WITH rising anxiety, the King tightened up security even further: the gates were shut and none could enter or leave. But no storm of Israelites broke against the city walls. Instead, the King watched in bemusement as seven Hebrew priests led a slow procession around the city, carrying the golden chest of the Ark of the Covenant* and blowing on ram’s horns,* but otherwise in eerie silence. Nothing happened. The next day they did it again, and the next, for six days in all. Nothing happened.
On the seventh day the Israelites processed with maddening solemnity not once but seven times. Nothing happened. Then Joshua cried: ‘Shout’, and the Israelites shouted;* and with that shout the walls of Jericho shivered, tottered and heaved, and fell flat.* The exultant Israelites walked straight over the ruins into the city, torched it and slew every living thing in it, sparing none but Rahab and her family, whose refuge was marked by some scarlet cord hanging from her window.
* The Ark of the Covenant was a golden chest, borne aloft upon poles. In it were two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, which Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. The Ark was eventually deposited in the Temple built at Jerusalem by King Solomon in the tenth century BC, but it vanished from history when the Babylonian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Judah and sacked the Temple in 587 BC. According 2 Maccabees 2:1-7, the prophet Jeremiah (?650-?570 BC) had by then taken the Ark up into Mount Nebo (on the east bank of the Jordan) and walled it up in a cave ‘until the time that God gather his people again together, and receive them unto mercy’.
* The ram’s horn, or shofar, is a musical instrument of great ritual significance in Judaism, used at Rosh Hashanah (the New Year, typically in September) and at the close of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) which follows shortly after it.
* The Book of Joshua does not say what Joshua and the Israelites shouted; Handel’s Joshua has them cry ‘Glory to God’.
* See also The Alleluia Victory, in which St Germanus helped Welsh villagers defend their homes with a simple shout.