Jericho #13

Jericho, an ancient oasis city near the Jordan River, is the first city Israel conquers upon entering the Promised Land, and its fall stands as one of the Old Testament’s best-known miracles. Before the attack, Joshua sends two spies into the city, where a prostitute named Rahab hides them from the king’s men on her roof. Convinced by the report of Israel’s conquests that resistance is futile, she tells them, “I know that the LORD hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us” (Joshua 2:9), and in exchange for hiding them she is promised safety for herself and her family when the city falls (Joshua 2:1-14).

The Fall of the Walls

Following God’s specific instructions, Israel’s army and priests, with seven priests bearing trumpets of rams’ horns before the Ark of the Covenant, march silently around Jericho’s walls once a day for six days, then seven times on the seventh day. At the sound of the trumpets, Joshua commands the people to shout, “and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city” (Joshua 6:20). Rahab’s household is spared as promised, and she is later named in the genealogy of Jesus as an ancestor of David (Matthew 1:5). Joshua pronounces a curse on anyone who rebuilds the city (Joshua 6:26), a curse later noted as fulfilled in the days of King Ahab (1 Kings 16:34).

Later Appearances

Jericho reappears in the ministry of the prophet Elisha, who heals its contaminated water source by casting salt into the spring at the Lord’s word, making the water wholesome (2 Kings 2:19-22). Centuries later the city appears prominently in the Gospels: as Jesus leaves Jericho, a blind beggar cries out, “Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me,” and Jesus restores his sight (Mark 10:46-52). Within the city, Jesus calls the despised tax collector Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree he had climbed to see over the crowd, and after Zacchaeus pledges to repay everyone he has cheated, Jesus declares, “This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9).

Today

Tel es-Sultan, the archaeological mound northwest of the modern city, is among the oldest continuously inhabited sites known, with excavation layers documenting walled settlement stretching back many thousands of years, well before the era of Joshua. Excavations by John Garstang in the 1930s and Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s reached different conclusions about which destruction layer, if any, corresponds to the biblical conquest, and the question remains debated among archaeologists, some of whom argue the relevant Late Bronze Age city was too small or poorly preserved to test the narrative directly. Modern Jericho, in the West Bank, is often described as one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth.