That the Sun and Moon stood still, the text plainly says (verse 13). For when Joshua had said (verse 12) “Sun, move not against Gabaon, and Moon against the valley of Aijalon,” it is at once subjoined (verse 13): “The Sun and the Moon stood still”; and again: “So the Sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to set.” And to this [event] he who wrote of the harmony of Scripture refers that [passage] of Habakkuk (chapter 3, verse 11): “The Sun and Moon stood still in their habitation.” But there the whole discourse seems metaphorical, and only to declare and indicate the supreme power and might of God whenever He wills to punish mortals — embracing, [among such acts,] those which were not done here, as that which immediately precedes: “The flood of waters passed by; the deep uttered its voice; it lifted up its hands” [Habakkuk 3:10]. Yet I would not deny that the Prophet had regard to this [Joshuan miracle], to show that by God’s nod the Sun and Moon can be made to stand and be held back from their course.
But since our history [here in Joshua] is so clear and perspicuous, there have nonetheless not been wanting those who have poured out [the claim] that the Sun did not stand still, but only seemed to stand. And this in three ways. First: some will have it that the Sun merely advanced more slowly — yet still advanced. So Rambam [Maimonides] and Ralbag [Gersonides]. Secondly: some [say] that, with the Sun’s own motion in the heaven neither halted nor slowed, [the Sun] indeed set with its [usual] confused velocity, but that in its place [above the horizon] there was substituted by God a certain body, after the likeness of the Sun, exceedingly bright; and some will have this [body] to have been the inflamed Moon — so Radak and his father R. Joseph Kimchi — others, some other [foreign] nature which God furnished with immense light: and so R. Shem Tob, or the Moreh Nevuchim [the Guide of the Perplexed]. Thirdly: others, finally, contend that absolutely nothing was changed in the heaven, but that something only seemed to be changed…
…because Joshua accomplished on earth deeds so great and so renowned, that it seemed rather that the day was lengthened and the Sun stood still, than that he carried them out so swiftly. For not even if the day had been increased by several hours could he have done more or greater things. — But all these [opinions] are manifestly against the most luminous light of this most clear history, which all the other interpreters, Greek and Latin, have seen and believed; in whose name, as it were, [speaks] St. Augustine (book 21 of the City of God, chapter 8): “In the divine books we read that even the Sun itself and the Moon stood still, when the holy man Joshua, son of Nun, had sought this from the Lord God, until the battle begun should be ended in victory.” But those who feign either a Sun slower than usual, or a substitute splendor in its place, while they all — that the miracle (which Scripture clearly hands down) may, philosopher-like, seem great to the rude and unskilled in their words — evade [the plain miracle], they coin new miracles of their own. For it is no less contrary to the wonted order of things that the Sun’s revolutions should be made faster or slower than usual, than that it should rest a while. Nor is it without marvel or novelty that a new body should be fixed in the heaven above the horizon when the Sun has already set, which should seem to scatter sun-light in every direction. And those who attribute such swiftness to Joshua, that it seemed an addition was made to the day, these are of all men either the dullest in wit or the most impudent in audacity. For who ever, sacred writer or profane, so described swiftness? What orator or poet, to extol some man’s diligence and speed in carrying out affairs, ever so used metaphor or hyperbole? On the contrary, indeed, when things are irksome to someone, by their endurance and patience the days, or nights, which are otherwise short, are wont to seem longer — as in Plautus (Amphitryon, act 1) and Horace (Epistle 1):
As the night is long to those whom a mistress deceives, and the day long to those who owe labor; as the year is slow to wards whom the harsh guardianship of mothers oppresses: so slow and unwelcome to me flow the seasons that delay my hope and my plan of action.
And indeed the swiftness of actions can never be perceived except together with [the perception of] the shortness of the time in which they were done.
Two things, however, here have some difficulty, and must not be glossed over. One is that in the Hebrew text Joshua said to the Sun and Moon not that they should stand, but that they should be silent; and afterward it is at once subjoined: “And the Sun was silent.” For dôm [דום] and dāmam [דמם] in Hebrew mean “to be silent” and “to be still.” That word [be silent] moved Aquila of Pontus to use this verb of “being silent” in his version of Scripture; it moved also the ancient Jewish Rabbis in the book Tanchuma, and Rashi, to say that the Sun sings praises to God at every hour, and was therefore bidden by Joshua to be silent for a while. These idle tales Abulensis [Tostatus] refutes copiously (questions 13 & 14): partly because the Sun is not animate; partly because it lacks the organs of articulate voice, and that hardness and softness [of parts] which is necessary even for the unshaped sounds of wagons; and finally because that most holy man Joshua, who was most zealous for [God’s] praises, would never have bidden a celestial herald to fall silent from the divine praises. — But there is no need to linger on these matters. For those Rabbis speak of a “harmony” by a trope, [meaning] namely that by its splendor, the beauty of its light, its magnitude, its efficacy,…
(col. 1003)
…[the Rabbis speak of a “harmony” by a trope, whereby the Sun] by its splendor, the beauty of its light, its magnitude, its efficacy, [and its] usefulness rouses men and Angels to the praise of God. And of this same “harmony” [is] Job 38[:37]: “Who shall make the harmony of heaven to sleep?”; of the same, the royal Prophet [David], Psalm 18 [19:1]: “The heavens declare the glory of God,” etc., [and] “Into all the earth their sound has gone out”; Psalm 112 [113], verse 3: “From the rising of the Sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is worthy of praise” — as those ancient Rabbis expound this verse. “To God,” says Tertullian (book Against Hermogenes, chapter 44), “even inanimate and incorporeal things sing praises” — [as] in Daniel chapter 3 [the canticle of the three children]. St. Augustine, on those words of Psalm 148 [verse 13], “His confession is in heaven and in earth,” [says]: “What is the confession of God? Is it that He confesses [Himself]? No — but that all things confess Him; all things cry out. The beauty of all things is, in a manner, the voice of those confessing God. Heaven cries to God, ‘Thou hast made me, not I’; earth cries, ‘Thou hast founded me, not I.’ How then do these cry out? When they are considered, and this [truth] is found: from thy consideration they cry; from thy voice they cry.” See St. Ambrose (Hexaemeron book 2, chapter 4 at the end; book 4, chapter 1); St. Chrysostom (homily 1 to the people [of Antioch]); Titelmann (book 7 on physics, chapter 24); the little book On Doxology, book 3, chapter 6.
