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12 Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the men of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel,

“Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon,
and thou Moon in the valley of Ai′jalon.”
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.

Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. 14 There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.[a]

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Footnotes

  1. 10.12-14 Joshua’s apostrophe to the sun occurs in a fragment quoted from an old collection of epic material, and the quotation goes on beyond verse 12. This would make a literal interpretation of this event undesirable. It appears from the narrative that a great storm occurred at the same time as the attack and powerfully helped toward the Israelite victory (verse 11). It is this sign of divine aid that is so graphically apostrophized in the following poetic fragment (verses 12-13).

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