The Astronomy of the Bible by E. Walter Maunder (feel good fiction books TXT) 📕

BEARINGS OF THE RISING AND SETTING POINTS OF THE SUN FROM GIBEON.ToList

But the moon cannot be as far as 17° north of west in latitude 31° 51´ N. on the 21st day of the month earlier than the fourth month of the Jewish year, or later than the eighth month. Now the 21st day of the fourth month is about seven weeks after the 3rd day of the third month; the 21st day of the fifth month is eleven weeks. Remembering how close Gilgal, Gibeon and Jerusalem were to each other, and how important was the need for promptitude to Israelite and Amorite alike, it can scarcely be disputed that eleven weeks is an inadmissible length of time to interpose between the reading of the Law and the battle; and that seven weeks is the utmost that can be allowed.

The battle took place, then, on or about the 21st day of the fourth month. But it could only have done so if that particular year began late. If the year had begun earlier than April 1st of our present calendar, the moon could not have been so far north on the day named. For the Jewish calendar is a natural one and regulated both by the sun and the moon. It begins with the new moon, and it also begins as nearly as possible with the spring equinox. But as twelve natural months fall short of a solar year by eleven days, a thirteenth month has to be intercalated from time to time; in every nineteen years, seven are years having an extra month. Now the 21st day of the fourth month must have fallen on or about July 22 according to our present reckoning, in order that the moon might have sufficient northing, and that involves a year beginning after April 1; so that the year of the battle of Beth-horon must have been an ordinary year, one of twelve months, but must have followed a year of thirteen months.

Summarizing all the conclusions at which we have now arrived, Joshua's observation was made at Gibeon itself, almost precisely at the moment of noon, on or about the 21st day of the fourth month, which day fell late in July according to our present reckoning; probably on or about the 22nd. The sun's declination must have been about 20° north; probably, if anything, a little more. The sun rose therefore almost exactly at five in the morning, and set almost exactly at seven in the evening, the day being just fourteen hours long. The moon had not yet passed her third quarter, but was very near it; that is to say, she was about half full. Her declination did not differ greatly from 16° north; she was probably about 5° above the horizon, and was due to set in about half an hour. She had risen soon after eleven o'clock the previous evening, and had lighted the Israelites during more than half of their night march up from Gilgal.

4.—Joshua's Strategy

These conclusions, as to the place and time of day, entirely sweep away the impression, so often formed, that Joshua's victory was practically in the nature of a night surprise. Had it been so, and had the Amorites been put to flight at daybreak, there would have seemed no conceivable reason why, with fourteen hours of daylight before him, Joshua should have been filled with anxiety for the day to have been prolonged. Nor is it possible to conceive that he would still have been at Gibeon at noon, seven hours after he had made his victorious attack upon his enemy.

The fact is that, in all probability, Joshua had no wish to make a night surprise. His attitude was like that of Nelson before the battle of Trafalgar; he had not the slightest doubt but that he would gain the victory, but he was most anxious that it should be a complete one. The great difficulty in the campaign which lay before him was the number of fortified places in the hands of the enemy, and the costliness, both in time and lives, of all siege operations at that epoch. His enemies having taken the field gave him the prospect of overcoming this difficulty, if, now that they were in the open, he could succeed in annihilating them there; to have simply scattered them would have brought him but little advantage. That this was the point to which he gave chief attention is apparent from one most significant circumstance in the history; the Amorites fled by the road to Beth-horon.

There have been several battles of Beth-horon since the days of Joshua, and the defeated army has, on more than one occasion, fled by the route now taken by the Amorites. Two of these are recorded by Josephus; the one in which Judas Maccabæus defeated and slew Nicanor, and the other when Cestius Gallus retreated from Jerusalem. It is probable that Beth-horon was also the scene of one, if not two, battles with the Philistines, at the commencement of David's reign. In all these cases the defeated foe fled by this road because it had been their line of advance, and was their shortest way back to safety.

But the conditions were entirely reversed in the case of Joshua's battle. The Amorites fled away from their cities. Jerusalem, the capital of Adoni-zedec and the chief city of the confederation, lay in precisely the opposite direction. The other cities of their league lay beyond Jerusalem, further still to the south.

A reference to the map shows that Gilgal, the headquarters of the army of Israel, was on the plain of Jericho, close to the banks of the Jordan, at the bottom of that extraordinary ravine through which the river runs. Due west, at a distance of about sixteen or seventeen miles as the crow flies, but three thousand four hundred feet above the level of the Jordan, rises the Ridge of the Watershed, the backbone of the structure of Palestine. On this ridge are the cities of Jerusalem and Gibeon, and on it, leading down to the Maritime Plain, runs in a north-westerly direction, the road through the two Beth-horons.

The two Beth-horons are one and a half miles apart, with a descent of 700 feet from the Upper to the Lower.

The flight of the Amorites towards Beth-horon proves, beyond a doubt, that Joshua had possessed himself of the road from Gibeon to Jerusalem. It is equally clear that this could not have been done by accident, but that it must have been the deliberate purpose of his generalship. Jerusalem was a city so strong that it was not until the reign of David that the Israelites obtained possession of the whole of it, and to take it was evidently a matter beyond Joshua's ability. But to have defeated the Amorites at Gibeon, and to have left open to them the way to Jerusalem—less than six miles distant—would have been a perfectly futile proceeding. We may be sure, therefore, that from the moment when he learned that Adoni-zedek was besieging Gibeon, Joshua's first aim was to cut off the Amorite king from his capital.

The fact that the Amorites fled, not towards their cities but away from them, shows clearly that Joshua had specially manœuvred so as to cut them off from Jerusalem. How he did it, we are not told, and any explanation offered must necessarily be merely of the nature of surmise. Yet a considerable amount of probability may attach to it. The geographical conditions are perfectly well known, and we can, to some degree, infer the course which the battle must have taken from these, just as we could infer the main lines of the strategy employed by the Germans in their war with the French in 1870, simply by noting the places where the successive battles occurred. The positions of the battlefields of Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, and Sedan would show clearly that the object of the Germans had been, first, to shut Bazaine up in Metz, and then to hinder MacMahon from coming to his relief. So in the present case, the fact that the Amorites fled by the way of the two Beth-horons, shows, first, that Joshua had completely cut them off from the road to Jerusalem, and next, that somehow or other when they took flight they were a long way to the north of him. Had they not been so, they could not have had any long start in their flight, and the hailstorm which occasioned them such heavy loss would have injured the Israelites almost as much.

How can these two circumstances be accounted for? I think we can make a very plausible guess at the details of Joshua's strategy from noting what he is recorded to have done in the case of Aï. On that occasion, as on this, he had felt his inability to deal with an enemy behind fortifications. His tactics therefore had consisted in making a feigned attack, followed by a feigned retreat, by which he drew his enemies completely away from their base, which he then seized by means of a detachment which he had previously placed in ambush near. Then, when the men of Aï were hopelessly cut off from their city, he brought all his forces together, surrounded his enemies in the open, and destroyed them.

It was a far more difficult task which lay before him at Gibeon, but we may suppose that he still acted on the same general principles. There were two points on the ridge of the watershed which, for very different reasons, it was important that he should seize. The one was Beeroth, one of the cities of