Then the thought came to Joshua, "Why should night come? Why should not the sun and the moon stand still in the heavens until this battle is finished and the Amorites are driven back?"
DESTRUCTION OF THE ARMY OF THE AMORITES.
And as he thought, lo! the prayer was answered, and the sun and the moon did stand still.
Hour after hour passed; the two armies fought on; the Amorites grew weaker and weaker. Why did not the sun go down? Why did the darkness not come to give them rest?
At last the Amorites could hold out no longer. The army turned and fled. The Israelites pursued. The kings hid themselves in a great cave. But Joshua pursued these still. He rolled great stones up before the cave and held them there prisoners. Then, when the Amorites had been scattered, Joshua came back to the cave, brought out the offending kings and slew them all.
So the contention for the possession of the land of Canaan went on. One by one the tribes were overcome; and at last Canaan was in the control of the Israelites.
But now Joshua had grown to be an old man. He knew that the end of his life was near at hand. So he called the people together and told them, even as Moses had told them, of all the wonderful things that had happened to God's chosen people in all the four hundred years since they had come out of Egypt.
Then he appealed to them in the name of God, who had led them safely into the land of Canaan; he begged them never to forget that they were the Children of Israel, and that the religion of the people into whose land they had come, an idolatrous religion, was not for them. Then the people all promised to be true to the religion of their fathers; and Joshua, taking the great book of the law, wrote their promise in it. More than that, he rolled a great stone up beneath an oak tree and said, "Look at the great stone. It has heard your promise that you will serve always the one God. Guard that stone; and let it be a remembrance to you of the promise you have made."