Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Joshua 10:14
And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel.
14. And there was no day ] This is still a quotation from the Book of Jashar, or “of ritwise men,” as Wyclif translates it.
“And so stood the sunne in the mydil of heuene,
And hyede not to goo doun the space of o day;
There was not before ne afterward so loong a day;
For the Lord obeide to the vois of man,
And fauit for Israel.”
Compare the returning of the shadow on the dial of Ahaz in the time of Hezekiah, 2Ki 20:11; Isa 38:8.
for the Lord fought for Israel ] Compare the account of Josephus, “He then heard that God was helping him, by the signs of thunder, lightning, and unusual hailstones; and that the day was increased lest the night should check the zeal of the Hebrews. That the length of the day did then increase, and was longer than usual, is told in the books laid up in the temple.” Ant. 5. Jos 1:17.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 14. And there was no day like that] There was no period of time in which the sun was kept so long above the horizon as on that occasion. Some learned men have supposed that the Fable of Phaeton was founded on this historic fact. The fable may be seen with all the elegance of poetic embellishment in the commencement of the second book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; but I confess I can see nothing in the pretended copy that can justify the above opinion.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
There was no day like that, to wit, in those parts of the world in which he here speaks, and about which the comparison is here made: vain therefore is that objection, that the days are longer near the northern and southern poles, where they are constantly longer at certain seasons, and that by the order of nature; whereas the length of this day was purely contingent. and granted by God in answer to Joshuas prayer, as is here added.
Object In Hezekiahs time, and at his prayer, there was a day which may seem to have been longer; for the sun went back ten degrees in ten hours, and then returned again ten degrees in ten hours, and so it was twenty hours longer than a common day, and so longer than this.
Answer It is not certain either that each degree designed an hour, and not rather half an hour, or a quarter, as others think; or that the sun returned those ten degrees as slowly as he went down before or after. Besides, it was now near summer solstice, when the day was longest, and about fourteen hours; and that being doubled, the artificial day was twenty-eight hours; and because there is not the least evidence that Hezekiahs day was longer, but rather of the contrary, it is much more reasonable to believe this Scripture assertion, than to deny or question upon mere suppositions or idle conjectures.
Hearkened unto the voice of a man, to wit, in such a manner to alter the course of nature, and of the heavenly bodies, that a man might have more time to pursue and destroy his enemies.
The Lord fought for Israel this is added as the reason why God was so ready to answer Joshuas petition herein, because he was engaged and resolved to fight for Israel, and that in a more than ordinary manner.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And there was no day like that, before it, or after it,…. Which must be understood as referring not to natural days, or such as are according to the natural course of things, as those in the northern and southern poles, which are much longer, but to miraculous and extraordinary ones: never was there such a day as this, occasioned by the sun standing still; and as for Hezekiah’s day, which is objected, when the sun went ten degrees backward on the dial of Ahaz, it is not certain whether those degrees were hours, or half hours, or quarters of an hour; and if they were hours, as the going backwards was at once, in a moment, it could only make an addition of ten hours in the return of them, and so it must make but a day of twenty two hours: besides, the writer of this book only speaks of days that had been in his time, and not of what might be hereafter; add to which, that this respects not so much the length of the day, as the manner in which it became so long; and especially it regards the following circumstance, being at the entreaty of a man, and that delivered in a very authoritative manner:
that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man; expressed in prayer, and which prayer was a prayer of faith:
for the Lord fought for Israel: by casting hailstones upon their enemies, and preserving them from them by the stopping the course of the sun, until they had taken full vengeance on them. The day on which this miracle was wrought, is conjectured to be Wednesday the eleventh of April, in the year before Christ 1454 n.
n Bedford’s Chronology, p. 492.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
14. And there was no day like that, etc We read in Isaiah and in the Sacred History, that the course of the sun was afterwards changed as a favor to King Hezekiah. (Isa 38:5) For to assure him that his life was still to be prolonged fifteen years, the shadow of the sun was carried back over ten degrees on which it had gone down. It is not, therefore, absolutely denied that anything similar had ever been conceded to any other person, but the miracle is extolled as singular. The rendering of the word שמע, by obeyed, as adopted by some, I reject as too harsh. For although it is said in Psa 145:18, that the Lord does according to the desire of his servants, which may be held to be equivalent to obeying, it is better to avoid anything which seems to give a subordinate office to God. (98) Simply, therefore, the excellence of the miracle is praised, as nothing like it had been seen before or had happened after. The second clause of the verse celebrates the kindness and condescension of God in hearing Joshua, as well as his paternal favor towards the people, for whom he is said to have fought.