There were certain Pythagoreans who posited a most sweet harmony in the heaven; but some took this in the proper [literal] sense — whom Aristotle rejects (On the Heavens book 2, chapter 9), and whose arguments against Simplicius the Coimbrans have lately reinforced (in the same place, question 1, article 2). Others thought it allegorical, and interpreted it variously — as Macrobius (book 2 On the Dream of Scipio, chapter 3), Glareanus (Dodecachordon book 2, chapter 13), Abulensis [Tostatus] (in this place, question 14).
Now therefore I say: by that Hebrew word of “being silent,” [Scripture] signified metaphorically rest, and cessation from all motion — the likeness being drawn from this, that just as one who speaks moves his mouth and the other instruments of the voice, and stirs up some noise, so too does one who moves; whereas, on the contrary, he who is silent is also he who makes an end of moving himself and stands still. Therefore the Seventy here [render it] στῆτι ὁ ἥλιος (stēti ho hēlios, “stand, O Sun”) [and the like], and our [Latin] likewise, “Be not moved,” or “Stand,” and “it stood.” So in 1 Samuel 14, verse 9: “If they shall have spoken thus to us, ‘Remain [where you are]’” — and at once the explanation is added, even in the Hebrew: “let us stand in our place.” And the same verb can likewise be taken [so] in Psalm 38[39]:7, Isaiah 23:2, Lamentations 2:18, where it is said: “Give thyself no rest, neither let the apple of thine eye be silent.”
And this manner of speaking is usual among the Germans. For when they wish someone who is walking, running, exerting himself, or dragging something, to cease, they are wont to cry out still, or halte still — though properly still sein means “to be silent.” Whence also Radak, on Psalm 4, says that demāmāh, or “silence,” is taken in two ways: sometimes [it is] rest from speech and voice; sometimes rest from work and motion. And this latter [sense], which he calls schethikath vehathchenuhah [the silence-and-the-rest], he proves from several Scriptures: Psalm 106[107:29], where we have “He set the storm into a breeze,” or “into silence” — that is, “He made the storm cease and rest”; and Psalm 4[:5], where for “be ye pricked [in conscience]” the Hebrew is “be silent” — that is, says Genebrardus there, “do penance in silence and fear.” Radak there also cites “the silent stone” from Habakkuk 2, verse 19; but this seems rather to belong to the former signification, since a stone is destitute of voice.
The other [difficulty], which has some difficulty, is of this kind. Ecclesiasticus chapter 48, verse 5, says not that the Sun stood still, but that it went back. For as to what our [Latin] says, “Was not [the Sun] stopped by his (Joshua’s) anger?” —
[Translator’s note: the print reads “chapter 48”; but the gloss “(Joshua)” and the Greek quoted just below show this is again the Joshua passage = Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 46:4–5 (cf. the note at column 1001), not the Hezekiah passage of Sirach 48.]
[—the Sun went back.] In Greek it is οὐχὶ ἐν χειρὶ αὐτοῦ ἀνεπόδισεν ὁ ἥλιος — that is, “Did not the Sun go back at his hand?” For ἀναποδίζειν is “to return, to be driven backward, to retrace one’s step,” and, as Cicero properly speaks, repedare [“to step back”]. And so of the Moon, when at the death and eclipse of CHRIST the Lord it had gone backward, Dionysius the Areopagite said in the Epistle to Polycarp (page 442): οὐκ εἰς μέσα ἄμφω εἰς ἑαυτὰ ἀντιμεθισταμένων [“the two not changing place toward themselves into the middle”]. Our [Latin] translator, in that passage of Ecclesiasticus, took that verb — as elsewhere [the Seventy take] certain others — passively, and rendered it “was hindered”; but the manner in which [the Sun] was hindered he did not express. For it could be hindered both by standing still and by going backward. But if we weigh the force of the Greek verb, the Sun will have been hindered by ἀναποδίζειν — namely, [by being] driven and carried backward.
Two answers can be given. First, that the Sun’s “going back” in Ecclesiasticus is taken for its not advancing further. For whatever is in [its] course and, on the spot — whether of its own accord, or by some force applied from without — comes to rest, seems, as it were, to turn back and recall its step. In which manner one of the saints said, “On the way of the spirit, not to advance is to go back”; and among the Mathematicians, in the doctrine of the spheres, it is called solstitium [“a standstill”] — not that the Sun properly stands, but that it goes no further. Secondly, that the Sun first indeed suddenly went back, but then stood fixed, immovable, and at rest; and that here [in Joshua] only the rest is expressed, [while] that “returning” [is expressed] in Ecclesiasticus. But which [answer] is the more probable, a later question will show.