* * * * *
"SUN, STAND THOU STILL UPON GIBEON!"
(JOSH. x. 12.)
(Vol. iii., p. 137.)
The observations of I. K. upon this passage have obviously proceeded from a
praiseworthy wish to remove what has appeared to some minds to be
inconsistent with that perfect truth which they expect to be the result of
divine inspiration. I. K. doubtless believes that God put it into the heart
of Joshua to utter a command for the miraculous continuance of daylight.
But why should he expect the inspiration to extend so far as to instruct
Joshua respecting the manner in which that continuance was to be brought
about? Joshua was not to be the worker of the miracle. It was to be wrought
by Him who can as easily stop any part of the stupendous machinery of His
universe, as we can stop the wheels of a watch. Joshua was left to speak,
as he naturally would, in terms well fitted to make those around him
understand, and tell others, that the sun and moon, whom the defeated
people notoriously worshipped, were so far from being able to protect their
worshippers, that they were made to promote their destruction at the
bidding of Joshua, whom God had commissioned to be the scourge of
idolaters. And when the inspired recorder of the miracle wrote that "the
sun stood still," he told what the eyes saw, with the same truth as I might
say that the sun _rose_ before seven this morning. Inspiration was not
bestowed to make men wise in astronomy, but wise unto salvation.
Those who think that the inspired penman should have said "the earth stood
still," in order to give a perfectly true account of the miracle, have need
to be told, or would do well to remember, that the stopping of the diurnal
revolution of the earth, in order to keep the sun and moon's apparent
places the same, would not involve a cessation of its motion in its orbit,
still less a cessation of that great movement of the whole solar system, by
which it is now more than conjectured that the sun, the moon, and the earth
are all carried on together at the rate of above 3700 miles in an hour; so
that to say "the earth stood still" would be liable to the same objection,
viz., that of not being astronomically true. I. K. carries his notion of
the "inseparable connexion" of the sun "with all planetary motion" too far,
when he supposes that a stoppage of the sun's motion round its own axis
would have any effect on our planet. The note he quotes from Kitto's
_Pictorial Bible_ is anything but satisfactory; and that from Mant is
childishly common-place. Good old Scott adverts with propriety to the
Creator's power to keep all things in their places, when the earth's
revolution was stopped; but when he endeavoured to illustrate it by the
little effect of a ship's _casting anchor when under full sail_, he should
have consulted his friend Newton, who would have stopped such an
imagination. Another commentator, Holden, has argued, in spite of the
Hebrew, that "in the midst of heaven" cannot mean mid-day, having made up
his mind that the moon can never be seen at that hour!
Such helpers do but make that difficult which, if received in its
simplicity, need neither perplex a child nor a philosopher.