God of the Valleys – The Valley Where the Moon Stood Still

God of the Valleys – The Valley Where the Moon Stood Still.

“Then Joshua spoke to the Lord Yahweh in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, ‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon; and moon, in the valley of Ayalon.’ So the sun stood still and the moon stopped, until the people had revenge upon their enemies. So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And there has been no day like that, before or after it, that the Lord Yahweh heeded the voice of a man.” (Joshua 10:12-14). 

The Valley of Ayalon is a beautiful, broad valley in Israel, full of good pasture lands, and located about fourteen miles from Jerusalem. It was the site of many military battles in biblical times, and ended up being the boundary between Judah and Israel during the divided Kingdom era.

The most famous battle in the valley of Ayalon involved the Israelite army led by Joshua against the coalition of five Amorite kingdoms. The Amorites wanted to destroy the city of Gibeon because the Gibeonites struck a peace treaty with Joshua. When the Amorites attacked and besieged Gibeon, Joshua had no choice but to respond. Joshua rode his men hard through the night on their midnight march to rescue Gibeon, which lay just on the outskirts of the valley of Ayalon. During their twenty-mile march, when they first met up with some Amorites, God sent huge hailstones down upon the Amorites, hailstones from heaven they were called, and the hailstorm ended up killing more Amorite soldiers than were killed by the Israelite army. The miracle with the hailstorm was an unexpected and dramatic battle plan from God, and the hailstones were termed by one scholar as “the artillery of heaven.”

Joshua wanted to finish off the Amorites right then and there in Gibeon, so Joshua made his outlandish request of the Lord…. “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and moon over the valley of Ayalon.” Astoundingly, the day was lengthened by additional sunlight, as Joshua’s forces succeeded in completing the rout of the Amorite enemy.

Skeptics of the Bible’s legitimacy have long used this miracle to prove their point. This is literally impossible, they say, knowing what we know now about how the universe operates. There would be natural catastrophes occurring all over the earth and the sky if its delicate timing of the solar system were disrupted. There is no plausible scientific explanation for this, they say, because the laws of nature and physics can’t possibly be changed like this.

Some things to think about regarding this miracle:

(1.) The earth rotates on its axis at about 1,000 m.p.h. Stop that?

(2.) The sun is moving as well, relative to the earth. It rotates at its equator once every 27 days, and travels through the Milky Way Galaxy at about 5000,000 m.p.h. This is getting to be a complicated miracle!

(3.) The earth revolves around the sun, so was it the earth that stood still, or the sun, or both?

(4.) We haven’t even mentioned the moon yet. The moon rotates on its axis as it revolves around the earth. The moon stopped as it rotated?

(5.) To accept this unprecedented miracle literally, we would need to acknowledge the powers of the Lord of creation. He is sovereign over nature, and He is able to suspend nature’s laws that He invented and put in place. Creator God is able to temporarily change the laws of physics supernaturally, and do whatever it takes to keep from having any number of cats trophies. It comes down to faith in God’s powers as we consider this apparently impossible, logically unthinkable miracle. The bottom line is, is there any reason we can’t accept this? Is there any reason we can’t consider this to be a once in lifetime astronomical miracle?

(6.) Don’t forget that the Lord caused the sun to darken at the Crucifixion for three hours (Luke 23:45). If Creator God can cause the sun to darken for a number of hours, He can certainly cause to the sun to continue shining as well. He can cause the moon to turn to the color of blood if He wants (Rev.6:12), or for that matter remove the sun and moon altogether (Rev.21:23).

(7.) What do we really know about how God does His miracles, anyway? How did He turn water into wine? Multiply bread and fish? Walk on water? Heal blindness? Cause fish to jump into a net? How did He part the Red Sea or send those plagues to Egypt? We simply don’t know how God performed those miracles in a scientific sense. That’s why we call them supernatural. They are outside of nature, like the sun and moon standing still.

(8.)  What better way to prove to the pagans that Yahweh the Creator of the world is more powerful than the sun gods and moon gods worshipped for so long?

Many explanations have been offered to try to make sense of this miracle, some of them are more reasonable than others:

(1.)  Joshua was using a figure of speech according to what he was perceiving. Maybe he was out in the sun for so long that day, and he accomplished so much more than he expected, that it seemed like the day was lengthened and the sun kept shining. After all, we say other things according to our perception even though we know they are not technically true, such as when we say that we are watching the sun rise and the sun set.

(2.) When Joshua wrote his book detailing Israel’s exploits taking over the Promised Land, he simply was reporting this incident poetically and not literally. He wanted to use descriptive terms that heightened the drama of the battle scene, he wanted to us some hyperbole to let the reader know that this was truly a very important win for the Israelites.

(3.)  This event was actually an “annular eclipse,” when the moon only partially covers the sun at night, enabling sunlight to occur during the evening hours.

(4.)  God did actually, literally stop the earth from rotating, and the sun from moving, and the moon as well, for twenty-four hours, coordinating this in a way that didn’t result in any disruption of our solar system.

(5.)  God slowed the earth’s rotation without fully stopping it, thus lengthening the day by slowing the earth’s rotation to 48 hours instead of the usual 24 hours.

(6.)  The sun and the moon standing still was just a timely mirage.

(7.)  A Yale astronomer and a Harvard research scientist have both claimed that in their research they have discovered that the earth is somehow twenty-four hours out of schedule. They say that through the centuries we have somehow lost a full day. These claims have not been confirmed or proven, and many other scientists consider this laughable.

(8.)  There have been unproven claims that there have been extended days found in the historical records of China, the Incas, the Aztecs, the Babylonians, the Persians, and in Egypt. This would be fascinating if true, but these claims have yet to be confirmed.

(9.)  This battle site was simply an incident of a local refracted light that lengthened the daylight.

(10.)  The Hebrew words for “sun stand still” suggests a meaning of “sun stop working,” which means the sun was too hot in the mist of the battle, and Joshua wanted the sun to down its brightness and heat to enable the overheated soldiers to continue fighting. Sun, you’re too hot and bright! Tone it down for awhile!

One way or another, Joshua called for the sun to stand still and for the moon to stop its circuit. Did Joshua realize the rather ridiculous request he was making of the Lord? Well, the result was an amazing, astounding miracle that has never been duplicated. But we already knew God can make things happen that we can’t understand, right?