Context No. 89 of 4322 · Joshua

Joshua 6:20-27: in context

20So the people shouted and the priests blew the trumpets. When the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight in front of him, and they took the city. 21They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, both young and old, and ox, sheep, and donkey, with the edge of the sword. 22Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house, and bring the woman and all that she has out from there, as you swore to her.” 23The young men who were spies went in, and brought out Rahab with her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had. They also brought out all of her relatives, and they set them outside of the camp of Israel. 24They burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only they put the silver, the gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron into the treasury of the LORD’s house. 25But Rahab the prostitute, her father’s household, and all that she had, Joshua saved alive. She lives in the middle of Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. 26Joshua commanded them with an oath at that time, saying, “Cursed is the man before the LORD who rises up and builds this city Jericho. With the loss of his firstborn he will lay its foundation, and with the loss of his youngest son he will set up its gates.” 27So the LORD was with Joshua; and his fame was in all the land.

Israel has crossed the Jordan, and Jericho is the first city in its path. For six days the army has circled the walls in silence, once a day, with priests and the ark. On the seventh day they circle seven times, the trumpets sound, the people shout, and the wall falls. This passage is the shout and what came after.

What came after is the hardest part. The city is put under the ban, the practice of devoting a captured place entirely to God by destroying it: men and women, young and old, and the livestock. Nothing is taken as spoil. Then a specific exception, and it is the whole reason the spies went in earlier. Joshua sends them to bring out Rahab, the prostitute who had hidden them, along with her father, mother, brothers, and everything she had. Her family is settled among Israel, and the text notes she lives there to this day.

Jericho has been dug repeatedly and the results are contested. John Garstang dated the fallen walls to about 1400 BC and connected them to Joshua. Kathleen Kenyon redated the destruction to around 1550, well before, on the absence of Late Bronze pottery, and the argument has run ever since. What both found was a mudbrick wall collapsed outward at the base. The one household spared is a foreign prostitute who kept her word. Who has kept faith with me from a position I would not have expected it from?

Sources

Joshua 2 and 6:22-25: the spies' oath to Rahab and her household spared
The herem, the practice of devoting a captured city entirely to God rather than taking spoil
John Garstang dating Jericho's fall to about 1400 BC and Kathleen Kenyon redating it to about 1550 on the absence of Late Bronze pottery, a dispute still open