The setting for the beginning of the battle is during the early morning, as the Israelites have marched all night, taking the Amorite army by surprise. The fact that it was early morning is confirmed by Joshua’s prayer-command for the sun to stand still over Gibeon and for the moon to stand still over the valley of Aijalon. Since Aijalon was located west of Gibeon, the moon would have been still visible on the western horizon and the sun would have been just rising in the east.

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During the rout of the enemy army, God brought about an intense storm of large hailstones, large enough to kill many of the enemy as the fled south to their Amorite home territory. Hailstones (ice balls) have been known in recorded history to be as large as a baseball, large enough to do great damage and to even crush an unprotected human skull. In God’s providence, the hail hit the fleeing Amorites but no the pursuing Israelites. Fleeing rapidly down the steep ridge from Beth Horon to Azekah added the danger of falling to the plight of the Amorites.

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In his prayer, Joshua commands the sun and moon to “stand still.” This Hebrew word, daman, is found 24 times in the Old Testament, and is variously translated with forms such as “be silent,” “cease,” “rest,” “be quiet,” “be still,” and “stop.” The question is whether this call to “cease” refers to the sun stopping its movement across the sky (i.e., the earth ceased to rotate), or to the sun’s light being restrained from being fully revealed, as by an eclipse or the clouds of an unusually intense thunderstorm. In response to this command, verse 13 notes that the sun did “cease,” and the the moon “stopped.” The Hebrew word here for “stopped,” amad, is used some 525 times in the Old Testament and is variously translated by “remained,” “stayed,” “stop,” and “stand.” Again, does this meant that the moon literally stopped its movement (i.e., the earth ceased to rotate), or that the moon’s movement and reflected light would not be visible due to the prolonged darkness?

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The core of the translational problem for this passage comes in the latter part of verse 13, translated in the NIV as “the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.” (Again, “stopped” is amad, and can just as naturally have a sense of “remained.”) This translation gives the impression of the sun being high overhead as at mid-day. However, the Hebrew word translated here as “middle,” hsiy, is actually the common Hebrew word for “half,” and is translated as such the 25 other times it is used in Joshua (such as in referring to the half tribe of Manasseh), and commonly so throughout the Old Testament. (Conversely, a difference Hebrew word, tawek, is used in the ten other texts translated as “middle” in the NIV translation of Joshua.) This distinction is important, because in theancient world “the sky was viewed as having various segments, one major segment being below the horizon, others being above the horizon, and so on” (Wood, “Joshua’s Long Day” and Mesopotamian Celestial Omen Texts,” Bible and Spade, Winter, 2004, p. 31). Thus, the sun was effectively as though still being in the lower half of the sky, below the horizon.

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There is another problem with the NIV translation. “Going down” is actually a translation of a single Hebrew word, bo, which occurs some 2581 times in the Old Testament, with the most common sense of: coming, entering, bringing, or arriving. This sense of “come” is seen, for example in Isaiah 60:1, “arise, shine, for your light has come.” In fact, “Going” is very much a minority usage of the word. The insertion of “down” is merely a reflection of the translator’s assumption of what was happening.

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Furthermore, the phrase “about a full day” may well also be a distorted translation, since the normal sense of the word translated as “full,” tamiym, is “perfect,” “blameless,” or “without defect,” and the prepositional form for “about” is most often rendered as “like” or “as.” So, a better translation of this passage would seem to be something like “so the sun remained in the half sky (i.e. the unseen segment below the horizon), and delayed rising as like with a normal day.” In effect, it would remain so dark that the sun did not seem to “rise” as it normally would to being the second half of the “day.” (“Days,” of course, to the Jewish mind, reflected the formula “there was evening, and there was morning—the X day” of the Genesis 1 days, beginning at sunset with the night half preceding the daylight half.)

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In verse 14, the writer of Joshua (Joshua?!) marvels that “there has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man” and “was fighting for Israel.” It is perhaps significant to notice why this event was deemed so memorable. The emphasis is not on its supernatural aspects, but rather on its providential nature: the LORD listened to Joshua, and responded to his faith and prayer by acting on Israel’s behalf.

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This understanding of the passage not only better reflects the common meaning of the Hebrew words, but also readily reflects the foregoing battle scenario. The Israelite surprise attack in the dark near daybreak is providentially enhanced, in response to Joshua’s prayer, by a greatly darkened sky and an unusually severe hail storm, prolonging the chaos experienced by the Amorites and extending the darkness until they had been thoroughly defeated.

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