30 Amazing Bible Stories You May Not Know
#14: The Longest Days of History
The Most well-known Day the Sun Stood Still | Joshua 10
- Verses 1-2 – Fear in the heart of the King of Jerusalem.
- Verses 3-5 – The five-king confederation goes against Gibeon, an ally of the Hebrews.
- Verses 6-11 – The great battle and its aftermath kills many (but not all) of the coalition of kings.
- Verses 12-14 – The back-story to verses 6-11.
- Verses 12-14 are the fifth of ten shirot (songs) in the Hebrew Scripture. They give praise for events in Israel which the hand of God wrought.
- Verse 12a – Then spake Joshua must be interpreted carefully.
- Is this saying, “then, after the battle, Joshua spoke?” This would be the normal English reading.
- The most basic meaning of the Hebrew are words like formerly, beginning, before, since.
- It seems best interpreted to put this song as an interpretation of the previous verses, not a chronological follow-up.
- Verses 12b-13 – the song itself:
- Joshua commands the sun to stand thou still over Gibeon (in the south) and the Moon over Ajalon (in the north).
- Verse 13 gives the result: the sun stood still, mentioned three times in this verse.
- It is really near impossible to interpret these words (in English or Hebrew) in any way other than the plain sense.
- What is the book of Jasher? The historian Josephus speaks about this account and mentions that it is written “in the books laid up in the Temple” (Antiquities of the Jews, 5:61) These books were likely lost in the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.
- Verse 14 says that this is the only day in which the Lord harkened unto the voice of a man.
- Verses 15-27 – the rest of the very long day, till the sun goes down.
The Lengthened day of Hezekiah | 2 Kings 20:1-11
- Verse 1 – the grave situation.
- Verses 2-3 – Hezekiah’s prayer.
- Some believe that Hezekiah wrote Psalm 120 (and others) and that his prayer is seen in the Psalm, especially verse 1.
- Verses 4-7 – Isaiah’s good news.
- Why did God answer Hezekiah’s prayer? Psalm 132:11 compared to verse 6, for my servant David’s sake.
- Concerning the medicine of figs, Jewish Middle-Ages commentator Rashi says, “[This was] a miracle within a miracle, for even healthy flesh - when you place a cake of pressed figs upon it, decays, yet the Holy One, Blessed be He, puts an injurious substance upon vulnerable tissue and it becomes healed.”
- Verses 8-11 – the sign that Hezekiah would live.
- The Lord granted Hezekiah 15 years of life (v. 6), and the “10 degrees” on the sundial was the promise.
- The word degrees is used six times in verses 8-11 (and five times in the corresponding account, Isaiah 38:8).
- Psalms 120-134 are called “A Psalm of Degrees.”
- The Hebrew says “A Psalm of The Degrees.”
- Which degrees? Could it be a hint that there are 15 Psalms of degrees, and these each correspond very well to Hezekiah’s predicament? Compare 2 Kings 20:5 with Psalm 122:1, for example.
The Third Almost Unknown Day the Sun Stood Still | Habakkuk 3:11
- Habakkuk 3 is a Psalm that is not found in the book of Psalms.
- This Psalms is a key to interpretation of the Psalms in that it shows us the pattern that Psalms have a superscription and a subscription and that all modern Bibles have these in the wrong place! To the chief singer… (v. 19) is a subscription!
- Habakkuk 3:11 prophetically declares that there is one more day in which the sun will stand still, and that is the day of the Lord’s arrival.
