193 - The Commissioning of Joshua [B]

Hebrews Lesson 193    April 8, 2010

^NKJ Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever."

We're going to get into some really interesting things tonight and first of all we have to go back to Hebrews 11 to see where we were last time.  Hebrews 11:30-31, these two verses introduce the next 2 examples. We started last week with background into Joshua. 

But here we read:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:31 By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace.

Now if you're familiar with the book of Joshua, what you will observe when you read those two verses in Hebrews is they're in reverse order. In one sense that the spy incident with Rahab happens first and then (in chapter 2), and the incident with the walls collapsing is in chapter 6. However the focal point in Hebrews 11:31 is that Rahab did not perish. The focal point here is not on the incident of the spies coming in Joshua 2, but on the fact that when the walls fell (verse 30) that they did not kill her. She was trusting in God to deliver her in the midst of the battle, in the midst of the conquest. 

Last time we got started in Joshua. Just thought I'd give you one more chance to remember it, to have a good visual image to remember Joshua. It is about conquest. The focus in Hebrew 11 is on "by faith" – by faith, by faith, by faith. The faith as I've said again and again so you won't forget it is that the faith is always in a specific promise of God. It is not in some sort of abstract principle or some generalization; but that what God is reminding us is that their faith was always focused on specific revelation and in almost all of these examples (at least from Abraham on), the focus is on the promise that God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

So here we have in Joshua 1:3-5 the promise that God makes to Joshua as he takes over the leadership of the Israelites to lead them into the land and to lead the conquest. 

God states in Joshua 1:3:

^NKJ Joshua 1:3 "Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses.

⁴ "From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.

 ⁵ "No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.

This is a tremendous promise to Joshua. Remember Joshua was one of the two spies that 40 years earlier had refused to be terrified by the giants in the land, by the walled cities and by the numerous people. He knew that God could deliver them and so his faith is only strengthened over the last 40 years; but he has this specific promise to go on that no matter what they faced, no matter what armies they faced, no matter what fortified cities they might face God is going to provide for them and God is going to give them the land that He has promised them. This promise goes back to passages as Deuteronomy 1:7-8 where in verse 8 God stated to Moses and Moses stated to the people just before they went into the land:

^NKJ Deuteronomy 1:8 'See, I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers -- to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -- to give to them and their descendants after them.'

That Abrahamic Covenant (that Abrahamic promise) is the basis for the whole book of Joshua. In fact it becomes a foundation for understanding almost everything that happens to Israel during the subsequent centuries. I think the Abrahamic Covenant lays the foundation for the rest of human history since the Abrahamic Covenant because that will then be the basis for God restoring the land to Israel in the future, establishing the Messianic Kingdom and the land that God promised to Abraham. So everything goes back to understanding the Abraham Covenant and its permanence.

Now at the time that Moses dies, he goes up on Mount Nebo. That is located in the Transjordan area east of the Jordan in what is now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Actually it's only about maybe 25, 30, 40 miles from the crossing of the Jordan River. Mt. Nebo is where Moses left, went up to the top of Mt. Nebo, and where he died. 

The Israelites are camped down in this lower area on the plains of Moab. They will get up, go down to the Jordan as I went over last time and there God will direct them to be led by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant. The water will not stop flowing until they put their foot down to actually take a step into the river. That must have called for tremendous amount of trust in the Lord that He would cause that water to stop because everything in their being would have told them that water's still coming. All the way down as their feet were just above the water, the water receded. 

Now there is a possible explanation that some people go to, to explain what happened here and how this could conceivably have taken place via a natural cause, and that the water stopped some 15 miles above the crossing point here. 

^NKJ Joshua 3:16 that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down into the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho.

There is a way in which God can cause something miraculous to happen via a natural cause. This doesn't diminish the miracle any because this happened exactly when the priests were putting their feet into the Jordan. But there have been known instances when the Jordan has been completely stopped for a period of time. The most recent time that occurred was back in the 1920's when there was an earthquake in the area and it causes mudslides to occur in the area of the Jordan. The mudslides come down and block the river and in 1920 there's a recorded incident when this occurred. Mudslides blocked the river.  The water completely stopped flowing for a little over 20 hours before it broke that earthen dam. So it is conceivable that that is one of the ways in which God caused this to happen through an intermediate means of a natural cause. But it's still every bit a miracle that it happened at the instant that the priest feet hit the ground. 

