God told Israel to circle Jericho for seven days before its walls fell. Why require a week of marching when He could have brought the city down at once? Joshua does not explain every reason for that schedule, but he tells us whose promise Israel was trusting and whose command they obeyed.
Covenant Preparation Before Jericho
Jericho was the first fortified city Israel confronted after crossing the Jordan into Canaan. It stood in the Jordan Valley near the oasis associated with Tell es-Sultan and guarded an approach toward the central hill country. Its gates were shut against Israel, so Joshua’s army faced a city prepared to resist them.
Israel did not go straight from the river into a siege. At Gilgal, the males born during the forty wilderness years were circumcised because they had not received that covenant sign during the journey. The LORD said He had rolled away the reproach of Egypt. This new generation was being identified with the covenant He had established with their fathers.
They then kept Passover, remembering how God had redeemed their people from Egypt before they possessed land or strength of their own. Once they ate the produce of Canaan, the manna ceased. Their circumstances were changing, but their dependence on the LORD remained. Before fighting, they worshiped the God who had delivered them and brought them into the land He had promised to Abraham.
Israel was not an army inventing its own right to the land. God was fulfilling a particular covenant promise and bringing the nations’ wickedness under judgment. The study on The Land of Canaan examines that promise, the peoples and boundaries of the land, and its future restoration. We need that setting to understand why God commanded this campaign.
Fortified cities had frightened the previous generation too. They recognized Canaan’s formidable defenses, but refused to trust the God who had promised them the land. The unbelieving generation died in the wilderness, and their children still had to face a fortified city. Renewing the covenant had not removed the danger; it prepared Joshua’s generation to face it in obedience to their Redeemer.
Rahab Believes and Joshua Meets the Commander
Before Israel crossed the Jordan, Joshua had sent two spies into Jericho. Rahab hid them and described the fear caused by the reports about Israel’s God:
And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.
Jericho had heard about the Red Sea and Israel’s victories over Sihon and Og. Rahab received those reports along with her neighbors, but responded with more than fear. She confessed that the LORD is God in heaven and on earth, protected His people’s messengers, and asked them to spare her father’s household. The spies promised protection for the members of her household gathered inside her house.
A scarlet cord identified Rahab’s house for the men who would rescue her household. Its color may remind us of Passover blood or other biblical salvation imagery, but Joshua does not identify it as a prophetic picture of atonement. Rahab trusted the promise she had received, displayed the agreed sign, and gathered her family where protection had been promised. The study on Rahab and the Scarlet Cord follows her confession and rescue more fully.
Rahab’s rescue also keeps me from explaining Jericho’s destruction as the removal of a genetically tainted population. I believe the Nephilim were giants produced when fallen angels had relations with women, but Joshua does not call Jericho a city of giants. Rahab was a Canaanite in the condemned city, yet she was spared and received into Israel. Anakim lived elsewhere in Canaan, and the broad claims in the spies’ bad report in Numbers 13 do not establish giant ancestry in every city. The study on Nephilim Tribes distinguishes the named peoples from those unsupported bloodline claims.
God had explained the delay in giving Abraham’s descendants the land in Genesis 15:16: Amorite iniquity was not yet complete. Generations passed before judgment came. Leviticus 18 describes the nations’ sexual corruption, idolatry, and child sacrifice. Scripture gives wickedness as the ground for judgment, rather than body size or ancestry. By Joshua’s time, Jericho knew what the LORD had done and had shut its gates against Israel, while Rahab responded to that same knowledge by seeking mercy.
After the crossing and Israel’s preparation at Gilgal, Joshua encountered a man standing with a drawn sword. He asked whether the man was for Israel or for its enemies, and received the answer, “No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” Joshua was Israel’s human commander, but he now had to acknowledge the authority before whom he stood. He fell on his face, worshiped, and asked what his Lord would say to His servant.
Then the Commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so.
I understand this Commander to be the preincarnate Son, Christ appearing before He took on human flesh. Such an appearance is called a Christophany. The Commander received Joshua’s worship and told him to remove his sandal because the ground was holy, recalling the LORD’s appearance to Moses at the burning bush. Faithful created angels refuse worship directed to them. These features lead me to identify the Commander as Christ rather than an ordinary angel.
Israel’s appointed leader was now listening as a servant. He could not turn the LORD’s army into an instrument of his private ambitions. The authority to judge Jericho belonged to God, and Joshua had to receive His instructions. The victory that followed would give Israel no reason to credit its own military ingenuity.
