Did the sun stand still for Joshua, when day and night were never to cease?

Genesis 8:22 promises that the order of the world will go on: seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night. It follows God’s word that he will not again “smite any more every thing living, as I have done” (8:21). Keil and Delitzsch take it of the regular round of day and night and of the seasons, which will never again be broken off as it was by the flood. One long day does not end that round. Night still came after the battle at Gibeon, as after every other day.

The book of Joshua itself treats the day as a single exception: “there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man” (10:14). A promise that God will keep the world’s order steady does not stop the same God from acting in a special way once, for a special purpose. The miracle and the promise come from one Lord, and neither cancels the other.

The passage also describes the event as it looked to those at Gibeon: the sun “stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down”. That is the language of appearance, like our ‘sunrise’; it says what was seen, not how it was done. Keil and Delitzsch point out that the words ‘hasted not to go down’ speak of the sun being slow to set, and that the text tells us that God heard Joshua’s prayer, not by what means he answered it. Christians therefore hold different views of the means, but the text does not ask us to choose one in order to see that Joshua and Genesis agree.

A real lengthening of daylight

Many, including Got Questions and Apologetics Press, take the passage to mean that God really prolonged the daylight, whether by slowing the earth’s turning or in some other way, such as by bending the light. The God who made the world can also guard it from the effects. The text does not say which.

A quotation from a song

Keil and Delitzsch note that verses 12–15 are quoted from the Book of Jasher, a collection of songs, and compare poetic lines such as “the stars in their courses fought against Sisera” (Judges 5:20). They still hold that the writer believed the day was miraculously lengthened.

‘Be silent’

The Hebrew verb in Joshua’s prayer, dom (H1826), means ‘be still’ or ‘be silent’. A few suggest that Joshua asked for the sun’s heat to be held back, or that the storm of hail (10:11) darkened the sky. Most commentators read the verse as a prayer for the day to be made longer.

Christian scholars are divided on what exactly happened in the sky that day. The popular story that NASA computers found a ‘missing day’ is a hoax, and Christian groups such as Answers in Genesis warn against using it.