That the walls of Jericho were shaken and cast down by the sound of the trumpets and the shout of the people, Ralbag seems, of the Rabbis, to teach. “Because,” he says, “a great voice strikes the air with a great impulse”; and this impulse struck and threw down the standing walls. “Which,” says Masius (fol. 112), “certainly seems ridiculous to me.” But of our own [writers], behold for you one than whom scarcely any is graver, subtler, and more cautious in asserting — St. Augustine, sermon 106 On the Season. “After these things,” he says, “they came to the city of Jericho, and its walls, at the shout of the peoples and the sound of the trumpets, were cast down to the foundations.” And afterward more plainly: “At the priests’ trumpets, the walls of Jericho, which contained within themselves the people of sinners, collapsed. No ram struck them, no engine stormed them; but — what is marvelous — the priestly sound, or the terror of the trumpet, overthrew [them]. The walls which had stood unconquerable against iron were shattered by the sacred voice of the trumpets. For who would not be stupefied at that deed — rocks broken apart by sound, foundations shaken by the clangor, and thus the whole [wall] collapsed, so that, while the victors hurt nothing with the hand, among the adversaries nothing remained stable? Yet they were stormed from without by the sound of the just, [and] within [were] the dwellings of sinners. For thus, by the just judgment of God, they both opened a way for the just and denied a defense to the faithless.” And St. Jerome, in his letter to Abigaus, briefly: “The walls of Jericho collapsed, overthrown by the clangors of the priestly trumpets.” St. Ambrose, On Duties [De officiis], book 3, ch. 10: “The walls of Jericho, struck by the sacred sound of the trumpets, and battered by the howling of the people.” And On the Faith, to Gratian, book 1, ch. 1: “Jesus [Joshua] the son of Nun conquered the enemies — whom the hand of the whole army could not powerfully overcome — by the sound of the seven priestly trumpets, inasmuch as he recognized the captain of the heavenly host.” Origen, hom. 6: “Jericho is surrounded; it must be stormed. How, then, is Jericho stormed? No sword is drawn against it; no ram is aimed, nor darts brandished: only the priestly trumpets are applied, and by these the walls of Jericho are undermined.” And at the beginning of hom. 7: “Jericho is undermined by the priests’ trumpets. For as soon as the trumpets’ clangor sounded out, the circuit of the walls was cast down.”
Next, that there is in great sounds a force for shaking and prostrating some things can be shown by manifold experience. For when the greater bells are rung, when cannons hurl the larger balls, how great [is] the movement of the air, of houses, of windows, and of towers? What, when “the poles thunder, [and] the aether flashes with frequent fires”? Is it not [true], as Seneca says in book 2 of the Natural Questions, that “men fall down and are struck lifeless”? Do not certain men stand stupefied, and utterly go out of themselves — [the state] which we call “thunderstruck” [attoniti] — whose minds that heavenly sound has driven from their place? Hence, in the Poet [Virgil], that Cyclops:
“He raises an immense shout, at which the sea and all the waves trembled.” [Aen. 3.672–673]
And another:
“He sings the pastoral signal, and on the curved horn strains a Tartarean voice, at which straightway the whole grove trembled, and the deep woods thundered.” [Aen. 7.513–515]
Similar things [are] in Homer and others. But lest these be despised as merely poetic, the divine books too attribute to sounds and voices a power of shaking even great masses. Ps. 45[46]:7: “The Lord gave [uttered] his voice, the earth was moved.” And more manifestly, Ezek. 36:10 [the noise-of-chariots, walls-shaking text is Ezek. 26:10]: “With the overflow of his horses their dust shall cover you; at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, your walls shall be moved.” I say, first: No sound of men — however huge, intense, and multiplied — nor of our trumpets, can naturally, by itself alone, cast down or [even] shake any wall, or any mass even moderately firm. This is proved. First: three things concur to make a sound. 1. the collision of two bodies, [either] solid or quasi-solid. Secondly: the breaking and grinding of air, or of a similar body, intercepted between those two. Thirdly: the diffusion of this broken and ground body, and, as it were, its flight and recession. And this is that by which anything can be moved and impelled. For while it thus flees and recedes, if any bodies meet it, it strikes them, and, if it can in any way, drives them forward. And indeed it always moves and drives forward the neighboring and first-met air — because otherwise there would be an interpenetration of bodies; and air, to receive motion, is of itself as it were spontaneously very ready: but the remote [air], not always. Because the impetus of that fleeing [air] is gradually weakened, and so it ceases to advance further and to impel. But in that its advance, and its driving of foreign bodies, it must be considered that, for it to be able to advance far and forcibly and to impel, it is necessary, first, that it be broken and thrust out by a great force; secondly, that it be not something slight and thin, but have a greater quantity [bulk]. For if the former be lacking, it will at once be stopped from its flight, nor will it, even at the very outset, vehemently move the nearest air. If the latter be lacking, it will soon be checked by the surrounding air, diffused far and wide, and will be able neither to advance nor to drive anything.
Now consider for me: when our trumpets blare, when we shout, how scanty [is] the breath poured forth from individuals — which is broken up in the trumpets, or in the [wind]pipes and our throats, and thrust outside the trumpet and ourselves? And when it has been thrust out, how languid and feeble it is, scarcely rolling itself forward a little? how easily it is dissolved and dissipated into the vast air that surrounds us? — so much so that most of the philosophers teach, with great approval, that to ears somewhat more remote it is not the true and direct sound [that arrives], but only its “species,” or images, that reach [them]. How, then, could this sound loosen ordinary bodies, walls, and any masses moderately firm? And to this [effect] there is no weight in the multitude of the trumpets and shouts themselves. For the breath of all is at once scattered into all the parts of this most vast airy space, and, cooled, grows dull, and comes to rest. Secondly: Aristotle is in doubt whether, if very many sound and shout together, they are heard farther than if individuals were to sound and shout singly. For he affirms it in the Problems, sect. 19, problem 2, but denies it in sect. 11, problem 52. Therefore the movement of air is not more vehement and stronger, even if there be very many sounds of very many [people]. Thirdly: If they could [do] that…
(col. 765)
…[if they could do] that — the most intense and, in number, most abundant sounds of men [could] cast down standing solid bodies — they would surely first cast down those which are nearest, and into which they run more quickly: namely, in the camps, the neighboring trees, their own standards, lances, tents; nay, those who shouted would lay themselves low, and one another. Fourthly: this way of destroying cities would be easy, and quite charming, and pretty. For [then] only Homeric Stentors would have to be chosen for sieges — the Egyptians of Herodotus [used] for summoning Histiaeus, and others of that clamorous kind; then to these must be joined a great force of horn-blowers, clarion-players, trumpeters, and drummers; boys too, perhaps, and girls, must be gathered with as many bells and rattles as possible. Fifthly: If motion from sound helped so much toward the ruin of things, [it would help] much more if great and whole armies ran round about with the greatest force and speed, threw their arms about, or by any other more vehement manner stirred the air.
Neither Ralbag nor St. Augustine either said or supposed that the walls of Jericho were torn down by the natural force of the trumpets and shouts alone. For that Rabbi too adjoins a divine efficiency, and this holy Father [does] here [as well]: but he considered those sounds as an instrument fit for shaking the walls, because through them the air would be moved and impelled, and through this [air] the walls. Yet this is nothing. For in supernatural [works] God needs not the natural faculty of the instruments themselves; nor, if ever for some fitting cause he employs such [an instrument], does that reasoning hold in trumpet-blasts and human voices. For their power to move solid and fixed things is very small, or almost none; he would rather have prescribed [an instrument of] running and charging — the various composition of bodies and the swift motion of any [heavy] things.
III. Nevertheless it is not to be denied that God could, if he had willed, use these clangors and shouts as an instrument to demolish those walls. For [God] can use any creature, however unfit, for whatever effects he pleases: and there are those who grant that the voice of Christ the Lord (John 5), and [the voice] of the Archangel (1 Thess. 4), and the clangor of the last trumpet (1 Cor. 15; Matt. 24) effect the resurrection of the dead physically, in this instrumental manner — as Euthymius, ch. 7 on John; Toletus on the same St. John, ch. 5; Suárez, vol. 2, disp. 50, sect. 4; Thyraeus, On the glorious apparition of Christ, ch. 4, no. 214. But that the Lord willed to use these sounds as an instrument — whence [could] any conjecture [of that] be made?
IV. Those same sounds demolished those walls and laid them level with the ground by no physical effecting, natural or supernatural, but by a moral one alone. For, this [sound] being as it were a signal given, the Angels did [it] — which was said in the previous question. The former part has thus far been proved by the 1st and 3rd propositions; the latter is gathered, first, from the text, which at vv. 5 and 20 indicates that the concordant trumpets and the shouting Israelites concurred in some manner toward the ruin of those walls: but there can be no other mode than the moral one. Therefore [it was so]. Secondly: Of this mode St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and perhaps Ralbag also speak. Thirdly: this same mode — of the voice and trumpet rousing the dead from their tombs — S. Chrysostom attributes [to sound] (1 Thess., hom. 8), [as do] Scotus (bk. 4, dist. 43) and several others, among whom also Suárez in the cited place.
From these, moreover, it is understood what is to be said to the objected experiences [the bells, cannon, thunder]. For when bells sound, when the greater cannons bellow, first the neighboring beams, and the mountings to which they are fastened, are moved; then the air itself too, a little more remote — because that which is shattered and flees is shattered by a somewhat greater force. Thirdly: other things, which are solid and stand firmly fixed and are a little distant, are moved not at all or very little. Fourthly: if they are moved, yet not so as to fall — they are moved, but tremble a little, like windows; so also in thunder, but much more, because there is much greater force in air shattered and broken by the collision of [air] thrust from a cloud, and the air itself [is] much more copious and more densely massed. Moreover, the shouts of the Poets are hyperbolic, yet with decorum, so that they say [only] that the sea and the grove trembled so much — not that ships were overturned in the one, [or] trees torn up in the other. But in the Scriptures: 1. his divine voice is his command. 2. whatever voice, at his bidding, can move the earth as much morally as physically, as was said [in] propositions 3 and 4. 3. by “earth” are also called the men who are roused by the shouts, in that manner which was expounded in q. 12; and so Ezekiel is to be taken. Or it must be said that not rarely, in descriptions of the affections, the Poetic and Oratorical grandiloquence is employed by the Prophets — as Ps. 113[114]:4: “the mountains skipped like rams.”