(98) French, “ Neantmoins si est ce meilleur d’eviter toujours toutes facons de parler derogantes a la majeste de Dieu, comme s’il estoit question de la ranger;” “Nevertheless it is better to avoid all modes of speaking derogatory to the majesty of God, as if it were intended to make him subordinate.” — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(14) And there was no day like that before it or after it.These words are meaningless, unless the writer intended to convey the idea that there was really a great miracle. We may compare the prophecy in Isa. 30:26, Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. No day like that No day was ever before or since supernaturally extended at the command of man. God had often before this hearkened unto the voice of man, but never before to the voice of a man inspired with miracle-working faith to control the movements of the heavenly bodies.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ver. 14. And there was no day like that, &c. Some say it was thirty-six hours long: others think, that the sacred author only means, that no other day was ever seen in which the course of the planets was arrested at the prayer of a mortal. Amama has made a full collection of the various opinions of the critics upon the subject. See Anti-barbaro Biblico. lib. 3: p. 381, &c.
For the Lord fought for Israel Namely, by causing an extraordinary hail to fall upon their enemies; by stopping the sun, to allow them time for conquest; by giving them strength to pursue the confederated kings; and by preserving them from the strokes of that terrible shower which fell on the desecrated Amorites.
REFLECTIONS.After the taking of Ai, the army seems to have rested awhile in Gilgal, and is now roused up to action by the attack made on their allies; in which the Canaanites being aggressors, the justice of their ruin is more evident, whilst by their confederacy they were brought together for a readier consumption by the sword of Israel.
1. Joshua, animated by divine encouragement, prepares to succour the trembling Gibeonites. They need not fear who have God with them, and never-failing promises for their security. 2. He marches all night with a select body of valiant men, in order to shew his readiness to help his friends, and unexpectedly to surprise his enemies. Note; (1.) In war, a well-judged expeditious march is among the chief proofs of generalship. (2.) They who would serve the Lord Jesus must follow him night and day, and stop at no toil that he may call them to endure. By and by their labours will end, and they shall rest in eternal uninterrupted peace. 3. God’s marvellous interposition. Though he might have destroyed them by the sword in battle, he chooses rather immediately to manifest his power, that Israel may know to whom they are indebted for victory, and their enemies be made sensible against whom they lift up themselves. God discomfited them, put terror on their spirits, and gave them up to slaughter as sheep; and from heaven, in their flight, cast down hail-stones of such a size, as slew more than fell by the sword. Note; Upon the ungodly will he shortly rain a more terrible hail, Rev 16:21 and judgments worse than death itself shall overtake them; under which men shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. 4. Joshua’s prayer. Fearing now lest the darkness should cover the flight of his enemies, and moved by divine impulse to make this strange request, he begs that God would stay the motions of the heavenly bodies, (as to us they appear to move,) or rather the revolution of this earthly globe, that, by prolonging the light of day, they might avenge themselves on their enemies; and being under the influence of miraculous faith, in the hearing of Israel, he commands the sun to stand still now on Gibeon in the west, and the rising moon to rest in the valley of Ajalon. 5. God hears and answers him: the sun, arrested in his steep descent, hastes not to go down, nor the rising moon to advance, during the space of a whole day. Never was such a day before, or since: but God fought for Israel, therefore he granted the prayer of Israel’s captain. Note; (1.) Great is the power of effectual fervent prayer. (2.) When God stirs up a spirit of supplication, it is a sure sign of his intention to grant the requests which he teaches us to make. (3.) God will appear for his people’s comfort, and his enemies’ confusion; and, if need be, all nature shall engage in their quarrel. (4.) When Israel’s enemies shall receive their final overthrow, at the appearing of our great God and Saviour in the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men, then shall our sun no more go down, nor our moon withdraw itself for ever.
See commentary on Jos 10:12
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Jos 10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel.
Ver. 14. And there was no day llke that. ] No, not Hezekiah’s long day, when the sun went backward ten degrees in the dial of Ahaz. Our forefathers had a long Sunday, as they called it, when King Edgar ordained that the Sabbath should be solemnised from Saturday nine of the clock till Monday morning. a The Jews likewise, in sanctifying the Sabbath, used to add, de profano ad sacrum, &c.