I'm not saying that's the explanation. God could very easily have just stopped the water with an invisible wall and held it for the time being. But this is an earthquake prone area where in the rift river valley where the geological plates come together and so this is an extremely earthquake prone area. I think that might even come to play in how God may have used an earthquake in bringing down the walls of Jericho.

So the people are then crossing over to Jordan; and they're going to approach Jericho. Here we have Jericho just here. Jericho is less than 20 miles from the Jordan.  So as they cross to Jordan the first thing they're going to do is head north to make camp at Gilgal. 

You can be certain that the Canaanites had their spies out watching the movement of the Israelites as they were coming. They knew all of the stories about how they left Egypt. They've been waiting for them for 40 years because they have heard the rumors that their land is going to be taken. They are preparing themselves and fortifying themselves in Jericho. 

Now the territory around Jericho today is not very hospitable. This is a picture taken about 100 years ago in black and white giving you some idea of the of the background to the area and the excavations of the Tel on the northern end of Jericho. That's what it looked like 100 years ago; and you can see some of the walls here that are outlined and were first beginning to be excavated in the late 1800's, early 1900's. 

This is another view today that you can see a little more clearly. The Tel-El-Sultan, which is where the remains are, is located in this is the area right here.  There's a little contrast for you to see that. This is the area of the Old City of Jericho. It wasn't very large. There were actually two walls. It's up on a little bit of a hill. The inner part of the city (the upper city) covered about 6 or 7 acres. Then if you had the whole Tel itself, it covered about 9 acres. 

At the time that the Israelites were coming, the people who farmed who lived outside of the city would have all come inside the city. So it's estimated that there were just several thousand people all within the walls of the city of Jericho.

Now as we look at these events, I want to start by going back to chapter 2 to pick up the initial reconnaissance that took place with the two spies and Rahab. As Joshua is getting ready to cross the Jordan and preparing his assault on the land he is going to send out two spies to form a reconnaissance to see what is going on and to get him some information. Now he is not making the mistake that the Jews made back at Kadesh Barnea. He is not sending out the spies to find out if they can do this; he is just getting information so that he understands the terrain, understands that people, and understands the fortification that are there. So these two spies come to Jericho, and it is obvious that they're not Canaanites and they're not from Jericho. And they are not very good at going into covert operations. 

It is very soon that the King of Jericho is made aware that these men have come into the city to spy out the countryside and see the lay of the land. They inform him that he is with Rahab who has called the harlot. At that time it was common for someone who perhaps ran some sort of a hostel or inn to provide services other than simply room and board. So that was her particular role.

These men have come to her seeking her out. Then she recognizes who they are. She understands something about God. She understands something about the Israelites and God's mission for them. So she is going to protect them. 

In verse 4 we're told the famous lie that Rahab told.

^NKJ Joshua 2:4 Then the woman took the two men and hid them. So she said, "Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from.

Now what's interesting and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. I'm just going to throw out a couple of things for you to think about. What is interesting about this episode is this is taking place in a military or warfare context where the spies are clearly on a mission for the army of God, which in this case is the Israelites. In a military context they are involved in a covert operation, which necessarily calls for a certain amount of deception to the enemy.

I think it's important for us to put this in the broader context of the angelic conflict in the warfare that God is engaged in with the enemies of His plans and operations whether those enemies are angelic or whether those enemies are human. I think perhaps one of the reasons that God has revealed things the way He did in the Old Testament. After the death of Christ on the cross we can go back and we can clearly see a number of things that were revealed in the Old Testament that are abundantly clear when we look at them through the lens of what happened at Golgotha. But if you all you had was the Old Testament and you didn't have the Holy Spirit … even John the Baptist was asking questions.

"Are you really the Messiah or should we be looking for somebody else?"

And He is his first cousin. He is heard all the stories from his mother about the birth of his cousin and miraculous virgin conception and birth with Mary.  And even he has doubts. So there is this uncertainty that even with all of the Old Testament, men didn't know quite what Jesus was going to do (what the Messiah was going to do).

