Jericho Falls, and One Household Is Brought Out

The Hebrew doubles the verb, “shutting and shut up”, a city closed from inside and held closed. The verse is an aside dropped into the middle of the scene at the end of chapter 5: the captain of the host is still standing before Joshua, and his orders begin in the next verse.

Jericho’s king is never named. He is simply the first entry in the book’s list of thirty one defeated kings: “The king of Jericho, one” (12:9). “See” asks Joshua to look at a walled city and regard it as already in his hand.

The command switches from plural to singular, “ye shall compass... thus shalt thou do”, from the army to Joshua as its head. The mound of ancient Jericho, Tell es-Sultan, covers only about ten acres, so a single circuit was a walk of well under a mile.

“Trumpets of rams’ horns” is shofarot hayyovelim. Yovel is a ram, and the same word names the Jubilee, the fiftieth year proclaimed with a blast of the horn (Leviticus 25:9). Seven is spoken three times in one verse: seven priests, seven horns, seven circuits.

“Make a long blast” is the verb used at Sinai: “when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount” (Exodus 19:13). “Fall down flat” is literally “fall in its place”, a collapse downward. “Straight before him” means each man goes up where he stands, with no breach to find.

God’s instructions mentioned the ark only in passing (verse 4); Joshua’s orders begin with it. He speaks to the priests first and the people second, turning the plan into a marching order where the ark is the fixed point.

“Pass on” is avar, the crossing verb of chapters 3 and 4, now used for walking round a city. “Him that is armed” is hechaluts, the equipped vanguard, the word Numbers 32 used for the eastern tribes who crossed ready for war.

The priests pass on “before the LORD”, where one might expect “before the ark”. The verse treats the ark as the place of God’s presence, so walking ahead of it is walking ahead of him. The trumpets sound from the first circuit.

“Rereward” is measseph, the gatherer, the rear guard that collects stragglers; Dan held that post in the wilderness march (Numbers 10:25). Amalek had once attacked Israel’s undefended rear (Deuteronomy 25:18). This column has a guard at both ends.

The ban tightens in three steps: no shout, no sound of the voice, not one word out of the mouth. The timing of the release belongs to Joshua alone, “until the day I bid you”. Six days of disciplined quiet stand against the noise that will end them.

Grammatically the ark is the subject: “the ark of the LORD compassed the city”. The army walks with it, but the circling is credited to the ark. Each night the procession returns to the camp at Gilgal, on Jericho’s eastern border (4:19).

The second day starts without any fresh command: the priests simply take up the ark. The routine of verse 6 now runs by itself. Joshua’s early rising is noted again, as it was on the morning of the crossing (3:1).

“Went on continually” renders a Hebrew construction of two infinitives, walking and blowing, which describes an action kept up without a break. The verse repeats verse 9 almost exactly, as the procession repeated itself.

Four Hebrew words, “so they did six days”, cover days three to six. Six days of the same work and a different seventh follow the shape of the creation week and the Sabbath, a pattern many readers have seen here, though the Book of Joshua does not draw the comparison.

“About the dawning of the day” is the phrase used when the angels hurried Lot out of Sodom (Genesis 19:15). On this morning a doomed city is again given a dawn departure for one household. With the seven circuits of this day, Israel walks round the city thirteen times in all.

“Shout” is heriu, the war cry, teruah, the shout Balaam heard in Israel’s camp: “the shout of a king is among them” (Numbers 23:21). Joshua gives the command, and then the account pauses for three verses of terms before the wall falls.

In chapter 2 the spies were only ever “men”. Here Joshua calls them malakhim, messengers, the word also used for angels. “That we sent” includes Joshua in the mission. Rahab’s act of hiding them is given as the whole reason for her rescue.

“Trouble it” is akhar, the verb that will give the Valley of Achor its name (7:25–26). 1 Chronicles 2:7 even spells the offender’s name to match: “Achar, the troubler of Israel.” The verse names the crime before anyone commits it.

After the war with Midian, Numbers 31:22–23 listed gold, silver, brass, iron, tin and lead as metals that could be made clean by passing them through fire. At Jericho these metals go to the sanctuary instead of to the soldiers. Iron was still scarce and valuable at the time.

The verse tells the moment twice, first the shout and then the trumpet and the shout again, as though the account itself pauses at the fall. Excavators have argued over the ruins: John Garstang dated a collapsed wall to about 1400 BC, and Kathleen Kenyon later dated Jericho’s great destruction some 150 years earlier. The debate continues.

“Edge of the sword” is literally “the mouth of the sword”, the sword pictured as eating, as in Deuteronomy 32:42, “my sword shall devour flesh”. The list, man and woman, ox, sheep and ass, returns in Samuel’s order to Saul against Amalek (1 Samuel 15:3), which Saul did not keep.

“Had said” places the order before the fall: Joshua arranged Rahab’s rescue ahead of the assault. He keeps an oath he did not swear himself, “as ye sware unto her”, treating the spies’ word as binding on the whole army.

The spies are called “young men”, neʿarim, a word used for attendants or soldiers of any rank below command. Rahab’s family is first placed “without the camp”. Numbers 31:19 had required those returning from battle to stay outside the camp seven days for purification, a comparable waiting place.

“The house of the LORD” is a surprising phrase before any temple existed. The tabernacle is called a house again at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:7). The metals are singled out a second time, and everything else in Jericho goes to the fire.

“She dwelleth in Israel even unto this day” is in the present tense, which suggests the words were written while Rahab or her household was still known in Israel. “Saved alive” is the causative of the verb “to live”: Joshua made her live.

The curse falls into three short poetic lines. “Build” here means refounding a fortified city, since the curse names foundation and gates; Jericho was not left empty, for Eglon of Moab later took “the city of palm trees” (Judges 3:13), and David’s envoys waited there (2 Samuel 10:5).

“Fame” is shoma, his report, from the verb “to hear” that ran through Rahab’s words: “we have heard” (2:10). Before the crossing Jericho heard of the LORD; now the whole country hears of Joshua. “Noised” in 1611 meant spread abroad by report.