Seven Days Around a Closed City
Before the march began, the LORD said, “See! I have given Jericho into your hand.” Israel received a promise of the outcome before receiving the unusual instructions for reaching it:
You shall march around the city, all you men of war; you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets.
Armed men led the procession, followed by seven priests carrying seven ram’s-horn trumpets. The ark came behind the priests, with a rear guard following it. The priests sounded the horns as they marched.
The ark represented the LORD’s covenant presence and throne among His people. It had no independent power for Israel to deploy against an enemy. In 1 Samuel 4, a later generation brought it into battle as though possessing the object would secure victory, and suffered defeat. At Jericho, the people were obeying the One whose presence the ark represented. The power that brought down the city belonged to Him.
Scripture uses trumpets in proclamation, sacred observances, and warfare. Gideon’s men, for example, sounded trumpets in Judges 7. At Jericho, God specifically commanded seven priests to carry ram’s-horn trumpets before the ark. Their place in the procession expressed Israel’s dependence on the LORD whose instructions they followed.
On each of the first six days, Israel went around the city once and returned to camp. On the seventh day, they rose early and made seven circuits.
The repeated use of seven gives the command a complete, ordered pattern. I do not take it as permission to assign a secret meaning to every number or prescribe seven repetitions for our own requests. Israel had to complete the whole week God specified. Joshua describes marching rather than building a siege ramp or forcing a gate, and records no change in the wall during the first six days. They obeyed because God had promised the city, rather than because each day’s march produced visible progress.
While the priests blew the horns, the people were forbidden to shout or speak until Joshua gave the command. Their part was to follow the procession and wait for his order. The promise of victory did not leave them free to change the instructions or decide for themselves when to shout.
On the seventh circuit of the seventh day, the long trumpet blast and Joshua’s order called the people to shout. They were acting on a promise God had already given. He had not told them to discover a volume loud enough to break masonry, and their shout was no technique for controlling His power.
The Wall Falls and a Unique Judgment Follows
So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
The wall collapsed, and Israel’s soldiers went straight before them into the city. Paul writes in Hebrews 11:30 that the walls fell by faith after Israel had encircled them for seven days. Their faith meant relying on the God who had spoken and acting on His command. The marchers were not generating an invisible force to push bricks out of the way.
Joshua does not explain the physical process God used. He could have brought down the wall directly or used a natural event at precisely the promised moment. An earthquake is possible, but the passage does not identify one. What Joshua records reveals God’s power and faithfulness without supplying the mechanism.
The words “fell down flat” describe a collapse that opened the way for the soldiers. They do not require every inch of the city to become a perfectly level surface. Joshua also records the rescue of Rahab’s household, so her house and the people gathered there remained identifiable. We need to read the wall’s fall alongside the rescue, rather than imagine a destruction that makes the rest of the account impossible.
The judgment that followed is severe, and I do not think we honor Scripture by softening it. Joshua records the killing of men and women, young and old, and the destruction of livestock. This was a specific judgment commanded by the Creator and Judge after generations of patience, in fulfillment of His covenant promise. Modern armies have no authorization to repeat Israel’s action at Jericho.
That judgment does not require us to pretend every resident had committed the same acts or bore the same degree of personal guilt. God knows each heart and judges every person rightly. Human life belongs to Him because He gives it, and He has authority to end earthly life. No individual, church, or ruler can claim that authority as a private right to imitate Joshua.
Devoted Things, Mercy, and God’s Word Fulfilled
The capture of the city did not give Israel permission to take whatever they wanted. Before the wall fell, Joshua had explained what must happen to its valuables:
But all the silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are consecrated to the LORD; they shall come into the treasury of the LORD.”
The Hebrew term herem, חֵרֶם, refers to what is placed under the ban or irrevocably devoted to God. His command determined how that devotion was carried out at Jericho: the city came under destruction, while its silver, gold, bronze, and iron went into His treasury. Those possessions were reserved for Him, so Israel could not treat them as private plunder.
Alongside the command about the city’s possessions, Joshua had ordered the rescue of Rahab’s household under the promise the spies had made:
And Joshua spared Rahab the harlot, her father’s household, and all that she had. So she dwells in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.
Joshua sent the same two spies to bring out Rahab, her relatives, and her possessions. The rescued household was initially placed outside the camp. Israel’s purity requirements may explain that separation, although Joshua does not give the reason. Rahab afterward lived within Israel, receiving a place among God’s people. Matthew later includes this Gentile woman in the Messiah’s genealogy.