I think God intentionally did it that way also to deceive Satan. Satan thought he had a trump card when he had Jesus crucified and it came back to bite him and that was his own death sentence that virtually defeated him at the cross even though he continues to fight on until he is finally and totally defeated at the end of the Armageddon campaign and then again when he's released at the end of the Millennial Kingdom and is sent to the Lake of Fire for eternity. 

God uses deception in warfare. I think that's important doctrine. God uses deception. We've seen this in our studies of 1 Kings 26 when God has the angels gather around Him (the sons of God) and He says, "Who's going to go out and deceive Ahab for Me? Who are we going to send that mission?"

We have a tendency (and I've taught it this way) where are these angelic convocations would include both the elect angels (the Holy Angels) as well as the fallen angels, but it's conceivable that God is sending an elect angel (not a demon) to exercise deception. 

If you look at the book of Joshua there are a lot of different types of deception in the book of Joshua as they are engaged in military conflict. After the battle at Jericho in the very next battle when they go to Ai and they fight the battle there, what do they do? They hide the majority of the Israelite army back up a canyon somewhere and they send in seven thousand troops who engage the men at Ai. They come out from behind their fortification and begin to defeat the Israelites. They fade back in a move that reminds me of the way the Apaches would often fight in the Southwest; they would fade back in. And they faded back into the mountains to a point where the remainder of the Israelite army (the majority of it) would then crush them from the side and ambush them - just a classic deceptive maneuver. We see God using deception in His battle in the warfare against Satan and the warfare against His human enemies.

I think this is an important doctrine to study. I have a friend who is a naval commander. He teaches military ethics at the Naval War College up in Rhode Island. He and I were in the Masters of Theology Program at Dallas Seminary and were also in the PhD Program of Historical Theology together. Tim has gone on to earn I think 2 more doctorates and 3 more master's degrees (or something like that) because the military will pay for all of this. So he's gotten additional degrees. He teaches military ethics. 

I called him up two or three years ago; and I said, "Tim, how do you handle Rahab as a foundation for covert operations and military deception and undercover operations?"

He said, "Hmm. I never thought of that."

He ought to do some thinking about that. That's a very interesting thing to think about. Unfortunately nobody has really thought about it or written on this as a as a doctrine or theology; but I think that that is very much worth exploring because that's the kind of situation that we have here. This isn't the kind of situation that you and I face on a day-to-day basis and just living our lives and we have to decide, "Well, are we going to lie or deceive somebody, or tell the truth?"

This is within a totally different context, the same type of context that you have with police officers who go undercover on drug stings, with CIA's operatives who are going undercover, in military operations and are having to tell lies and completely fabricate everything in order to carry out their mission. 

If you take what I consider to be a sort of a typical surface approach to this passage, where you look and say, "Well, this lie was wrong. Lying, deceiving at any time is wrong" – which is what most of us have heard over the years. Then when you come to a passage like this. If you are in the military and are thinking about a career in military intelligence or you want to go to work with the police or with the FBI (something like that) you have to have a theology that can incorporate deception without going into something like situational ethics. So this is an extremely tantalizing incident here, and I don't think that Rahab is doing anything that is morally or ethically wrong. She is operating within the context of warfare and she understands that.

So she says that the men came and went, and she doesn't know where they went. She had actually taken them up onto the roof where she hid them with stalks of flax, which she had laid out in order on the roof. These are other materials which she would be using in the running of her inn so to speak.

^NKJ Joshua 2:7 Then the men pursued them by the road to the Jordan, to the fords. And as soon as those who pursued them had gone out, they shut the gate.

They believed her. That is, the guards that the king sent out and they started chasing them. But as soon as they go out, they began to realize that she had not told the truth.

So she then goes up to the men in verse 8 and says to them: 

^NKJ Joshua 2:8 Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof,

^NKJ Joshua 2:9 and said to the men: "I know that the LORD has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us,

…which indicates the fear and panic that had already set in among the Canaanites.

and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you.

You've already won the main battle, which has to do with mental attitude and the commitment of the enemy to go to war. They have given up already.  They're already defeated mentally.

^NKJ Joshua 2:10 "For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.

^NKJ Joshua 2:11 "And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.

So she has a tremendous faith in God, and she is going to throw her lot in with the Israelites because she is convinced and has the faith in what God's plan is. 

