MAP OF SOUTHERN PALESTINE.[ToList]
Amorite Cities, thus: Hebron. Hivite Cities: BEEROTH.
Places taken by the Israelites: Jericho.
Conjectural line of march of Joshua: ...................
To do this they had to deceive the Israelites into believing that they were inhabitants of some land far from Canaan, and this they must do, not only before Joshua actually attacked them, but before he sent out another scouting party. For Beeroth would inevitably have been the very first town which it would have approached, and once Joshua's spies had surveyed it, all chance of the Hivites successfully imposing upon him would have vanished.
But they were exposed to another danger, if possible more urgent still. The headquarters of the newly formed Amorite league was at Jerusalem, on the same plateau as Gibeon, the Hivite capital, and distant from it less than six miles. A single spy, a single traitor, during the anxious time that their defection was being planned, and Adoni-zedec, the king of Jerusalem, would have heard of it in less than a couple of hours; and the Gibeonites would have been overwhelmed before Joshua had any inkling that they were anxious to treat with him. Whoever was dilatory, whoever was slow, the Gibeonites dared not be. It can, therefore, have been, at most, only a matter of hours after Joshua's return to Gilgal, before their wily embassy set forth.
But their defection had an instant result. Adoni-zedec recognized in a moment the urgency of the situation. With Joshua in possession of Gibeon and its dependencies, the Israelites would be firmly established on the plateau at his very gates, and the states of southern Palestine would be cut off from their brethren in the north.
Adoni-zedec lost no time; he sought and obtained the aid of four neighbouring kings and marched upon Gibeon. The Gibeonites sent at once the most urgent message to acquaint Joshua with their danger, and Joshua as promptly replied. He made a forced march with picked troops all that night up from Gilgal, and next day he was at their gates.
Counterblow had followed blow, swift as the clash of rapiers in a duel of fencers. All three of the parties concerned—Hivite, Amorite and Israelite—had moved with the utmost rapidity. And no wonder; the stake for which they were playing was very existence, and the forfeit, which would be exacted on failure, was extinction.
3.—Day, Hour, and Place of the Miracle
The foregoing considerations enable us somewhat to narrow down the time of the year at which Joshua's miracle can have taken place, and from an astronomical point of view this is very important. The Israelites had entered the land of Canaan on the 10th day of the first month, that is to say, very shortly after the spring equinox—March 21 of our present calendar. Seven weeks after that equinox—May 11—the sun attains a declination of 18° north. From this time its declination increases day by day until the summer solstice, when, in Joshua's time, it was nearly 24° north. After that it slowly diminishes, and on August 4 it is 18° again. For twelve weeks, therefore—very nearly a quarter of the entire year—the sun's northern declination is never less than 18°. The date of the battle must have fallen somewhere within this period. It cannot have fallen earlier; the events recorded could not possibly have all been included in the seven weeks following the equinox. Nor, in view of the promptitude with which all the contending parties acted, and were bound to act, can we postpone the battle to a later date than the end of this midsummer period.