Hebrews places Rahab’s faith beside Israel’s faith at the walls, and James points to her protection of the messengers as evidence that her faith was alive. She trusted God’s word and acted on it. Her deeds did not earn salvation; they showed whose promise she believed and whose people she was willing to protect.
The mercy Rahab received did not mean Israel could disregard what God had reserved for Himself. Jericho’s wealth functioned like firstfruits, the first portion belonging to the God who had given the land and victory. Joshua 7 records Achan taking devoted items and hiding them, bringing judgment within Israel. Belonging to the covenant people did not shelter him from judgment for his secret theft. The God who judged disobedience in Jericho also judged it within Israel’s camp.
God’s impartiality remains clear across Israel’s history. Rahab received mercy despite her Canaanite birth, and the Gibeonites survived under an oath Israel had made to them, even though they obtained it through deception. Israel itself eventually suffered destruction and exile for practicing the nations’ sins. Ancestry neither excused rebellion nor prevented an outsider from receiving mercy.
Joshua pronounced a warning against rebuilding Jericho: the builder would lay its foundation at the cost of his firstborn and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest. In 1 Kings 16:34, Hiel the Bethelite rebuilt it during Ahab’s reign. Abiram died when the foundation was laid, and Segub died when the gates were set up. The LORD’s word through Joshua was fulfilled.
Centuries had passed between the warning and Hiel’s work. The passage does not tell us what he knew or thought about Joshua’s words, but time had not made their fulfillment less certain. I should not dismiss a warning from God because it was given long ago or because people no longer take it seriously. His word was fulfilled in Jericho’s fall and again in the cost of rebuilding it. Every person will answer to Him, and we need to repent and seek His mercy while we can.
The account of Hiel’s rebuilding also reminds us that ancient Jericho had a long history beyond Joshua’s campaign. Its site is commonly identified with Tell es-Sultan. A tell is a mound formed as successive communities occupy a site and build over earlier remains. Archaeologists call the study of the resulting layers and their sequence stratigraphy. UNESCO’s documentation of Tell es-Sultan describes twenty-nine phases of occupation reaching back to very early settlement, with fortifications from different periods. Those remains attest to Jericho’s long history and its importance as a fortified center.
Excavators and later interpreters disagree about the dating of pottery, the sequence of layers, and which events explain particular destructions. They work with incomplete remains from only part of a site and fit them into a proposed chronology. A collapsed wall cannot by itself establish every detail of Joshua 6, and a disputed date does not disprove what God has recorded. Jericho was destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly, so not every destruction layer can belong to Joshua’s campaign.
I can learn from archaeology without asking it to replace Scripture as my authority. We should examine the remains carefully and describe the uncertainties honestly, rather than announce sensational proof or dismiss the biblical event on the strength of a disputed reconstruction. Receiving Joshua as inspired testimony does not require us to pretend that every archaeological question has been settled.
The same Scriptures call the church to proclaim the gospel, pray, serve, and love even its enemies. Faithfulness to that calling may require us to endure suffering. Claiming that God supports a leader’s ambitions gives no authority to commit religious violence. The judgment at Jericho was God’s to command, and His command to Israel gives us no warrant to wage a holy war of our own.
Israel’s march and Rahab’s rescue both show faith answering something God had actually made known. That is different from choosing a goal, calling it a promise, and expecting God to remove whatever I call a wall. He may require endurance through a hardship, and some obstacles protect us from a course we should not take. I need to obey what He has said rather than invent a technique that obliges Him to give me the outcome I want.
The warning about judgment also brings us to our need for Christ’s mercy. Jesus is the eternal, uncreated Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and without sin. Wicked people tortured and killed Him, but He voluntarily gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His shed blood and death completed His saving sacrifice before His burial and bodily resurrection. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acted in unity in providing our salvation.
Christ died for the whole world, so God’s offer is genuine for every person, although people can resist His grace and reject Him. Everyone who repents and believes is forgiven and born again. God justifies the believer, declaring him righteous in Christ, and the Holy Spirit indwells and seals him. Every genuine believer is eternally secure in Christ. That security gives no permission for lawlessness, and a superficial profession of faith does not prove new birth. Changed conduct gives evidence of the new life without earning or keeping salvation, and genuine new birth does not make a believer sinless.
My Final Thoughts
Israel obeyed the particular word given by the divine Commander, and His power brought Jericho’s wall down. Rahab received mercy within the city under judgment, so neither her ancestry nor her past put her beyond God’s grace. The destruction warns us that His patience will not postpone judgment forever. I need to seek His mercy in Christ and obey what He has actually said, without turning Israel’s instructions into a formula for my own goals.