So then she says to them:

^NKJ Joshua 2:12 "Now therefore, I beg you, swear to me by the LORD, since I have shown you kindness, that you also will show kindness to my father's house, and give me a true token,

^NKJ Joshua 2:13 "and spare my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death."

^NKJ Joshua 2:14 So the men answered her, "Our lives for yours, if none of you tell this business of ours. And it shall be, when the LORD has given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you."

The men swore to her that that's exactly what they would do. Then she let them out by a rope through the window for her house was on the city wall. 

Now I'm going to show you a video at the end of class. It will take about fifteen minutes that deals with the archaeology of Jericho. I ran across this video today. I had somewhat prepared to go through the material myself, but this work was all done by Dr Bryant Wood with the Biblical Research Associates. I found this great video where he gives all the information. There is nothing like hearing it from an expert who actually discovered and uncovered the information rather than hearing it second hand through me. So we'll look at that. But one of the things he points out when it comes to the end of the section we'll listen to this evening, he points out that when the archaeologists identified the walls of Jericho that there is one section on the north end where the walls were not destroyed. This is the area where Rahab's house would be. 

But this phrase "on the city wall" (which is a very difficult phrase to understand in the Hebrew) actually would mean "against the wall". That is how the city was constructed. As they have gone in and they've uncovered this, this house wasn't on top of the wall. It was up against the side of the wall.

So she allows them to get out and to escape and to hide until the pursuers are out of the way. The men then promise that if she would put out a scarlet rope to indicate her presence and where she was located then she would not be harmed. That's the introduction to Jericho. 

Now what happens in chapter 3 is that the Israelites cross the Jordan. Then in chapter 5 they go to Gilgal where they are circumcised which means that this generation is reaffirming the Abrahamic Covenant. Circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant. They're not going back to the Mosaic Covenant.  This is Abrahamic Covenant. This is a recognition that this land was given to them by God. The right to the land was given to them in the covenant with Abraham.

But before they can go into the land, they have to be as it were positionally sanctified in order to go into the land. This would be comparable once again to what we think of as salvation phase 1. This is a positional event. It's not something they would do again and again and again. But there will be times where they're disobedient and the nation will have to be cleansed again. For example, after the disobedience that occurs after Jericho. 

As we stopped last time, I came to verse 12 where the Commander of the Army of the Lord appears to Joshua. This is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ.

^NKJ Joshua 5:12 Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land; and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year.

Once they got into the land and began to eat from the fruit of the land, at that instant God ceased the manna supply because now they had the supply from the land. This is a time we know from within this context that is just after the harvest, so there is plenty of food for them to eat. They have a harvest at the end of the winter production because if you remember just before they crossed over the Jordan they celebrated Passover. They come in to the land and they are now going to be fed by the fruit of the land.

^NKJ Joshua 5:13 And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, "Are You for us or for our adversaries?"

^NKJ Joshua 5:14 So He said, "No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, "What does my Lord say to His servant?"

We know this isn't a creature.  This isn't an angel; this is a God Himself. This is actually the Second Person of the Trinity. 

^NKJ Joshua 5:15 Then the Commander of the LORD's army said to Joshua, "Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy." And Joshua did so.

…indicating again this is deity standing before him

Chapter 6 then begins telling us about Jericho. 

^NKJ Joshua 6:1 Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel; none went out, and none came in.

They had anticipated this. This is a diagram here of the Tel and what's been discovered through the archaeological digs. There were actually two walls. The purple line here represents the wall that was in place at the time that this conquest took place. The lower wall here was down the hill. It was an older wall and it may not have been in complete condition at the time. Then you also had a number of people in dwellings that were built outside of the upper wall in the purple-shaded area in between. We'll look and see a couple pictures later on indicating what that looked like.

This area as I said covered about 6 acres or so on top. When you add the other area it would expand to approximately 9 areas. What made this such a formidable site and a site to settle – because as you saw from pictures earlier it is pretty dry. I don't know if it was as dry then as it is now, but it was still somewhat dry – was they had a spring that provided water for them. The spring came up inside. Here's the modern reservoir of the spring. This spring is what still supplies water for the modern city of Jericho. So they had water inside the walls and because it was harvest they had just brought in the grain and all of this food is stored inside the walls. In fact the archaeologists have discovered huge pots (numerous pots of grain) of the grain that was stored during this time when the city was destroyed.

