So says our text (v. 20). But the Rabbis of today have another mind. For they think that the walls of Jericho were not collapsed and dissolved, but, whole and cemented together, sank down as the earth gaped open — so that both their whole breadth, and [their] height, was only buried under the earth, yet safe and constant [intact]. This they take: first, from the Hebrew phrase, which at v. 4 is “And the wall of the city shall fall under it,” that is, “under itself”; and at v. 20, “the wall fell under it,” that is, “under itself.” Secondly, the Chaldee Thargum translates at v. 4: “and the wall of the city shall fall, and be swallowed up under it[self]”; [and at] v. 19: “the wall of the city fell, and was swallowed up.” Thirdly, the Talmudists, in the tractate Berachot, ch. 9, say thus: “Whoever sees the swallowed-up wall of the city of Jericho ought to use a favorable prayer [say a blessing].” And the same [Talmudists] go on, objecting to themselves: “But it is written [that it] was not swallowed up, but collapsed” — and they at once reply: “That is indeed written; but since its breadth and height still then stood firm together, it is concluded that it was swallowed up, not collapsed.” It is confirmed, fourthly, because after the mention of the walls it is immediately added, “And each one went up by the place which was over against him.” But how could anyone conveniently “go up,” if the walls were cast down and prostrate on the ground? For one would have had to go over rough and jagged heaps of stones and rubble. Fifthly: [given] such walls, so suddenly cast down and scattered — how great clouds of raised dust, how great a gloom, how great a blindness of all, would there have been? Sixthly: to this sense too the Latin Interpreter can easily be expounded. For he says only that “the walls collapsed” [corruisse]. But they could “collapse” in two ways: (1) if they were thrown apart and lay strewn on the ground in heaps of stones and lime; (2) if they were, as it were, dug down beneath themselves and wholly swallowed up. The Latin expressed neither mode, but asserted generally that they “collapsed,” not defining this or that mode of collapsing. Seventhly: this mode [sinking] was as easy for God as that the walls should fall forward and occupy the surface of the ground. Eighthly: to which side do we think they fell — inward, or outward? If inward, it is likely that all, or nearly all, of the men of Jericho were overwhelmed by their ruin. For it is quite probable that they were wont to run to the walls each day, while the Israelites circled — partly to defend them, if force were applied, partly to view with their own eyes that new and unusual circuit of the strangers and enemies. How much more on that seventh day, when, contrary to custom, the Israelites repeated those circuits of theirs so many times? And [when] there was added the new clangor of the trumpets, the new and most intense shout and shouting of all? But if all, or nearly all, had been crushed by that ruin, who then, at last, were those whom the Israelites are said to have slain with the sword? If the walls leaned and fell outward, nearly the same things would have happened — but this besides: that it would have thrown more obstacles and impediments in the Israelites’ way. But indeed the received opinion of all others is that those walls fell upon the very surface of the ground; and this is proved: (1) from the Hebrew text, where expressly, as we saw above, the wall is asserted [to be] “about to fall” and “to have fallen.” But what falls does not stand [remain]; and it is one thing to be dug down, and swallowed up whole by the jaws of the earth, and preserved [while] swallowed — [and] another to fall. The Hebrew naphal [נפל] agrees with the German verb fallen; nay, that [German word] is derived from this. Certainly no one would say in German: “wo ein Maur unter sich gesunken were, das ist gefallen” [“where a wall had sunk down under itself — [to say] that is ‘fallen’”]. As for what is added in the same Hebrew, “under it[self],” it does not have that force, that the wall be understood [to be] swallowed up beneath the earth, but…
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…but [it collapsed] onto the same [spot]. For at 1 Kings [1 Sam.] 14:9 it is also said in Hebrew, “and we will stand under us [= in our place].” How can anyone stand “under himself”? Did [Jonathan], when he said this, think that he and his armor-bearer, standing on the ground, would be swallowed up out of the earth? Ridiculous. But the sense is the one which our own interpreter best expressed: “let us stand in our place”; or, “let us not advance further.” The Hebrew, therefore, meant nothing else than that the walls of Jericho were not so taken away that they were carried off elsewhere I-know-not-whither, or that, springing apart this way and that, the stones were flung far off, but that they fell down in the same place in which they stood. Yet because this could be sufficiently gathered from the verb “to fall,” it was put in the [completed] past by the 70 and by the Latin — indeed also by St. Paul, Heb. 11:30. For they [render] thus: ἔπεσεν ἅπαν τὸ τεῖχος κύκλῳ [epesen hapan to teichos kyklōi, “the whole wall fell down round about”]; our [Latin]: “the walls fell down forthwith.” St. Paul: τὰ τείχη ἔπεσε [ta teichē epese, “the walls fell”]; and Josephus, book 5, ch. 1: κατέπεσε τὸ τεῖχος [katepese to teichos, “the wall fell down”]. 3. The same can be confirmed by replying to the things which were being objected.
And of the first [objection] it has already been spoken. To the second, indeed, it could be said that “the walls are swallowed up” when they fall, and fall into certain trench-like ditches, which perhaps the Chaldee Targum supposed to have been around Jericho. Whence — which was the third [point] — those later Talmudists who followed it [the Targum] are to be understood. To the fourth: if the walls collapsed into the city’s ditches after the manner of a bridge, or rather of a level road, they would have been [a way] for the Israelites about to enter the city; but if there were no ditches, how dainty are these soldiers whom they set before us, who would seem either unable or unwilling to rush into the city over the cast-down heaps of walls? The reply to [the point about] the dust, which is cast at our eyes in the fifth place, is the same. These are the soldiers’ daily banquets: “Dust, thirst, heat, sand — [things] sweet to valor.” Yet of this [I shall say] something again in the following question. To the sixth: it is better that the Chaldee Jonathan, and with it its Talmudic followers, be brought over into the common sense [of the passage], than that our interpreter be dragged into a foreign and absurd one. To the seventh: that mode [the sinking] is denied not as if difficult for God, but because Scripture does not assert it — indeed rejects it. To the eighth: if Jericho was surrounded by ditches, I should think the walls fell outward, to fill those up, as has been said; if otherwise, inward. That not all the men of Jericho were on the walls is nearer the truth — though without doubt there were very many; but that there were not a few in the marketplace, in towers or houses or other places [is also likely]; especially since there was now not so great a novelty [in the sight], after the circuits had already been watched several other times. But whichever opinion we follow, one difficulty always remains, concerning the house of Rahab. For since, in ch. 2, q. 21, it was taught that it was fixed in and built into the city’s wall, how, when that [wall] fell, did that [house] not collapse at the same time? It is answered that this part of the wall does not seem to have fallen; nor yet, on that account, is it badly said by the 70 that “the whole wall round about fell.” For how tiny is this little scrap of wall? And [there is] that moral note: “A little [thing] is reckoned as nothing.” Hither can be recalled the things which, at the cited q. of ch. 2, were brought forward from the most illustrious Duke of Olyka [Radziwiłł], a recent eyewitness of Jericho.