God’s Battle Strategy For Joshua And Our Spiritual Obedience
When we talk about Jericho, we are not talking about a little desert village. This place is one of the oldest known cities in the world. Archaeologists call it Tel es Sultan, a mound built from thousands of years of human living. Every civilization that lived there left behind layers, like pages in a history book written in dirt. When Israel arrived in Joshua 6, they were staring at a fortified structure that was ancient even then.
Excavations, especially those by John Garstang in the 1930s, uncovered something remarkable. Jericho’s walls were not a single wall. They were a system. At the base was a huge stone retaining wall, about twelve to fifteen feet high. On top of that sat a mudbrick wall another twenty to twenty five feet tall. And behind that, further in, was a second wall. From the ground level outside the city, an approaching soldier would be looking at what appeared to be a thirty five to forty foot barrier of stone and brick. Humanly impossible to breach.
And yet God told His people to walk around it in silence.
The Hebrew word for their army, the tzava (צבא), reminds us that Israel did not see themselves as a band of fighters hoping to survive. They saw themselves as a divinely arranged force, appointed for a holy purpose. The modern reader might picture an army waiting for orders. The ancient Hebrew reader would picture an army already acting under the orders of heaven.
Garstang’s dig uncovered something else that fits Joshua 6 perfectly. He found that the mudbrick walls had literally collapsed outward. Not inward like a city under attack. Outward. That is unusual. Attackers push walls inward. But Jericho’s walls fell in such a way that the collapsed bricks formed natural ramps up into the city, exactly what Joshua 6:20 describes when it says that Israel went straight up into the city. The archaeology and the Scripture match like a hand to a glove.
Later excavations by Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s challenged Garstang’s dates, but the physical evidence of fallen walls still stood. Even scholars who disagreed about timing could not deny what was in the dirt, that the walls fell, and that they fell outward. More recent analyses have suggested that Kenyon’s dating was too narrow and that the collapse likely fits the biblical timeframe far better than she thought. The debate continues, but the stones keep preaching the same sermon. Jericho’s walls fell. And they fell strangely.
When you layer that archaeology with the Hebrew verb ḥarash (חרש), the quiet marching of Israel suddenly becomes powerful. Ḥarash paints that picture of slow, deliberate movement, the way a plow moves through soil, turning the earth with patience. God was preparing the ground for something that would shock both Israel and Jericho.
Jericho was not only fortified. It was wealthy. Archaeologists found jars filled with charred grain in the remains of the city. Tons of grain. That matters, because grain was currency. It was life. If an invading army had captured Jericho, they would have taken the grain. They would have emptied those jars. But they were found full and burned. That detail mirrors Joshua 6:17, where God commands that the city be burned and not plundered. Israel did not take the grain. They obeyed. And the archaeology freezes that obedience in time.
The presence of so much stored grain also proves something else. Jericho had not been starved out. The siege had not lasted long. A long siege empties storage bins. A short one leaves them full. Israel obeyed for seven days, not seven months, and God acted exactly in that window.
The marching was an act of shama (שמע), hearing with the intention to obey. And because they obeyed, the city that sat on its ancient mound, guarded by walls and filled with provisions, fell without a single human hand pushing a brick.
Archaeologists note another detail that catches the eye. One section of the wall on the north side did not collapse. The stones remain standing, while the rest of the city shows clear evidence of destruction. Some scholars believe this preserved section corresponds to Rahab’s house, the place described in Joshua 2 and spared in Joshua 6:22. It sits on the lower northern slope, exactly where her house would need to be if she could hang a cord from her window over the outer wall. The Scripture describes it. The archaeology agrees.
With this history under your feet, the seven days of silence start to shine. Jericho was impressive. Humanly secure. Ancient. Arrogant. And there walked Israel, one lap at a time, priests carrying the ark, seven priests carrying seven shofarot (שופרות), the people following behind. Day after day, no change on the surface, but everything changing under the surface.
Like resonance in physics, where small rhythmic forces build until strength gives way. Like neurons in the body sending tiny signals until the threshold is reached and power is released. Israel walked in obedience until heaven said enough. Now.
Then came that seventh day. Seven laps. The blast of the shofar, the shout, the collapse. The excavated stones tell the same story. The ground did not simply shake. The walls did not slowly erode. They fell suddenly, violently, outward, as if pushed by a force that originated outside the city rather than inside. The people of Israel did not break those walls. The God of Israel did.
This is where the Hebrew word ḥesed (חסד), God’s covenant love, glows like a lamp in a dark room. His faithfulness held His people steady during the silent days. His love wrapped around their obedience. His timing brought the victory. And His word shaped their marching.
And this is exactly how our lives work. Some of the walls we face have been standing for generations. Some look ancient, immovable, fortified. Some are built of years of pain, habit, addiction, fear, generational patterns that feel older than we are. And God says, “Walk with Me. Trust Me. Take another lap.”
That quiet obedience, that shama, becomes a spiritual resonance. It builds. It grows. It gathers force. Until one day, God says, “Now”.
And the wall falls.
The kol (קול), the voice of our faith, may be quiet. But heaven hears every step.
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