Now the text on the side, I'll read to you. This is a picture of what is called the 4^th city. There are various different levels and so this is the 4^th city. All scholars agree that it was violently destroyed, but there has been a lot of debate about this. There was a man back in the 30's named John Garstang a British archaeologist who did a tremendous amount of research. He dated the remains of city 4 around 1400 to 1500 BC and identified the remains that he found as the remains of the wall that fell down at the time of Joshua.

Then in the 1960's or so, there was some conflict on this. They also found signs of fire. A lot of places areas had been burned tremendously as a result of the collapse of the walls. Then in the 50's and 60's along came Kathleen Kenyon who reexamined Garstang's evidence, dug in another area, the area marked area B here. Area A was Garstang's dig. She's over here in B. Her conclusions were that this destruction was about 1550 BC. So this would be a 150 years before we would date the conquest. According to her evaluation of data, this was too early for the Israelites and nothing else is happening. Her conclusion was that there is no evidence anywhere of the walls falling down or the story Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho. None of that was there. That is what you'll see.

I remember back in 1979 in the fall of '79 taking a biblical archaeology class. Randy Price sat next to me. We were studying under Dr Barker at Dallas Seminary and were studying the archeology of Jericho.

He goes, "Well, we're uncertain. There's no evidence based on Kathleen Kenyon's findings. There's no evidence that the walls fell down because of the dating. We don't know what the issues are." She had completely challenged Garstang's evidence and that was the accepted scholarly opinion back in the 70's. 

This is a picture of the Tel itself from the air so you can see a little bit of the perspective on the general size of the city. It's not very large. Then this is an artist's depiction of what it would have looked like. The houses there are probably a little too far apart. They were much, much closer together. But you do get some idea of how some of these houses along here were right up against the wall. Then out here you have the Israelites marching around.

When God gave the instructions to Joshua, they were completely contrary to any kind of military advice and strategy that anyone would give in all of history. God told him that instead of organizing his troops in terms of strength, in terms of their weapons, in terms of the most value warriors out front, that instead they were to march around the city; all the men of war. Some suggest that this was just a representative number. Others say it would be all the men of war. If it was all the men of war, it was probably around 500,000. It would take some time for them to walk around the city even though it's not very large. If it's just a small group that's marching (a representative group), then they could walk around the city in about 30 or 40 minutes.

The instructions from God were that they would march around the city once a day for six days. During that time they would not make any noise. They would be led by 7 priests, who would carry 7 shofars (7 ram's horns) before the Ark. Then on the seventh day they would march around the city 7 times. Then and only then would they make a noise. The priest would blow their shofars and then at that point the people would shout with a great shout and the wall of the city would fall down flat. 

^NKJ Joshua 6:5 "It shall come to pass, when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of the city will fall down flat. And the people

Notice:

shall go up every man straight before him.

What is interesting is that there was a lower wall, which is the older wall, and then the upper wall around the upper part of the city. If those walls fell down, they would collapse and bricks would roll down and basically turn a hillside into a ramp that would allow the Israelites to make it up the hill. We'll see in the video how that's described in a minute. 

That's exactly what Kathleen Kenyan herself conformed, even though she denied that this could be dated in the period of 1400. Her charts from the rubble from the wall confirm that the walls had fallen down and that they had fallen down a certain way. We have her charts, which confirm this kind of thing. It's just that she was off on the date for various reasons, as Dr. Wood will explain in just a minute. 

So Joshua's condition here is that he has to believe God. This is what the writer of Hebrews is focusing on: that he believed God and trusted God. 

He goes back to his generals and gives them the instructions. The generals don't balk at all. These are the men that were born and raised during the time in the wilderness. This generation has a trust in God. They are not like their parents who came out from slavery and so they don't question the orders. They just trust in what the Lord has instructed them. They're the ones who've been living daily on manna day-in and day-out for the last 40 years, so they are going to follow God's instructions to the letter.  They began to carry out that instruction and each day they march around the city.

Then the last day comes and we read down in verses 15 and 16:

^NKJ Joshua 6:15 But it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early, about the dawning of the day, and marched around the city seven times in the same manner. On that day only they marched around the city seven times.

