The Fall of Jericho: How the People’s Shout Silenced the Scouts’ Doubt

Most discussions about the biblical passage in the Book of Joshua about the battle of Jericho focus on the archaeological digs that have failed to find evidence of a substantial settlement on the site during the centuries surrounding the probable time of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. This has been the consensus since 1868, when Charles Warren identified Tell es-Sultan as the site of biblical Jericho.¹ Others see the passage as fiction, a seventh-century scribal invention as part of King Josiah’s program to restore Israel to its former borders. Some explore the possibility that the account describes the surrender of the city.²

Those who want to “believe” in this account seek a different kind of answer, such as that archaeologists have not dug in the right place, or that the event was geological rather than military. A theory by two distinguished scholars takes a “medical approach,” proposing that schistosomiasis is the real reason for the fall of Jericho.³ Those who read the Bible on its own terms focus instead on the miraculous nature of the victory: the Israelites marched around the city walls once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day, and then blew their horns. Some think about the psychic power of the circumambulation, or the terrifying sound of the horns.⁴ Spero’s article in this journal explores the possibility that Rahab, who lived in the casemate wall, may have played a part in undermining its structure.⁵

My approach focuses on the theological and textual rather than the historical. In the hope of finding a different understanding of the meaning of Joshua 6, I turn to one of the most important passages in the Torah, which may be a key to understanding the fall of Jericho.

The Cities Are Fortified and Very Large

The majority report of the ten scouts in Numbers 13:22-29 is a turning point in the Torah. Their report evokes a response among the Israelites that leads to the punishment that this generation will never enter the Promised Land. The punishment fits the crime: if you do not believe that God will enable you to conquer the land, you will never conquer the land or even enter it.

From Kadesh, Moses sent twelve scouts, one from each tribe, each a chieftain, with this mission: Go up there into the Negeb and on into the hill country, and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? . . . Are the towns they live in open or fortified? (Num. 13:17-20). Their first report is an objective assessment fulfilling this mission: We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey . . . However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the Anakites there (Num. 13:27-29 [sic]). This report is factual: there were strong peoples living in the land, under no single power; there were Anakites; and there were large, fortified cities — Jerusalem, a Jebusite fortress on high hills, would in fact not be taken by any of the tribes for generations (Judg. 1:21).

It is when the people hear this accurate report and grow afraid that the ten scouts, for whatever reason, exaggerate their objective report and give in to — and prey on — the people’s fears: All the people that we saw in it are men of great size, we saw the Nephilim there . . . and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them (vv. 32-33). Their first report was objective; their sin was in claiming that all the people of the land were giants and that the Israelites would appear as grasshoppers to them.

The majority of the scouts win over the people; the minority voices — Caleb’s, and later Joshua’s — are drowned out in the community’s collective shout of rebellion against Moses and Aaron. Three positions emerge in this fateful debate: a factual assessment of the challenges ahead (vv. 27-29); Caleb’s incredible faith and optimism (v. 30); and exaggerated, demagogic, fear-mongering calumny (vv. 31-33). I want to emphasize the distinction between the first and the third, because there is nothing wrong with stating facts. Large, fortified cities would normally be unconquerable for a force like the Israelites at this time — their confidence was appropriate to the military realities of the Late Bronze Age, when well-fortified cities were close to unconquerable except by subterfuge or by drawing the besieged out, delaying “the Hebrew conquest of Canaan for hundreds of years.”⁶

Now, as the new generation crosses the Jordan, the imposing walled city of Jericho is immediately in their way, and the question remains: how can the Israelites conquer such fortresses?

The Unified Shout of the People

Looking closely at the text of Joshua 6, we find an emphasis on the voice of the people, reminiscent of God’s instructions to Moses about the people ascending Mt. Sinai at the blast of the horn (Ex. 19:13, 19). The people are to march around the city once a day; on the seventh day: March around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the horns. And when a long blast is sounded on the horn . . . all the people shall give a mighty shout. Thereupon the city will collapse (6:5). Joshua adds a restriction of his own: Do not shout, do not let your voices be heard, and do not let a sound issue from your lips until the moment that I command you, “Shout!” (6:10).

Joshua, who was present when the people’s faithless, fear-mongering speech condemned their parents’ generation, in effect tells the new generation: do not speak until commanded; your parents spoke and shouted and condemned themselves to defeat; speech divided the people; by not speaking until you shout with one voice, you will achieve victory. Remarkably, the people obey. And when they do shout as commanded, they are part of a miracle: So the people shouted when the horns were sounded. When the people heard the sound of the horns, the people raised a mighty shout and the wall collapsed (6:16, 20).⁷

The walls come down not because of the psychic power of the circumambulation, nor the terrifying sound of the horns, nor a seismic shift, nor schistosomiasis. It is because the people shout in unanimous recognition that it is God who is stronger than any earthly power, as He showed Himself to be against Pharaoh. This first battle of the conquest was meant to demonstrate how the land would be won: not by usual stratagem or ruse, but by a people who obey the commands of God.

To conquer the land, the people needed to be united and obedient — no small thing, given the catastrophic scouts’ report, the rebellions over water and food, Korah, and Baal Peor, not to mention two and a half tribes who wanted to remain east of the Jordan yet were commanded to serve as the invasion’s shock troops. The seven-day marching ritual, with no muttering or murmuring in the ranks, was less about working on the psychology of the people inside the city than about showing the Israelites themselves what God would do if they obeyed His commands — just as the plagues in Egypt were more for the Israelites’ education than the Egyptians’. Their voices of division, calumny, and doubt — the very voices that had condemned their parents to die in the wilderness — were to be silent; only their unanimous shout of faith and hope was to be heard.

The fall of Jericho answers the question of how the Promised Land will be conquered: by uniting the people to listen, and act according, to the word of God.

Postscript

Joshua pronounces an oath: Cursed of the LORD be the man who shall undertake to fortify this city of Jericho; he shall lay its foundations at the cost of his first-born, and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest (6:26). Why the curse on re-fortifying Jericho, and why such violent language? The destruction of the city was meant to be total and permanent, a symbol forever of the power of God — its ruins a permanent reminder to future generations to believe in God’s power to protect them and to remain united against their enemies.⁸ To rebuild Jericho would be to assert human power at the very place where God had demonstrated to the Israelites that obedience and unity can bring great miracles.