JOSHUA'S LONG DAY. 



133 



rays directly on their heads for many hours still to come. There 

 were seven hours of the afternoon yet before him : the day was 

 far from drawing to a close. If he commanded the sun "to be 

 silent " in what was that silence to consist ? In refraining from 

 moving, or in refraining from oppressing ? 



The answer is given unmistakably by the narrative itself. 

 The sun refrained from oppressing. For the Lord sent a mighty 

 hailstorm, evidently coming, as summer hailstorms always come 

 in Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea. The dense storm- 

 clouds sweep across the low country of the coast and are forced 

 upward as they meet the slopes of the Ridge. As they ascend 

 the air becomes more rarified and the temperature falls rapidly. 

 Thus the moisture with which they are laden is not only condensed 

 but frozen, and hailstorms of a violence approaching that described 

 in the narrative are not unknown. The dazzling glare and fierce 

 heat were replaced by a grateful shade and a bracing coolness. 



How was it that the hailstorm does not seem to have injured 

 the Israelites ? 



It seems to me that we may make a plausible conjecture from 

 noting the strategy which Joshua is recorded to have adopted 

 in his second attack upon Ai. His problem now was similar 

 but on a larger scale. The most obvious line of march for him 

 to take was up the valley of Achor, past the ruins of Ai, and so 

 to the little city of Beeroth, now become his ally, and thence to 

 move southward to the relief of Gibeon. But an advance by 

 that route would have left to the Amorites, if defeated, an easy 

 line of retreat to their base at Jerusalem. Could he again adopt 

 enveloping tactics ? We are not told whether he did or not, 

 but I would suggest that he may have sent a considerable detach- 

 ment to Beeroth under his lieutenant, with orders to draw on the 

 enemy as far from Gibeon as he could, until Joshua should signal 

 to him that the main army was successfully established upon the 

 Ridge between Jerusalem and Gibeon. As in the battle of Ai, 

 the important point was that neither of the Israelite forces should 

 be taken at a disadvantage while forcing their way up the ravines, 

 and before they could emerge from them and deploy upon the 

 tableland. He was operating in the very region where somewhat 

 later the eleven tribes suffered most terrible losses at the hands 

 of the Benjamites in the first inter-tribal war, the forces holding 

 the higher ground being able to overwhelm their opponents with 

 impunity. 



If this was Joshua's plan of campaign, his strategy was 



