clined, at the suggestion of the tempter, to suspend the laws of nature that He might be fed, who never has suspended those laws in such a manner for the benefit of His creatures, would have suspended them for their slaughter. And while steadfastly maintaining the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, and their accuracy on all the main points of their nn.rrative, it has never yet been authoritatively decided that they '\\'ere free from error on every point. From the time of St. Jerome downwards it has been held that mistakes in minor points might be admitted in them without invalidating their claim to be regarded as authoritative exponents of the will of God. Thus, then, the writer will have satisfied all the conditions of authentic his- tory, if he tells us what was the current belief in his own day. The success of the Israelites was so far beyond their expectations, the slaughter of their powerful enemies so immense, that it may have been their firm belief that the day was miraculously lengthened on their behalf. But we are not driven to this view of the case. The quotation has an obviously poetic form, as every one must admit. The Book of Jasher (although Jarchi, as well as Targum, thinks it is the Pentateuch, and other Rabbis believe it to be the Books of Genesis and Deuteronomy respectively) has been very generally supposed to be a collection of national songs existing in early days, and receiving additions from time to time. This is Maurer's belief, and it has been adopted by Reil and others. We are not compelled therefore to regard Joshua's prayer and the whole paragraph as more literal than the apostrophe of Isaiah, " 0 that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would flow down at Thy Presence," or the statement of Deborah and Barak that "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera." But, again, the words of the original have been singularly exaggerated. Literally translated (see notes on the passage) they amount simply to this: " Then spake Joshua to (or before, as Masius) Jehovah in the day when Jehovah gave the Amorite before the sons of Israel And he said before the eyes of Israel, Sun, in Gibeon be still, and moon, in the vale of Ajalon. And the sun was still, and the moon stood till a nation was avenged of its enemies. Is not this written in the book of the upright? And the sun stood in the midst of heaven, and did not haste to go down, as (or like) a perfect day. And there was not a day like that before or after it, for Jehovah to hearken to the voice of a man, for Jehovah fought for Israel." It is obvious that the actual meaning of the autho? is involved in much obscurity. It is certainly not asserted that the sun remained in the heavens twenty-four, or twelve, or even one hour beyond its usual time. All that is stated is that Joshua in impassioned words demanded that the sun and moon should not set until his ·work was done, and that this (to the Israelites) extraordinary request was fulfilled. He had perfect day until Israel was avenged of their enemies. A vast league of TO THE BOOK OF JOSHUA. xxiii
civilized ete,tee, with e,ll the best e,pplie,nces of we,rfare be,nding together to resist e, ne,tion unused to milite,ry exploits, defeated with tremendous slaughter, e,nd e,nnihilated in a single day, would doubtless seem to Israel a stupendous work of God's he,nd. Well might they embody it among their national songs, and relate for ever after how the sun remained above the heavens until the victory was more than complete, and how the moon continued to give her light until the scanty remnant of the mighty host were pursued to their strongholds. Nor is this view of the passage without corroboration. Hengstenberg (' Geschichte des Reiches Gottes,' p. 231 sqq.) does not fail to notice the fact that in all the allusions - and they are many-to the great things God had done for Israel, not one is found to this supposed miracle, until the time of the son of Sirach (eh. xlvi. 4), save a very doubtful passage in Habakkuk iii. This is surely decisive as to the view Scripture itself has taken of the passage, and it is as true of the New Testament as of the Old. Thus, therefore, we conclude that the whole passage is so obscure and difficult, besides being very probably a quotation-perhaps even an interpolation-from another book, that we are at least justified in considering its importance to have been exag- gerated both by assailants and defenders. The interpretation which supposes it to refer to a vast natural convulsion, wrought by the Almighty in order to complete the defeat of the Canaanites, though a possible, is, as has been shown, by no means the only possible explanation of the words of the narrative. And this position once established, the whole fabric of controversy that has been raised on this much-vexed passage falls to the 'l'l'Ound. § III. THE OBIGINAL INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE. The people who inhabited Palestine at the time of the Israelite invasion are regarded in history from two very opposite points of view. To the Israelites, in whom the moral sense strongly predominated over culture, they appeared as monsters of iniquity, deserving of nothing but absolute extirpa- tion. To profane history, regarding mankind from a more material point of view, they appear as the parents of civilization, the founders of literature and science, the pioneers of commeooe, the colonists of the Mediterranean. These views may be to a certain ex.tent harmonized. It is not necessary to regard the Jews as the opponents of all culture, because they were stem avengers of moral depravity. The time when the Phrenicie,n power e,ttained its utmost height was coincident, as recent discoveries show, with the time of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt. Civilization, as it usually does, brought luxury, and luxury demoralization; and the same fate attended the Phreni- cian supremacy which attended the supremacy of all the great empires of the ancient world, a dissolution of lllOrals ancl, consequent decay. The JOSBU,\, I xnv INTRODUCTION