Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon
John Martin (1816)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The long day of Joshua is one of the better known and probably the most controversial astronomical events in the Bible. Many Christians love to use this passage in order to demonstrate the power and the sovereignty of God over his creation. Atheists love to use this passage in order to discredit the Bible.
In this essay, I want to propose a different understanding of the long day of Joshua. Before I express my view of what happened, I want to discuss the fiction and the fact about the long day of Joshua, and explain the event and propose an explanation for what happened.
The Fiction
To view how this passage plays in popular imagination, take for example, the email I received recently from a well-meaning Christian who was making an attempt at demonstrating the reliability of the Bible and the power of God over his creation:
For all the scientists out there, and for all the students who have a hard time convincing these people regarding the truth of the Bible, here’s something that shows God’s awesome creation, and that He is still in control.
Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been called “myth” in the Bible is true? Mr. Harold Hill, President of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, Maryland, and a consultant in the space program, relates the following development.
I think one of the most amazing things that God has done for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Maryland. They were checking out where the positions of the sun, moon, and planets would be 100 years and 1,000 years from now. We have to know this so we won’t send up a satellite and have it bump into something later on in its orbits [sic].
We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets will be so the whole thing will not bog down. They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries, and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong with either the information fed into it or with the results as compared to the standards.
They called in the service department to check it out, and they said, ‘What’s wrong?’ Well, they found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair out. There was no answer.
Finally a Christian man on the team said, ‘You know, one time I was in Sunday School, and they talked about the sun standing still.’ While they didn’t believe him, they didn’t have an answer either, so they said, ‘Show us,’ He got a Bible and went to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for any one with ‘common sense.’ There they found the Lord saying to Joshua, ‘Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not a man of them stand before Thee.’ Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy! And if darkness fell, they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still! That’s right: ‘The sun stood still and the moon stayed and lasted not to go down about a whole day!’ (Joshua 10:12-13).
The astronauts and scientists said, There is the missing day! They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua’s day was 23 hours and 20 minutes, not a whole day. They read the Bible, and there it was about [approximately] a day. These little words in the Bible are important, but they were still in trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes, you’ll still be in trouble 1000 years from now.
Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went BACKWARDS.
The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the Book and read these words in 2 Kings 20:9-11 that told of the following story: Hezekiah, on his death bed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah said ‘Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees?’ Hezekiah said, ‘It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees.’ Isaiah spoke to the Lord, and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees BACKWARD! Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes!
Twenty-three hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in Second Kings make the missing day in the universe! Isn’t it amazing?
The Fact
This would be a great story if it were true and, if it were true, it would convince many people who do not believe the Bible and do not believe that God is sovereign over his creation. But this story is a hoax. This event never happened and it is one of those great urban legends that is being circulated through the Internet.
This story about a missing day in the universe originated in 1936, when Harry Rimmer wrote a book titled The Harmony of Science and Scripture. In his book Rimmer cited another book, one published in 1890 in which the author declared that two professors, one at Harvard and another at Yale, discovered a day missing in astronomical calculations.
In the 1960s, if memory serves me correctly, Christianity Today published the same story, which later was retracted as a hoax, that NASA was calculating days and times for the first journey to the moon when a scientist at NASA discovered a missing day in the universe. The story was as false then as it is today. Legends are hard to kill.
The Event
The story of Joshua 10 can be summarized as follows: When the five Amorite kings made an alliance to fight against the Gibeonites, the men of Gibeon asked Joshua to help them against their common enemy. In response to this request, Joshua and the whole army of Israel went from Gilgal to fight against the Amorites.
According to the biblical text, Joshua and the army marched all night from Gilgal and took the army of the Amorites by total surprise. In addition, God threw the enemy army into total confusion by casting against them huge stones out of the sky and many died. The text says that more people died from the hailstones than the people of Israel killed with the sword.
It was at the height of the battle that Joshua cried out: “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.” And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies” (Joshua 10:12-13).
The Explanation
So, what happened? The traditional interpretation is that there was a prolongation of the day so that Joshua and his army could have more light to fight against the enemy. Thus, God stopped the sun and the moon long enough to give Joshua and his army time to defeat the Amorites.
It is true that God could stop the sun and still maintain the solar system in place. But the laws of physics bring serious doubts to the traditional interpretation of the text. The stopping in place of the sun and the moon would affect the whole solar system. In addition, there are other problems with this interpretation.
1. This view reflects a pre-Copernican view of the solar system, one in which the sun rotates around the earth.
2. The stopping of the sun in the same place in the sky probably would scorch the land where the light was shining and would freeze the land when there was only darkness.
