“’Sun, stand motionless over Giv‘on!
Moon, you too, over Ayalon Valley!”
So the sun stood still and the moon stayed put,
till Israel took vengeance on their enemies.’
This is written in the book of Yashar.
The sun stood still in the sky and
was in no rush to set
for nearly a whole day.”
-Joshua 10:12-13
Let’s talk a little bit about this so-called “Book of Yashar” where the story of the sun standing still is recorded.
The first thing you should know is that Bible scholars refer to the person who wrote the book of Joshua as “The Compiler”.
And this is also a good time to remind you that the Torah and the rest of the books in the Tanakh were not written in chronological fashion the way someone would compose a daily diary or journal for instance.
Sure, it’s true most of the Bible books had a main author who wrote them but the truth is not even one of the Bible books was written from beginning to end by just one person.
And if you think about it, the historical time period for each book would show that to be an impossibility anyway.
So getting back to our story of the sun standing still, whoever wrote this section of the Bible apparently was referring to a piece of extra-Biblical literature called “The Book of Yashar”.
In Hebrew, this is SEFER HA-YASHAR.
Literally, this would be translated as…
…“The Book of the Correct Record”.
Other scholars will say it means “The Book of the Righteous” or “The Book of the Worthy Ones”.
Whatever you wanna call it, just know that contrary to popular belief, Yashar is NOT a person’s name.
Another thing you should know is that the Book of Yashar has still yet to be discovered to this day.
That’s right.
We only know it existed because of the many references to this document throughout history with the verse Joshua 10:13 being a perfect case in point.
The Book of Yashar was thought to be a huge selection of poems and war songs about the greatest heroes in Hebrew history.
Therefore, the bit about the sun standing still is undoubtably a form of poetry.
Because of this, there has been a ton of controversy and heated debated concerning exactly how literally we should take these verses.
Personally, I believe it was a miracle of God, plain and simple.
Heck, if the Creator of the whole universe can cause a worldwide flood or cause a whole ocean to literally split in half, making the sun stand still for a few more extra hours should be a cinch for Him.
I know a lot of folks view this as Hebrew folklore or just a fairy tale.
To them, I say you can have your disbelief.
To me, life is a lot more exciting believing in a God who loves me, performs miracles and will meet ALL my needs in abundance.
And by the way, if you are a true believer, it’s incidents like this that serve as good evidence why you should NEVER EVER have to worry about anything in your life.
Are you worried about making the rent?
Are worried about what’s gonna happen to your job because of some crazy global upheaval due to a worldwide pandemic?
Or maybe you’re worried about your health and one physical ailment or another?
If you truly have faith, none of those things should be a worry at all.
I mean, just look at how ridiculously powerful the God we worship is.
As the Lord told Joshua…
“Fear not!”
CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
“What, then, shall we say in
response to these things?
If God is for us,
who can be against us?“
-Romans 8:31
Leave a Reply