of cavil against God's word, it is none of the least striking instances of a wisdom and power incomparably above science. So faith will always find in Scripture.

Unbelievers may of course refuse this story of the sun-dial incident, just as they do the incident of the long day, recorded in Joshua 10:13, when the apparent course of the sun was arrested. It is worthy of note that in Joshua the sun, "hasted not to go down about a whole day." The ten degrees of Hezekiah's time may have completed a whole day. He who established the course of the solar system can accelerate or retard it, if it pleases Him so to do.

b.) The Long Day in Joshua 10:7-14

Whilst in battle against the Amorites Jehovah made the sun and moon stand still for one day upon the request of Joshua until he had defeated the enemies. At the same time great hailstones fell from heaven. Different explanations for these miracles have been given:

Some expositors wrongly think it was only an apparent prolongation of a day on which the Israelites (who did not have any clocks or watches) achieved a performance for which they would have needed much longer under normal circumstances. Then the miracle would only have been of psychological nature and the hailstorm would just have helped them. We find ancient reports from China, India and Egypt in which a very long day is mentioned. And in the legends of Indians in South America we find reports of a very long night. If the hailstones consisted of real stones one could be thinking of an cosmic catastrophe by which the rotation of the earth was slowed down or changed in order that there was a day on which the sun shone for a longer time than usual (while it was night on the other side of the globe).