1. The successes and terrible reprisals of the Israelites shook the Canaanitish populations of the south which had not been touched and decided them to take concerted action. The coalition aimed ostensibly at punishing the Gibeonites, who, moved to fear by the recent successes of Israel and by the fame of Israel's God, sought to save themselves from their probable doom by making league with the conquerors. The clever cunning with which they posed as travellers from a very far country, eager to make a league with the now famous people of Jehovah, threw the Israelites completely off their guard. Their old shoes and old bottles and old bread, and their wily speeches and other fine fetches completely circumvented Joshua, till he made a covenant of peace with a cruel and corrupt people that he had been commanded to sweep off the face of the earth.
Up to this moment the initiative had always been taken by the Lord. Now for the first time it is taken by Joshua and the people. They “asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord.” And for this, and for other like mistakes of ignorance, and simplicity, and over-leniency, both Joshua and all Israel suffered long and bitterly. When the guile of the Gibeonites was discovered, the furious people were for slaying them. Joshua, however, would not permit this; but, with a solemn curse, he condemned them, for their guile, to be slaves of the sanctuary of Israel's God.
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words: a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded; so that no form of blinded conscience is so far sunk as that which comforts itself for having deceived, because the deception was by gesture or silence, instead of utterance; and, finally, according to Tennyson's deep and trenchant line, “A lie which is half a truth is ever the worst of lies.”1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters (Works, vii. 352).]
2. Then five southern kings, headed by the king of Jerusalem, conspired to take revenge upon Gibeon for weakening the confederacy by its alliance with Israel. In terror, the Gibeonites appealed to Joshua, who, with the Divine assurance of success, at once responded. His confidence was justified; for Jehovah granted him a signal victory. The Canaanites were panicstricken, and gave but little resistance to the Israelites, who slew them right and left; and those who could get away fled through the defiles westward, over roads broken by ascent and descent which led to Beth-horon, five miles distant. In making the descent to the town, down a precipitous and rocky defile, the refugees were arrested by a hail-storm, which slew many of them.
Standing on the summit of Upper Beth-horon, Joshua watched the foe flying in helpless confusion towards the western lowlands. The Lord had already delivered them into his hands, and only time was needed to render the rout complete and enable his forces to avenge themselves on their enemies. But the day was far advanced, and he feared the Canaanites might yet make good their escape.
At this point our narrative quotes some lines from an ancient collection of poems called the Book of Jashar. The lines quoted here are given as a prayer uttered by Joshua to Jehovah in the presence of Israel: they run as follows:-
“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.”
These lines were originally a poetic figure, similar to those in the Song of Deborah, which tells us that:-
“They fought from heaven,
The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.”
Apparently Joshua with the main battle of Israel was then to the west of Gibeon, so that the sun appeared in the eastern sky over the city. The valley of Ajalon stretches S.W. from Bethhoron, and over it could be discerned the setting moon. The rout of the enemy was complete, and the prayer of Israel was for time for effective pursuit, for a fair opportunity of reaping all the fruits of a great victory. And the prayer was granted; in that chase of many miles, there was a great slaughter of wretched fugitives, blinded and battered by the storm. With the ready hyperbole of Oriental rhetoric, the poets of Israel sang that this had been no common day, the very sun and moon had stood still in heaven to ensure the triumph of the chosen people.
Moon and sun are continually found associated in the Old Testament as two great lights, destined, the one to rule the day, the other the night, intended to fix days, months, and years, and also to serve for the miraculous manifestations portending remarkable events to come. Although their duty of regulating time requires a certain regularity of movements and periods, it is not considered impossible that their course should be arrested or even turned back at the command of Joshua and other men loved by Yahwe. An ancient Jewish poet, singing of Joshua's victory over the Amorites, attributes to that commander the boast of having arrested the sun and moon; and certainly one could not conceive a more effective flight of fancy, or one more fitted for the heights of an heroic and lyrical composition. But, as has happened in other ancient nations, so among the Jews also the material of heroic songs passed not infrequently into history, and as history this episode in the wars of Israel is even now regarded by many. According to the narrative in the historical portion of the book bearing the name of Isaiah, that prophet is said not only to have stopped the sun, but to have turned it back. So, too, of Elimelech, husband of Naomi, an obscure tradition relates that he stopped the sun; and according to the Vulgate of 1Ch_4:22, a descendant of Judah, son of Jacob, is said to have accomplished a like feat.1 [Note: G. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, 40.]
3. On his return to Makkedah, Joshua brought forth the five kings out of the cave to which they had fled for shelter, and slew them with his own hand. Their bodies were then buried in the cave. The victory of Beth-horon did not stand alone. In like manner throughout the whole of the southern campaign Jehovah fought for Israel and subdued the country before Joshua.
In an army, if once the confidence of the soldiers in their officers is destroyed, the whole organization is relaxed, discipline gives way, military courage rapidly sinks, and troops who under other circumstances would have been full of fire, enthusiasm, and steady valour, degenerate into a dispirited and vacillating mob. With nations it is not very different. Few things contribute so much to the strength and steadiness of a national character as the consciousness among the people that in every great struggle or difficulty they will find their natural leaders at their head-men in whom they have perfect confidence, whose interests are thoroughly identified with their own, who are placed by their position above most sordid temptations, to whom they are already attached by ties of property, tradition, and association. A nation must have attained no mean political development before it can choose with intelligence its own leaders, and it is happy if in the earlier stages of its career the structure of society saves it from the necessity, by placing honest and efficient men naturally at its head.1 [Note: W. E. H. Lecky, A History of Ireland, i. 280.]
