When the Earth Stood Still: A Celestial Pause in Ancient Times

When Joshua led the conquest of the Land of Israel over the Canaanites, he was on the verge of a pivotal victory near the descent of Beth Horon. However, as the sun began to set, the Canaanites could have used the cover of darkness to flee, regroup, or escape.

Seeing this, Joshua pronounced, "Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon in the Valley of Aijalon," and indeed, the sun halted, "and did not rush to set for about a full day." The Israelites were granted additional daylight to fight and ultimately defeat the Canaanites.

A straightforward calculation reveals that if we experienced an extended day in our hemisphere, then the other hemisphere had a prolonged night. Imagine the poor Aztecs, awakening after a night's sleep and waiting for the sun to rise—but it never did... hour after hour, and still, no sunlight.

Rabbi Moshe Grylak notes in his book "Sinai, Then and Forever": "A letter published by the New York Times, penned by a researcher of prehistoric civilizations, caught our attention.

"The author, whose latest work is 'The Lost Regions,' delving into prehistoric civilizations, writes: 'Around the same time, approximately 1400 BCE, Aztec legends from Mexico recount that the sun did not rise for a full day over the city of the gods—Teotihuacan (located in northern Mexico). Similarly, Incan legends from Peru and the Andes of South America claim the sun refused to appear for about twenty hours.'

"Since an endless day and night are descriptions of the same phenomenon, albeit from polar angles of the Earth, the identical date—1400 BCE—when these remarkable stories appeared at opposite ends of the world coincides with the agreed date of Jericho's conquest by Joshua, inadvertently confirming the tale of the sun standing still at Gibeon."

An amazing story.

Today, we understand that the sun's movement is essentially the Earth's rotation around the sun. For sunset to halt, Earth would have needed to stop moving.

Thus, scientists have wondered: how could Earth stop its orbit? That would incite global chaos, as the inertia from homes, trees, and seas would lead to floods, destruction, and global catastrophe, whereas the biblical account describes everything continuing normally—except the sun.

The answer is that Earth did not need to "stop," nor did it need to stop "suddenly." It needed to gradually decelerate, allowing an additional 20 hours to pass, then return to normal speed very slowly, avoiding any damage.

Technically, the slowing rotation could be caused by the approach of another celestial body whose gravity slows the rotation, but we cannot precisely know how Hashem chose to perform this miracle. It's just one potential explanation, of course.