Joshua 8:24-11:9

How can the sun stay in the middle of the sky? As I see it, the earth has to stop rotating and orbiting! If the earth did stop rotating I guess everyone was roped to the dirt because without gravity they would all float around. Maybe this is why they so easily defeated the army. Also, how could you see the sun stop when there was a huge hail storm…these things can’t coexist? There is no real evidence of a missing day and the Egyptian, Chinese and Hindu account of the sun standing still are had, to say the least, to validate. Now I know that this goes against centuries if not millennia of tradition and biblical interpretation and translation, but I think I agree with current biblical scholarship that we have a translation issue, not a rotation issue.

In verse 13, the word translated “stood still” or “stopped” is the Hebrew word dōm and it is better translated “silenced”. The men had been chasing the army in the heat and could not continue on for the 18 hours of that day, but God silenced the sun through the deep cloud cover that also resulted in a hail storm. The cooler air and silencing of the sun allowed them to fight all day long.

Now if you need the sun to have stopped, I’m okay with that, but I think we just might have messed up on our translation back in the original King James that has continued on in tradition. It’s just my opinion!

​-Pastor Doug

---