3. If the sun would stop in the middle of the sky, there would still be day and night because day and night are determined by the rotation of the earth on its axis, not by the rotation of the sun.
Other views, such as the view that what happened was the refraction of the sun, that the sun and the moon appeared to be out of their regular places in the sky and the view that Joshua was only asking for release from the heat of the day, are without merit since these views do not explain the biblical text.
So, if these views do not explain the long day of Joshua, how should we understand what happened? The following explanation, I believe, is a better understanding of Joshua’s request. I also believe that it explains the text without doing damage to the events related by the biblical writer.
In Hebrew, the word translated “stand still” literally means “be silent.” In this context, Joshua was commanding the sun “to be silent,” that is, to keep from shining. Since the sun was rising in the east, his command to the sun was that it refrains from shining.
When Joshua came to fight against the Amorites, he came at night and caught them by surprise. Joshua was aided by the darkness caused by a huge storm that produced hail so big that it killed many people. In fact, the biblical text says that more people died from the hailstones than the people of Israel killed with the sword.
Since the hailstorm did not affect the army of Israel, Joshua needed the storm to last so that the hail could continue decimating the army of the Amorites. Consequently, Joshua’s prayer was for more darkness (the continuation of the storm) and not for more light. The reason Joshua’s army did not kill many soldiers was because the storm prevailed most of that day.
The view that Joshua prayed for more darkness is in agreement with the biblical text because the sun stood still (was silent, did not shine) for a whole day. This view also allows for a better understanding of the text without forcing upon it an interpretation that would require the reversal of the laws of physics.
The Long Day of Joshua Series
Rereading Joshua 10:12-13: The Long Day of Joshua
The Long Day of Joshua: In Search of Understanding – Part 1
The Long Day of Joshua: In Search of Understanding – Part 2
Claude Mariottini
Emeritus Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
Find my books on Amazon (Click here).
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Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament 
Very nice, Professor Mariottini! I came to something of the same conclusion here, that the storm is the miracle referred to, not the astronomical phenomena.
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Fascinating, Professor. I am keeping this one in my files to refer back to each time I work through this part of the Bible. Your explanation is new to me, but believable. Thanks.
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Kevin,
Thank you for your comment about this post. Your article is very illuminating because the language of the lamentation that you cite in your work is very similar to the events in Joshua 10. You and I came to the same conclusion, but from different perspectives. I just wonder if future commentators on Joshua will be willing to look at this astronomical event from this new perspective.I commend Kevin’s article to every reader of this post.
Claude Mariottini
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Patrick,
Thank you for visiting my blog and posting your comment on the text on Joshua 10. My friend Kevin (in the comment above) has also written something similar on Joshua. Although he comes to the same conclusion from a different perspective, his view that the text emphasizes the storm and not the sun, is what the writer is trying to convey to the reader.Thank you for your comment.
Claude Mariottini
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This was a very fascinating article. In reading it, I found some of the translation to be problematic.The Hebrew runs this way:שמש בגבעון דום וירח בעמק אילוןIn case this medium doesn’t pick Hebrew characters, the transliteration is as follows:…shémesh b’Giv’ón dom výaréaH b’émeq Ayalón……sun, in Gi’von stand still, and moon in the valley of Ayalon…The problematic word is “dom.” In modern Hebrew, heart failure is “dom lév” – heart stoppage – and the command to stand “at attention” is “‘amód dóm!” – stand still! In ancient Hebrew, the word “d’mamá!” means “silence!” and in Leviticus it recites that when Aaron’s sons died, Aaron was silent – the verb used was וידום – vayadóm – meaning specifically that he was consoled (by Moses) and had nothing to say, thus he was silent. It could also just as easily mean “he was still”. Translating thought patterns from one language to another is a very tricky business.But the idea that Joshua needed a storm of hailstones to continue fighting the Amorites is not clear from the text.It continues a bit later,ויעמוד השמש בחצי השמים ולא אץ לבוא כיום תמיםvay’amód hashemésh baHatzí hashamáyim v’lo atz lavó kayóm tamím..and the sun stood in the middle (or half) of the sky and did not hasten to set for a whole (or complete) day.. In a desert climate, and Giv’on is in a desert climate, it is terribly hard to cope with the cold of the night and the darkness to fight. This would hold true for Israelite soldiers as well as the confused and surprised Amorites. According to rabbinic authorities (and plain common sense when you live and have to cope with the bright and hot sun here), the sun shone on the shields and spears of the Israelite soldiers and also in the eyes of the Amorites.It was this that allowed the Israelite soldiers to route the Amorites the way they did.Now, let’s look at the point you make about how “This view reflects a pre-Copernican view of the solar system, one in which the sun rotates around the earth.”Joshua was not a cosmologist or an astronomer and it does not appear that the ancient Israelites understood that the earth revolved around the sun. So it stands to logic that Joshua would ask for the Almighty to stop the sun in place and also the moon. But to accomplish this, the Almighty would have to prevent the earth from revolving on its axis, and stop the moon from revolving around the earth. So why couldn’t the Almighty put such a “hold” on the rotation of the earth in its axis? Is the Almighty’s Hand short?The big problem, from the point of physics, at least as I understand it, is that the moon, so stopped, would begin to fall in to the earth. Could it possibly be that at one point the moon was farther away from the earth? Finally there is this basic idea. It’s the Almighty’s universe, His creation in the first place. He created its laws of operation, and when He so chooses could suspend their operation for a blink of time.Just a note. My son helped me with the translation, and had studied the Book of Joshua in school in detail. He recited these lines from memory, and provided the in depth explanations of the modern and ancient Hebrew.