Then on the 7^th time in verse 16:

^NKJ Joshua 6:16 And the seventh time it happened, when the priests blew the trumpets, that Joshua said to the people: "Shout, for the LORD has given you the city!

At that instant the city walls collapsed. He says:

^NKJ Joshua 6:17 "Now the city shall be doomed by the LORD to destruction, it and all who are in it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.

^NKJ Joshua 6:18 "And you, by all means abstain from the accursed things,

You have to pay attention to the orders here.

lest you become accursed

…or come under discipline

when you take of the accursed things, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.

^NKJ Joshua 6:19 "But all the silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are consecrated to the LORD; they shall come into the treasury of the LORD."

Everything else was to be destroyed. 

^NKJ Joshua 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.

Why are they having to kill all the animals? This is because these are the domestic animals. God is showing that they weren't going to be living off of the proceeds of the pagan culture. That was the order for Jericho. It differs in different places. People did exactly what God said to do.

^NKJ Joshua 6:23 And the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had. So they brought out all her relatives and left them outside the camp of Israel.

^NKJ Joshua 6:24 But they burned the city and all that was in it with fire. Only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

After the walls go down, they go in. They burned the city. They take out all the silver and gold and bronze and iron and that goes into the treasury in the House of the Lord, and the promise to Rahab was fulfilled.

Now this is one of the most interesting episodes I think in all of Scripture because it teaches about how God is faithful, and we have good archaeological evidence which substantiates this. 

I want to play about 15 minutes (so our timing is good) of this video. We're going to need to turn the lights out because the illumination of the projectors isn't all that it should be. But this is Dr. Bryant Wood. These men with the Biblical Research Association are very conservative Bible believing creationists.  They take the dates and the numbers and all the data in Scripture to be absolutely accurate and true. Up until his work in the late 80 and early 90's everybody in Christendom believed that there was no evidence at Jericho. He just did a fabulous job of demonstrating the truth of Scripture.

"It's still only about 9 acres and as we'll see later there were people actually living on the embankment. Here is a cross-section through that fortification system, the purple-blue here showing the embankment.  Today it's preserved only up to about this height. The rest of it all eroded away. Then there's a brick wall at the top of that embankment about six feet wide and we know there was a wall there from an earlier phase of this fortification and Kenyon uncovered that earlier phase and it had a wall up there about six feet wide. 

Down here we actually have found portions of this lower wall at several places around the Tel and we know it was about six feet wide. That means the height of the wall would have been around twenty feet - approximately three times as high as it was wide. Then finally we have this stone retaining wall here which goes right down to bedrock and that held this embankment in place. Here is ground level and this is where the Israelites were walking around the city each day for seven days. You can imagine the thoughts going through their heads as they were looking up at this massive fortification system and thinking, 'Wow, how can we ever take this city?" But yet they followed the Lord's direction and they marched around it one time each day for six days and then on the seventh day they marched around seven times and then those walls came down.

Here's the description of the walls falling down as we have it in Joshua 6:20.  It tells us the people shouted. The priest blew the trumpets and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell flat. That's what all of our translation say - the wall fell flat. But when you look at the Hebrew text, there is a Hebrew word used there that does not mean "flat", but rather means the wall fell beneath itself. Well, you saw that cross section diagram. When those walls fell, what would happen? The mud bricks would just tumble down that embankment and be deposited at the base of that retaining wall. So literally the walls fell beneath themselves. 

It is interesting that the critical scholars will tell us that this story was written hundreds of years later. In fact most biblical scholars say the Old Testament was written during the exile period. Well, when we look at something like this we must wonder how would they know in the exile period that the walls fell beneath themselves. Obviously they would not know and obviously it wasn't written then; it was written by someone who observed the walls falling down. It's an eyewitness account and that is what our Scripture is. It's something that was written at that time.  It's not something written down hundreds or thousands of years later.

Then we read the people - these are the Israelite soldiers around the city - on that 7^th trip around (that 7^th day) they went up into the city. Here again, how would a later writer know that they went up? Why didn't they just run straight in? Well again, the person who wrote this down was observing what happened and they had to go up over that earthen embankment to get up to the city. Every man went up straight ahead and they took the city - just another artist's reconstruction of those events. 

