The Battle of Jericho

Shut up tight. “Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel; none went out, and none came in” (6:1). The people of Jericho had heard about God for forty years. Rahab said, “For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you” (2:10). They locked their gates instead of turning to God. Already given. “See! I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor” (6:2). God spoke as if the battle were already over. When God promises, it is as good as done. Before the plan. Just before this, Joshua met the “Commander of the army of the Lord” and “fell on his face to the earth and worshiped” (5:14). Joshua bowed first. Then God gave him the plan. A strange plan. March around the city once a day for six days. On the seventh day march around seven times, blow the trumpets and shout (6:3-5). No ladders, no battering rams, no tunnels. Why this way? God wanted everyone to know that He gave the victory. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). What this means for you. God's plans do not always make sense to us at first. Trust His Word, and do what He says, even when you cannot see how it will work.

Securely shut up (6:1). The Hebrew doubles the verb: Jericho was shutting and shut. The city braced for a siege. Its people had heard of the Red Sea and of Sihon and Og, and “our hearts melted” (2:11). Rahab heard the same news and turned to the Lord. The rest of Jericho heard it and hid behind their walls. The Commander (5:13-15). Joshua asked, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?” He answered, “No, but as Commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Many Christians see this Commander as the Son of God before He was born in Bethlehem, since He received Joshua's worship. The question was never whether God was on Joshua's side. Already done (6:2). “I have given” uses a Hebrew form that describes a finished action. God spoke of the victory as complete before a single step was taken. Faith rests on what God has already said. A plan no general would choose (6:3-5). Ancient armies took walled cities by siege, starving them out over months. God gave Israel a week of marching and a shout. Hebrews 11:30 says, “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days.” The weak things. “God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1:27). God often works so that no one can boast but Him. For you. When God's way looks foolish to the world, obey it anyway. The victory belongs to the Lord.

Jericho was a strong city with tall walls. The people inside were afraid of Israel. They had heard what God did at the Red Sea. Rahab heard too, and she trusted God. But the rest of Jericho shut its gates. Then God spoke to Joshua. He said He had already given Jericho to Israel. God talked as if it was already done! When God makes a promise, it is sure. God's plan sounded very strange. Nobody knocks down walls by walking and shouting. But God's ways are better than ours. We can trust God even when we do not understand.

God told Joshua, “Look, I have given you Jericho.” God had already won! We can always trust what God says.

The ark in the middle. Armed men went first, then seven priests with trumpets, then “the ark of the covenant of the Lord” (6:8), then the rear guard. God's presence was at the center of the march. Trumpets of rams' horns. The priests blew “seven trumpets of rams' horns” (6:6). These were not band instruments. They were the horns used to call God's people together and to announce that God was acting. Not one word. “You shall not shout or make any noise with your voice, nor shall a word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I say to you, ‘Shout!’” (6:10). No grumbling, no bragging and no arguing. Day after day. “So they did six days” (6:14). Each day they marched, went home and saw no change. Obedience meant doing the same thing again tomorrow. Early risers. “And Joshua rose early in the morning” (6:12). Joshua did not drag his feet. He was eager to obey. What this means for you. Sometimes obeying God means waiting and keeping quiet. “Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart” (Psalm 27:14). Keep doing what God says, even before you see the answer.

The order of march (6:8-9). Armed men, then seven priests blowing trumpets, then the ark, then the rear guard. The ark went with them every time. The battle centered on the Lord's presence, not on Israel's soldiers. The shofar (6:4). The shofar (say: sho-FAR) is a ram's-horn trumpet. It sounded at Sinai when God came down (Exodus 19:16), and it announced the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:9). Its sound meant God was present and acting. Commanded silence (6:10). Forty years earlier, Israel's words in the desert had been full of complaining (Numbers 14:2). Now their mouths were shut until God said, “Shout!” Silence was an act of trust. Six ordinary days (6:11-14). Each day was the same: rose early, took up the ark, circled once, returned to camp. Faithfulness is often doing what God said, the same way, without visible results. Patience as obedience. “Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart” (Psalm 27:14). Waiting was not doing nothing. It was obeying day by day. Jesus our example. Jesus “humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). He obeyed the Father all the way. His obedience, not ours, wins our salvation, and His Spirit helps us obey.

Every day the people did the same thing. They marched around Jericho one time. Then they went back to camp. Nothing happened to the walls. Maybe the people of Jericho laughed at them. But Israel kept obeying God. The Ark went with them every day. That showed God was right there with them. Joshua told the people not to talk. They could not complain or brag. They just had to trust God. Sometimes God asks us to wait. We can keep obeying, even when we do not see anything change. God is working even when we cannot see it.

God's people marched around the city. They did not say a word. They obeyed God every day, even when nothing changed.