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Dear Ruvy,
Thank you for your very informative comment to my post on Joshua 10. You raised some interesting points that deserve a more detailed answer. For this reason, I invite you to come back next week and in another article I will address some of the issues you raised in your comment.By the way, tell your son that he has done a good job in explaining the Hebrew of Joshua. I wish I could live in Israel for a year and learn Modern Hebrew.Thank you for visiting my blog.
Claude Mariottini
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Fascinating and plausible interpretation. Thanks for sharing it. Peace.
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Milton,
Welcome back. I have not heard from you for sometime now. Thank you for your comment on this post. The reactions I have received through comments, emails, and personal dialogue with friends have been all positive. Next week I will be adding a rejoinder to the comment made by Ruvy in Jerusalem (see his comment above).I hope all is well with you.
Claude Mariottini
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Dear Prof. Mariottini,
I’ve read your blog on “Rereading Joshua 10:12-13: The Long Day of Joshua” with great interest. Also the comments of Ruvy are very interesting.In the past I’ve studied archeo-astronomy and as a Christian I’ve studied several astronomical phenomena in the Bible and also this phenomenon in the book of Joshua.For some references see my site: http://83.247.49.84/cgi-bin/jpg/bn.pl?m=Bsubj&action=91 (on the right corner click on References). There are some English references on material I’ve read about this phenomenon.Now some of my own ideas:1) A real standstill of the Sun & Moon, that is, a stopping of the rotation of the Earth, would create some real problems. I compare this problem with driving in a car: when you stop suddenly everything in the car will go forward through the window. If this was the solution, then big earthquakes and floods all over the world would occur. I couldn’t find anything of this in the old sources all over the world. So this hypothesis isn’t truthful. But, if this hypothesis is true, it could be an explanation for the (hail)stones.2) Another kind of standstill is if Earth and Moon stopped their rotation and went into another track around the Sun. But also this give some problems: this theory supposes the Earth (and Moon) where formerly nearer the Sun and were driven away into a track further from the Sun. If this is true, the temperature would be much higher before the time of Joshua. If we suppose the duration of this “standstill” was some hours the Earth moved several thousands of kilometers on the outside track. This means a lowering of several degrees of temperature!!3) There was a storm and this lowered the sight of the Sun and Moon, this storm also explains the hailstones. But because these hailstones were big (big enough to kill people!), this storm couldn’t have a duration of several hours. Most storms of this kind have nowadays a duration of about 30 minutes. But, according to my view, this theory is the better one..Now there is only one problem/question: all around the world there are legends of a standstill of the Sun and Moon (see Velikovsky for an overview. I’m not a Velikovskian but I appreciate his sources). We can’t explain all of them if there wasn’t a phenomenon described in 1) or 2).I suppose the clue is in the hailstones, are these real “hail” stones or something else? If they are meteorites (stones from heaven), they are not found in Israel. I’ve searched for myself in this region, and couldn’t find a meteorite. I have corresponded with the Orion Institute (in Israel) and they also said there are no findings of many meteorites in Israel. (The nearest field of meteorites is in Egypt)So if they are earthly stones (which is possible if hypothesis 1) or 2) is true), then we must determine if there are stones in Israel which are from another region of the Earth (=America)I don’t have an answer, but if you are writing about this in another post, please take attention about this “hailstones”.
Jan Pieter van de Giessenhttp://bijbelaantekeningen.blogspot.com
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Dear Jan Pieter,
Thank you for your comment. I have posted a partial reply to your comment on Monday and another one will follow on Tuesday. Thank you for your comment.
Claude Mariottini
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