Down at the southern end of the site of Jericho, there's been a recent expedition in the late 1990's undertaken by a team from the University of Rome. They cleared quite a long section of the retaining wall. Kenyon had previously dug a trench up to that wall; but she did not go beyond the wall to the area outside of the retaining wall. So the Italians as part of their work cleared a section of the wall. As you can see, it's a very high. I am standing at about the level of - ground level at the time of the Joshua and so you can see just this stone facing. This retaining wall is a huge barrier for the Israelites to get into the city. It's how high? 18 or 20 feet. Then on top of that of course the mud brick wall.

This is a view kind of looking down on that and you can get such a view because there is now a cable car that goes from the parking lot at the southern end of the town of Jericho up to the Mount of Temptation where there's a monastery up there kind of clinging to the cliff. This cable car will pick you up if you want to visit that monastery. But it passes right over that Italian excavation area. You can see the length of their dig there where they've exposed the retaining wall for that distance there. 

Notice the buildings here outside of the wall. When they constructed this wall they cut through the buildings that were there right along this line.  We clearly see that cut where they dug a trench down to bedrock; and then they built their stone retaining wall from bedrock up to support that earthen embankment. 

Well, this is important archaeology here because we know the sequence. First we have these buildings and then after that (after they went out of use) we have the construction of this massive wall.

The pottery in the buildings here dates to the very end of the Middle Bronze Period or very early in the Late Bronze Period, in other words right around 1500 BC. So again this is disproving Kenyon's date of some 50 years earlier for the destruction of the city. They were just building their final fortification system around 1500 which means the destruction happened sometime after that. From the pottery it would be about 100 years later than the construction of the fortification system. That is very important evidence that the Italians have provided for us.

Here's a view at the end of Kenyans west trench that she dug through the fortification system. Before she cut through this retaining wall, she cleared it off and took this nice picture and then she completed the trench and cut right through that retaining wall. But we can see again the great height of that wall.  The meter stick is what? One, two, three, four meters high.  So you can kind of calculate the overall height. Maybe it's two meters – it's hard to tell from the picture. 

Anyway the important thing I wanted to show you here are the remnants of the mud bricks up here. It is the first course of the mud brick wall that once stood there and that's the wall that fell. When the Italians first exposed that retaining wall there were chunks of mud brick on top of their wall as well. Here I'm putting my hand right on those mud bricks. This was taken I think in 1997. Since then the winter rains have washed these bricks away and they're not there today unfortunately. But they were there when they first opened up that area.

Here's a cross section through Kenyon's west trench – what we would call a bulk drawing. It gives us the details again of the fortification system with the yellow showing the earthen embankment. Here's our retaining wall. Here's ground level. Notice what Kenyon discovered when she dug beyond that retaining wall, a great pile of what she calls fallen red bricks. Isn't that interesting? A pile of fallen red bricks. And what does she say about it? In her excavation report she tells us the first tip line (that's this sloping surface here) was fallen red bricks piling nearly to the top of the revetment (that's what she calls this retaining wall). You can see the bricks go nearly to the top of that retaining wall. These probably came from the wall on the summit (She's talking about the mud brick wall up there) of the bank or the brickwork above the revetment. Isn't this interesting? She is saying that that pile of bricks came from the city walls. That's where the bricks were deposited when the walls fell down. 

For Kenyon it had nothing to do with the biblical account because of her incorrect dating. For her, this happened 150 years before Joshua. But once we get the dating straightened out and we know that the city was destroyed in about 1400 then we realize this is evidence for the fallen walls of Jericho.

And this isn't the only example. Every place around that Tel where archaeologists have dug they have found a similar pile of bricks. Let me go back and take one more point before we leave that section view there.  Well okay, the walls fell down. How were the Israelites going to get up over this retaining wall, which was very high? Well, notice how those bricks fell. It was in such a way as to form a ramp. So the Israelites could just scramble over that pile of collapsed mud bricks and go up into the city just as the Bible tells us. 

Down here at the base of the retaining wall and in the bulk of the Italian dig you can clearly see the same pile of bricks piling up against the retaining wall as Kenyon found just a short distance away in her west trench. Everything at the base of that retaining wall is all collapsed mud brick that they left there - some of that mud brick.

Chip is going to go to Israel in August and he's got to jump down in that trench and he's going to bring us back one of those bricks. 

