Alrighty, so the $64,000 question facing us here is…
…did God literally stop or slow down the rotation of planet earth for a short time to help Joshua out so he could defeat his enemies?
First of all, understand the Scripture does NOT saying the sun was kept shining when it was at its brightest.
Rather, it just says the sun maintained its position in the middle of the sky.
In other words, it did NOT set towards the skyline that separates the night from day.
And as I mentioned a couple of days ago, this bit about the sun stopping was a poetic piece taken from the Book of Yashar.
That’s why a lot of scholars do NOT take this event literally.
And if you think about it, how we experience time is a subjective thing anyway.
You know how when you’re having a great time, time just seems to fly by real quick?
But when you’re bored out of your freakin’ mind, every minute seems like an hour, right?
Or have you ever had one of those days when you had so much on your plate, you wondered how in the world you were going to get it all done?
But you just started on the first task, finished it, moved on to the next task, finished that one and and so on until by the end of the day, you looked back and were just blown away by how much you had accomplished.
My point is while I do believe a miracle was wrought here, I personally don’t have problems with scholars who say this event was just a poetic depiction of how Joshua and his soldiers subjectively experienced this event.
Here’s another thing to think about.
Yes, it is true, if He wanted to, God could have literally stopped the rotation of the earth.
He could also have stopped the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.
Yet given that this story was taken from a book of poetry and war ballads (no one disagrees on this point)…
…AND…
…given that there’s no extra-Biblical mention anywhere else of the earth suddenly ceasing to rotate (unlike the flood where every primitive society has a record of this event occurring), I wouldn’t have a problem with folks who say this event didn’t literally happen.
As far as I’m concerned, in some way, the Lord supernaturally intervened so that Joshua and his army would get the victory.
And I have faith He will do the same thing in my life.
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