The shout. “Shout, for the Lord has given you the city!” (6:16). They shouted before the walls moved. It was a shout of faith. Flat. “The wall fell down flat” (6:20). No army pushed it. God brought it down. “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days” (Hebrews 11:30). Given to the Lord. “The city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction” (6:17). Everything in Jericho was handed over to God. The silver and gold went into “the treasury of the Lord” (6:19). A just Judge. The people of Jericho died in the battle (6:21). Their nations had done terrible evil for hundreds of years. God had told Abraham long before that He would wait until their sin was full (Genesis 15:16). God is patient, “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Only for then. This was God's judgment at one time and place. Jesus does not send His followers to fight for Him with swords (John 18:36). A warning. Israel was told not to take anything for themselves (6:18). The next lesson shows what happened when one man did. What this means for you. God takes sin seriously, and He is always fair. Run to Him for mercy, as Rahab did.

Shout first (6:16, 20). The people shouted on Joshua's word, before the walls moved. Their shout was faith out loud. Fell down flat (6:20). The wall fell where it stood, so Israel went up “every man straight before him.” No siege ramp was needed. Herem (6:17). Herem (say: KHEH-rem) means devoted to the Lord: handed over to God completely, either destroyed or placed in His treasury. Israel was not allowed to profit from Jericho. This was God's judgment, not Israel's plunder. Why judgment? God told Abraham that Israel would return when “the iniquity of the Amorites” was complete (Genesis 15:16). For more than four hundred years God waited. Jericho had heard of the Red Sea for forty years (2:10). The Lord is “longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9). Not about race. Rahab, a Canaanite, was spared. In the next chapter Achan, an Israelite, was judged. God's judgment fell on unbelief and sin, not on a nation for being a nation. A command for that time. This war was a unique act of God's judgment through Israel. It is not a pattern for Christians. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight” (John 18:36). The final judgment. Jericho is a picture of the day when God will judge all sin. The only safe place on that day is in Christ: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

On the seventh day the people shouted. Then the walls fell down flat! Shouting cannot knock down walls. God did it, not the people. The Bible says the walls fell because they had faith. The people of Jericho had done evil for hundreds of years. God is patient, but He is also fair. He judged the city for its sin. That is very serious. God hates sin because He is good. But God also gives a way to be saved. Rahab trusted God, and God saved her.

The people gave a big shout. God made the walls fall down! Jericho had done evil, and God judged it.

A promise kept. Joshua told the spies, “Go into the harlot's house, and from there bring out the woman and all that she has, as you swore to her” (6:22). The spies had promised to save her (2:14), and Israel kept its word. The whole family. They “brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had” (6:23). Rahab's faith brought her family under God's protection. Who Rahab was. Rahab is called “the harlot” (6:25), a woman who had lived a sinful life. She was also a Canaanite. Yet God saved her. Saved by faith. “By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe” (Hebrews 11:31). Her faith was real, and it showed in what she did. Part of God's people. “So she dwells in Israel to this day” (6:25). The outsider became family. In Jesus' family tree. “Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab” (Matthew 1:5). Rahab became the great-great-grandmother of King David and an ancestor of Jesus. A city left in ruins. Joshua warned that anyone who rebuilt Jericho would be cursed (6:26). The ruins would remind everyone of what God had done. What this means for you. No one is too far from God to be saved. Jesus came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

Kept oaths (6:22-23). Rahab had asked the spies to “swear to me by the Lord” (2:12). Joshua honored that oath in the middle of the battle. God's people keep their word because God keeps His. Outside the camp (6:23). Rahab's family was first placed “outside the camp of Israel.” The law treated outsiders as unclean until they joined God's people. By 6:25 she “dwells in Israel,” and Matthew 1:5 shows she married into the tribe of Judah. Faith that acts. Hebrews 11:31 says she was saved “by faith,” and James 2:25 asks whether Rahab was not “justified by works when she received the messengers.” Both are true: her faith in the Lord showed itself in action. Safe inside (2:18-21). Rahab tied the scarlet cord in her window and gathered her family into her house. Everyone inside was safe when judgment came, and every one of them was brought out alive (6:23). The curse of 6:26. Joshua warned that whoever rebuilt Jericho's foundation and gates would lose his firstborn and his youngest son. In the days of King Ahab, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho, and it happened just as Joshua said (1 Kings 16:34). God's word does not fail. Grace for outsiders. Rahab is one of four women named in Jesus' family line in Matthew 1, alongside Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba. God's grace reaches people no one expected. Jesus came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

Rahab had made a deal with the spies. She hid them, and they promised to save her family. Now the spies kept their promise. They brought out Rahab and her whole family. Rahab had not always lived a good life. She was not an Israelite either. But she trusted the Lord, and God saved her. Then Rahab came to live with God's people. Many years later, Rahab became part of Jesus' family line! God loves to save people who trust Him. It does not matter where they come from. Jesus saves anyone who comes to Him.

God kept Rahab safe. Her whole family was saved too. God loves to save people who trust Him!

The Battle of Jericho

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