The Greek 70 Interpreters asserted this at verse 5, when they render, πεσεῖται αὐτόματα τὰ τείχη τῆς πόλεως [peseitai automata ta teichē tēs poleōs, “the walls of the city shall fall of their own accord”]. Now in inanimate things that is said to happen “automatically” [αὐτομάτως] and “spontaneously” which comes about from them with no force or externally-applied operation: just as, in Demosthenes, αὐτόματος θάνατος, a natural death, which no external force but the interior corruption of the humors produces; in Hesiod, Works [and Days]: “diseases come of their own accord” [αὐτόματοι φοιτῶσι]; in others, αὐτόμαται μηχαναί, machines which are moved by themselves. How, then, without any force — at least any applied externally — was the overthrow of those walls brought about? Were they decrepit through weak foundations, ruinous with age, of faulty material, rotten in structure, sapped by the injury of rains and storms? None of these. And therefore it is to be said that they “collapsed of their own accord,” if indeed [only] the force which is applied by men, and which falls under sight, be considered; but if the Angelic force and impulse, which is not perceived by the eyes, be looked at, [it is to be said] they “did not collapse of their own accord.” For these [Angels] either undermined the foundations of those [walls], or by some hidden manner dissolved their bonding with their most efficacious efficacy, and overthrew them entirely; but of the Israelites there were, against those walls, absolutely no battering-rams, catapults, mines, or assaults. And this Josephus indicated not obscurely, when he wrote, in the place often cited: κατέπεσε τὸ τεῖχος μήτε μηχανῆς μήτε ἄλλης βίας αὐτῷ προσενεχθείσης ὑπὸ τῶν ἑβραίων [“the wall fell, though neither engine nor any other force had been applied to it by the Hebrews”] — that is, “the wall fell, though neither engine nor any other force had been brought against it by the Hebrews.”
But it could again be asked, of what kind were they who produced this ruin — [were they] Angels? evil or good? For those [evil ones], indeed, employed as executioners upon the crimes of the Canaanites, could well have thrown these walls into disorder, and either crushed those [men] by their ruin, or cast them forth to be slaughtered by the swords of the Israelites. Yet I should rather believe that this whole thing was done by good Angels — and indeed either by that very one who introduced this assault to Joshua and predicted the victory, or by others, but at his command and bidding. For it seems [fitting] that, of a victory so great and so admirable, whose author and giver [was] the Lord, the ministers were good rather than evil Angels — [Angels] who, after the Israelites had so many times, and so piously, and so obediently and humbly undertaken the circuits, the carryings of the sacred ark, the sounds of the trumpets, paved a road into the city, and visited the impious with punishment and disaster, the pious with victory and reward. For the same holy Angels destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with heavenly flames, [and] led out pious Lot safe and unharmed; the same — as the more probable opinion, which I set forth in [my work] on Exodus, holds — smote Egypt with all the plagues, divided the Red Sea, led the Israelites through it, [and] submerged Pharaoh in it with his chariots and horses. Why, then, should not the Angels — happy [themselves] — open a happy road for Joshua in Jericho? And these could most easily have turned away all the dust and the roughness of the wall-fragments, if there were need. Certainly, when Robert, King of the Franks, was besieging Avallon, and meanwhile was free for prayers and was chanting psalms together with the priests, the walls of that [town] suddenly collapsed — as Espencæus notes in his treatise On the Eucharist, and Lipsius, book [1] of Political Examples, ch. 2. And because these same Angels are ministers of God, the principal cause is to be referred to Him — as S. Macarius rightly does (homily 50), and Rupert on Joshua, ch. 20: “The walls,” he says, “by God’s mere nod, and without the hand of man, had utterly collapsed.”
(col. 763)