Seven days, seven trumpets, one shout: the fall of Jericho in Joshua 6

Jericho’s walls were strong, and its gates were shut tight. Israel had no siege engines and no experience of attacking cities. God’s battle plan sounded strange: walk around the city and blow trumpets. The story of Jericho has become a symbol of faith meeting impossible odds.

Rahab and the spies

After Moses died, Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan. Crossing the Jordan River, they faced Jericho, the first great obstacle. Before the battle, Joshua sent two spies into Jericho. A woman named Rahab hid them and helped them escape, asking that her family be spared. The spies told her to tie a scarlet cord in her window.

Joshua 6 begins: “Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.”

The instructions

God told Joshua that the army should march around the city once a day for six days, with seven priests carrying trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the covenant. On the seventh day, they were to march around the city seven times. Then the priests would blow a long blast, the people would shout, and the wall would fall down flat.

Joshua ordered the people not to shout or speak until the day he told them to. For six days, they marched in silence, apart from the trumpets.

The shout

On the seventh day, after the seventh circuit, Joshua said: “Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.” The people shouted, and the wall fell down flat. Rahab and her family were brought out safely, as the spies had promised. She later appears in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. The story is often used to teach obedience to God’s instructions, even when they seem strange.

Walls that fall

The victory did not come on the first day. The Israelites had to march for a week before anything happened, a lesson in patience that many believers find encouraging. Songs about Jericho’s walls are popular in African churches, often sung during prayer meetings with marching and shouting. Many believers speak of their own “walls” of difficulty. Jericho’s story reminds them that the way through may look odd, may take time and may require them to keep walking before anything changes.