That the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man.
a Act. and Mon.
there was: 2Ki 20:10, 2Ki 20:11, Isa 38:8
the Lord: Zec 4:6, Zec 4:7, Mat 21:21, Mat 21:22, Mar 11:22-24, Luk 17:6
for the Lord: Jos 10:42, Jos 23:3, Deu 1:30
Reciprocal: Exo 14:14 – the Lord Jos 10:13 – So the sun 1Ch 5:20 – And they Psa 111:6 – showed Ecc 1:5 – hasteth Zec 10:5 – because
A WONDERFUL DAY!
No day like that!
Jos 10:14
We shall speak of the power and art of making the sun to stand still. How may we, like Joshua, virtually lengthen out our day of life, how may we even make one day equal to ten?
I. Obviously the first essential requisite is thought and earnestness.It is not study that I mean, though this is necessary for some courses of life. It is reflection, pondering, keeping oneself mentally awake, and being intent. Are there not many who, though possessed of powerful faculties, allow them to lie in a torpid state, or only waken up dimly at distant intervals? Plainly a life spent without earnestness or purpose may be nominally long, but it is scarcely the shadow of life. I would like to say one word to any one such who may be here, a word that may stick to their memory. You have passed now, I shall say, through twenty or fifteen years; how many of these years have been anything of the nature of a rational, purposeful, earnest life? Make an honest estimate, as you will be obliged to make soon before the face of God. Have there, then, been five out of the twenty really lived with an earnest purpose and according to reflection and reason? Has there been one out of the twenty inspired by a true steadfast purposeall the rest going to wastebut one gathered up out of the scraps and odds and ends of life; could you manage to piece together one year saved from all the waste? He who fills his life with earnest thought and steadfast purpose is making the sun to wait upon him; he is not allowing the sun to go till it has lighted him to his task; but he who leads a thoughtless, self-indulgent, frivolous life may count a hundred years without truly experiencing one. His life is all empty and vain. Thought is the most powerful lever in any world. I know not what forces there may be in yonder stars, but I know this already, there is no power in any of them equal to thoughtthe power you carry in your own breast. There is power in thought, in your thought, your reflection, to revolutionise your whole life and to bring all mighty forces to bear upon you. Will you think, then? The thought is your ownit is Gods endowment, Gods gift to you as a rational being. It is no gigantic effort that is required of you. It is only such as men around you are employing every day in ordinary affairs. It is only such as you may have yourself applied often to passing and trivial matters, even to games and amusements. If you would reflect on these great questions and refuse to lay them down till you have settled them, you would make this year equal to ten or twenty years, to all the years of your life, though you may have existed fifty or sixty or more years. Your thought would in the fullest and deepest sense make the sun stand still.
II. The sun stands still for those who are fighting in Gods army.It depends altogether on what side you are whether the sun and moon will obey you. Often has the cry gone up amid the stress of life, O sun, stand! Why must the years fleet so fast away? Why must the days fly with such terrible rapidity? Already, O sun! thou hast borne away my childhood. The sunny days of childhood and youth come back no more. They are gonethose bright days when I sported by the brook, chased the butterfly and caught the minnows. I shall never more walk with friends who shared thought and feeling in the sprightly glowing days of youth, in which fear and hope and romance mingled like lines in the rainbow. O sun! stand still and steal not away the days of strength and vigour. Stand still. Let things remain as they are. Bring not on decrepitude and decay. O sun! stand still, cries another, thou art measuring out my last day. Go slowly at least. Ere another day dawns I shall have passed into the great unseen. But the inexorable sun heeds not command or entreaty. It marches on the same for the joyous and the sad, the exulting and the condemned to die. But let any one be a soldier in Gods army. Let him march under the banners which bear the words truth, freedom, eternal life, and he will find the day will not be too short. Every day will be lengthened out. There will be more in one of his days than there used to be in a hundred.
III. It was the voice of Joshua, the leader of Gods host, that bade the sun stand still; so it is the voice of our Joshua, Jesus the Captain of our Salvation, that has power over all times and seasons.If there is any one here that fears lest his day of grace should run done before he has finished his work, let him take this Joshua as his. Is any one mourningAlas! I have not used the opportunities that my life offered? My life might have been made powerful against evil, mighty for good. What have I done? Nothing or worse. And now the sun is far in the heavens, it is sinking toward evening, what men have I blessed, what weary hearts have I comforted, what sinful souls have I reclaimed? Alas, there are none to wait at heavens gate to welcome me to everlasting habitations. Your case is not utterly hopeless, it is not hopeless at all, if you will beseech the great Joshua. He is able to crowd many valiant deeds into a brief space of your life. Jesus will make your earthly existence full, so that though you only live five years, or only one year, that will be a fuller period than the ten, twenty, or fifty years of your previous existence. One year filled with earnest, tender, noble thoughts will be really longer than sixty or seventy. If but the spirit of Christs life, His love, His zeal, inspire you, the contents of your life will equal those of ten at least.
Illustrations
(1)Jacob Boehme says:
When Time is as Eternity,
Eternity as Time to thee,
From strife of all kinds thou are free.
For every soldier of Gods army breathes the air of eternity. If you are one of His genuine soldiers you have a right to the air of eternity, and you actually do breathe it. No soldier of Gods can have his strength and courage maintained by the air of time. To be filled with thoughts of eternity is to have every day made as long as ten, deep and wide and high, with a range far beyond the reach of earth; but there is that which is still greater and more expansive and strengthening than eternity.
(2) To tell the truth no year, no day even, can be made up of patches and fragments thrown together. The true day must be animated by an earnest purpose. No earnest purpose or rational plan can be a thing of mere random broken gleams, It will not do then to take refuge in gleams and snatches that float for a little in the mind and then disappear like bubbles on the stream, or like fragments of music or old ballads that are dimly repeated in memory. Such things have no substance, no reality in them; if there were substance, solidity in them, they would exhibit some permanence.
(3) Must not Joshua have agonised in spirit as he beheld the quickening pace of the fugitive Amorites, and the slackening pace of his own troops, lest the decisive results of victory were about to elude his grasp? How many a victorious general has longed for only a hour or two more of daylight, that he might reap the fruits of victory? How many a beaten general has longed for the coming of night, to save him from utter rout and destruction? On the afternoon of Waterloo, the Prussian forces not having yet come upon the ground, and the lines of the British having become thin and wavering from the repeated and fiery onsets of the French, Wellington, wiping the bead-drops of agony from his brow, sighed for Nightnight, or Blcher!
Jos 10:14. There was no day like that Namely in those parts of the world in which he here speaks. Vain, therefore, is that objection, that the days are longer near the northern and southern poles, where they are constantly longer at certain seasons, and that by the order of nature; whereas the length of this day was surely contingent, and granted by God in answer to Joshuas prayer. The Lord hearkened to a man Namely, in such a manner as to alter the course of nature, that a man might have more time to pursue and destroy his enemies. The Lord fought This is added as the reason why God was so ready to answer Joshuas petition, because he was resolved to fight for Israel, and that in a more than ordinary manner. We may observe here how remarkably pertinent both the miracle of the hailstones, and this of the suns being arrested in his course, were to the circumstances of the persons concerned in them. All nations had at this time their several tutelar deities, to whose protection they committed themselves and their country, and to whose power they imputed their successes in war. Now, the three principal deities whom the inhabitants of Canaan adored, were the sun, moon, and heavens, or air. To convince them, therefore, that the gods in whom they trusted were subject to the God of Israel, and to punish them, at the same time, for the false worship they paid them, the Lord showered down great hailstones from the heavens, or air, which slew vast numbers of their powerful army; and then stopped the two great luminaries in their course, which gave the Israelites time and opportunity to complete their victory over the remainder. It may be thought, perhaps, that the whole motive which induced Joshua to put up his prayer for the prolongation of the day, was only his zeal and eagerness for gaining an entire conquest over his enemies; but we cannot imagine that Joshua should, without a special intimation from heaven, have addressed unto God the prayer concerning the sun and moon, which he is recorded to have done in the sight of Israel; for of what an extravagance would he have appeared guilty, if an effect had not been given to what he asked for? Or how could he be so wild as to think of an accomplishment of so strange an expectation as this would have been, had it been only a thought of his own heart to wish for it? But unquestionably the same Lord who spake unto him before the battle, who bade him not fear the armies of the Canaanites, who assured him that they should not be able to stand before him, directed him to ask for this wonderful miracle, and in granting what he asked for, gave a full testimony, both to the Israelites and their enemies, that the gods of the heathen were but idols, and that it is the Lord that made (and that ruleth in) the heavens.
10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD {f} fought for Israel.
(f) By taking away the enemies hearts and destroying them with the hail stones.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes