Commentaria in Josue
MOVE NOT, O SUN, TOWARD GABAON, NOR THOU, O MOON, TOWARD THE VALLEY OF AJALON.—The Hebrew is: Sun, be silent. Which R. Solomon understands of the Pythagorean harmony of the heavens, as if to say: Sun, sing not as thou art wont, but be silent and hear my voice and command, and stay thy course. But this is ridiculous and futile. Sun, be silent, therefore, is the same as: Sun, be still, move not from thy place. The Septuagint: Sun, stand at Gabaon, and moon at the valley of Elon. The sense, then, is as if to say: To thee, O sun, in the power of almighty God I command and order that thou move not, but remain unmoved and fixed over against the cities of Gabaon and Ajalon, that thou mayest give us light until we pursue our enemies and destroy them all utterly. For the city of Ajalon was near the city of Gabaon, and between them lay a valley, in which this battle was being fought. Whence it appears that on that day it was about the new moon, and the moon was in conjunction with the sun. That Josue names the moon, he does not do as though this were necessary to give his men light (for the sun alone supplied this otherwise), but because he plays with poetic fulness on sun and moon, as on Gabaon and Ajalon; for this verse and the two following are in Hebrew rhythm, taken, as it seems, from the book of the Just. Whence it appears that they were not composed by Josue, but inserted here from the book of the Just, whether Esdras, the restorer of the sacred books, or someone else inserted them here, unless someone say that the book of the Just is here called the public annals, in which in every year or age the illustrious deeds of the just, especially of heroes, were written, as though Josue were citing them here.
Second, he names the moon to signify that not only the sun but the moon also, and all the orbs of the heavens, were commanded to stay their course: for the sun and the moon, which are the noblest stars and preside over day and night, signify all the other heavenly stars and bodies; otherwise the standing still of the moon was not required here for light or for victory; it signifies, therefore, that God then restrained all the orbs of the heavens, lest the perpetual order, tenor and concord established by him among these orbs from the creation of the world should be disturbed by the unequal progress of one or two, as Abulensis and Masius teach at length, article 3, at the end. A like thing happened in Isaias 38:8, where Isaias at the prayers of King Ezechias commanded the sun to go back ten degrees.
On that day of Josue, therefore, there was no time, whose measure is the motion of the first mobile (for this motion ceased on that day), but there was a duration which naturally accompanies any thing existing and enduring, and whose measure could be the duration of the first mobile even while it itself is at rest. And this duration could be measured by clocks, not sundials, but sand or iron clocks, which, being poised, run down in a fixed time and indicate each hour by their pointer or by sound and stroke. In like manner, the motion of the sun and moon ceasing, the reciprocation, or flow and ebb, of the sea ceased; for this is caused by the motion of the moon. So the Conimbricenses.
13. IS NOT THIS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE JUST?
This book was as it were a catalogue of saints, in which the famous deeds of men illustrious for faith and religion were described. Who and what manner of book it was is not known; for it has wholly perished. So Theodoret and others. See Sixtus of Siena in the Catalogue of the Sacred Books, relating the various opinions of men about this book.
SO THE SUN STOOD IN THE MIDST OF HEAVEN,—that is, in the great and vast heaven itself: it is a frequent Hebraism; or in our hemisphere, which is a half in respect of the other hemisphere, which looks to the antipodes.
AND HASTED NOT TO GO DOWN THE SPACE OF ONE DAY.—Hence it seems that Josue commanded the sun to stand toward evening, when it was going down, and therefore Josue feared lest the enemy should escape through the impending darkness. Justin Martyr, in the dialogue Against Trypho, is of opinion that this day of Josue was thirty-six hours long. For besides the twelve natural hours he adds to it twenty-four supernatural hours, in which he thinks the sun stood; for it is said here that the sun stood the space of one day, which he takes of the natural day of twenty-four hours. You should rather take it of the artificial day; for this alone gives light, and Ecclesiasticus 46:5 indicates this, saying: “One day became as two,” as if to say: The day, which is wont to be of twelve or fourteen hours, became twenty-four or twenty-eight hours. The sun therefore stood here for twelve or rather fourteen hours. For this battle happened near the summer solstice, when in Judea the day is fourteen hours.
More literal and mystical things about this standing of the sun I have said on Ecclesiasticus 46:5; to which add tropologically: In the moon consider the knowledge of the intellect, which in this life is always less clear, and in the sun the ardour of affection. These at times remain in the contemplation and love of the one highest good without variation, until man avenge himself on his enemies. For nothing so subdues and consumes our imperfections as this gift of most perfect contemplation, by which man, by the Lord’s benefit, learns to emulate the angelic spirits.
In physical and military terms the Emperor Leo in his Tactics, in the Epilogue, number 4: “In drawing up the line,” he says, “have the sun and the wind at your back, and you will place both in the eyes of the enemy.” The same you may say of the dust, that you place it behind you and in front of the enemy, that it may fly into their eyes and blind them, so that for as long a time they cannot fight; for dust follows the wind.
Anagogically, Rupert says: In this standing of the sun, he says, is a figure of the last judgment; for when Christ shall come to judge, then, the sun standing still, the day will be long until he avenge himself on his enemies. “The great day of the Lord is near,” says Sophonias, chapter 1, “a day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery.” Indeed after the day of judgment all motion of the heavens will cease, and the sun, moon and stars will stand in the same place for ever, as the theologians teach.
Allegorically, Josue here was a type of Jesus Christ.
“For as, when the Prophet (Josue) fought, the sun stood, so when our Saviour by his death dissolved death, the sun at midday withheld its rays, and filled the earth with darkness,” says Theodoret, Question 15.
Finally, the Hebrews, on account of this standing of the sun obtained by Josue, carved a sun on his sepulchre, as a perpetual memory of so great a miracle, because he had been the stayer of the sun, and like the sun had been watchful night and day; for “wars stand firm under a watchful master,” of which I shall speak again in the last chapter, verse 30.
14. THERE WAS NOT BEFORE, NOR AFTER, SO LONG A DAY.—For the day of Ezechias, lengthened by Isaias, was only of fifteen hours. For to the ten hours of the day Isaias added five; but this day of Josue was twenty-eight hours. For to the fourteen hours of the day Josue added another fourteen hours. See what is said on Ecclesiasticus 46:5, and Isaias 38:8.
THE LORD OBEYING THE VOICE OF A MAN, AND FIGHTING FOR ISRAEL.—It is a prodigy that God should obey a man, as God obeyed Josue asking him to stay the sun, because Josue obeyed God in all things. Wouldst thou have God hear thee? Hear thou God, and obey him; so he will make everything he has created obey thee, and will communicate to thee as it were his omnipotence. For it is written: “He will do the will of them that fear him.” So St. Dominic used to say that he obtained from God whatever he asked of him. The same holy men still experience. “From which it is understood that God obeys the prayers of his servants, and seasonably governs his creatures for their need,” says the author of On the Wonders of Holy Scripture, in St. Augustine, volume 3, book 2, chapter 4.
St. Bernard marvels that God born of the Virgin obeyed her as a son; but it is more marvellous that God obeyed Josue. For Christ obeyed his mother, not as God, but as man and son; but here God as God obeyed Josue. O prodigy, O wonder, O condescension never heard of in heaven or on earth, that the Creator obeys the creature, God obeys man! St. Bernard cries out: Blush, ashes: God humbles himself, and thou exaltest thyself. Blush, dust: God obeys man, and thou obeyest neither man nor God!