Okay, evidence is still there today and this just shows some of the places around the city where they have excavated up against that retaining wall and found similar evidence. 

Well, if the walls fell down, what about Rahab's house? We mentioned the spies going into her house and when she hid them and the king's men left, then we're told that she let them down by a rope through the window for her house was on the city wall so that she was living on the wall. Now other translations might have something slightly different - maybe her house was in the wall or corner of the wall or something like that. In fact the translators really don't know how to deal with the Hebrew that we have here.  But now that we have the results of the excavations, we can more precisely translate the Hebrew here. 

The Hebrew actually says that her house was built against the vertical surface of the city well. Qirah chomah – chomah is the word for the big city wall. Qirah is the word that usually means small wall; but in this case it means the vertical surface of the wall. That is a meaning that we encounter sometimes in the Old Testament and so her house was qirah against the vertical surface; chomah, the city wall. So the city wall was actually kind of the back wall to her house and she had an opening there to let in some light and fresh air. By letting the spies out of the window of her house, they were able to go down over the city wall. 

Then she said, "Flee to the mountains."  And that was quite close by.

Then later the Israelite spies went back to her house and rescued Rahab and her family. You remember they have made that covenant. If she would hide them from the king's men and save their lives, they would save her life when they attacked the city.

They said, "Put this red rope out the window of your house so that we will know which house is yours."

Well, if the city fell, how would her house survive? Well, archaeology gives us the answer. Up at the northern end of the site, all of the expeditions excavated the trenches through that fortification system and they found that the wall was still standing at the northern end of the site. The Germans found it still standing to a height of about 9 feet.Can you imagine after 3400 years still standing to a height of 9 feet? 

Garstang found a similar situation maybe not quite as high as the Germans but still quite high and Kenyan found just a bit of it here but enough to show that it was still remaining there to some extent.  But that wall did not fall.  That is what we're determining from these remnants that are remaining there.

Here's Garstang's dig and we see again our retaining wall here.  Then here's what's left of that brick wall.  It's 8 feet wide.  It looks like it's even higher than 6 feet.  But it shows that in the northern part of that Tel the wall did not fall for a short distance. 

Here is a plan looking down on the findings from the German dig with our retaining wall right here and our mud brick wall running along here. We see that houses are built on the slope right up against the lower brick wall. This must be the area where Rahab's house was located. I don't know which one is hers. We don't know her address so we weren't able to figure out which house she lived in. But it must've been one of these houses on the north side of the Tel. Of course the north side is the closest side to those mountains and these spies could easily escape from there to the mountains. 

That explains how Rahab's house was able to survive because God preserved it. And He preserved the wall there on the northern side for that short distance. Here again we can see our retaining wall and then here's the mud brick wall this is from the German dig. Notice all the houses there on the embankment. This must have been a poor part of town – sort of the overflow from the upper city and this is apparently where Rahab lived. 

Here is an artist's reconstruction of that. The houses were much smaller, more tightly packed than what he shows here but it gives you an idea of the situation there and where Rahab's house was located. Her house would have looked something like this with flax drying on the roof, the hole or opening there where the spies escaped. 

Today you can still walk around the site of Jericho and every little ways you can see the top of that stone retaining wall kind of popping up through the earth. If you care to walk around it takes about a half an hour to go around the site of Jericho. 

Now we're going to go over to the southeast slope where they found the evidence for the burned the city. The area here to the south…

Well I thought you would enjoy hearing him go over that material. That is still today not fully accepted by a lot of liberals because their presupposition is that God really didn't do anything supernatural – "you can't prove that. There were no miracles". Then of course you have the minimalists who try to say that there's no evidence of Jews at all in the land until much, much later. They want to say that the House of David was mythical and all these other things. 

So these guys have done a tremendous service I think in demonstrating how archaeology done correctly really does show (demonstrates, substantiate) the claims that we have in Scripture. 

Now back to the beginning we saw that by faith Joshua and by faith Rahab… So their faith was in the promise of God to give the land to Israel and so they were willing to trust God no matter what the difficulties in life might be. The challenge to the readers of Hebrews (the challenge to us) is to do the same thing; that whatever the difficulties we may have no the matter how insurmountable they might appear that we are to trust in God who is more powerful than any difficulty that we perceive in life. 

Let's bow our heads and close in prayer.

Illustrations