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Chapter 6[a]

Jericho Overtaken. Now Jericho was shut up tight on account of the people of Israel, none went out and none came in. The Lord said to Joshua, “Behold, I have given Jericho, its king, and its mighty warriors into your hands. Your soldiers are to march all around the city once, doing that for six days.

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Footnotes

  1. Joshua 6:1 The entire ceremonial that precedes the fall of Jericho gives the event the character of a liturgical action rather than of a conquest; God is at work in giving the Promised Land to his people, just as he was at the crossing of the Jordan. The account is therefore not to be taken literally but as giving religious expression to a real intervention of God, whatever the manner of this intervention may have been. The story combines two different traditions that cannot be fully harmonized. One describes a procession accompanied by the playing of trumpets; the other says that the war shout was uttered after seven processional circlings of the city made in silence.