Two efficient causes are indicated in the text, to which a third can be added. The first is Joshua, who brought about the standstill of the Sun and Moon in a twofold manner. First, by praying to God. For this is what those words signify (verse 12): “Then Joshua spoke to the Lord” — and the Seventy: ἐλάλησεν Ἰησοῦς πρὸς κύριον (elalēsen Iēsous pros kyrion, “Joshua spoke to the Lord”); the Chaldaean [Targum]: “then he will praise the Lord.” For although these words (as I said, question 12) can also be applied to the prayer by which Joshua sought the storm of hail-stones, yet they show most clearly, and without any winding of words, that he employed prayers to God for obtaining the portent that followed. Cajetan [says]: “Join, O prudent reader, two things written here: namely, that Joshua then spoke to the Lord, the fount of being, and that he spoke a word to the Sun and Moon — that you may weigh that the first [act] raised [his] mind to God, supplicating for a complete victory, and that God inspired him to enjoin the delay upon the Sun and Moon.” Again, afterward, it is said — or hinted — that God obeyed Joshua’s voice (verse 14), as I shall explain below.
[Translator’s note: the print here reads “verse 4”; the verse meant is Joshua 10:14, “the Lord obeying the voice of a man.”]
He had therefore sent up [his] voice to God, by which he asked that the day be made longer, and that the Sun not set so quickly. For since, as is had in verses 8 and 11, God had delivered the Amorite into the sight of the children of Israel — that they might, namely, subdue, destroy, and utterly exterminate them — and [since] he saw that a great multitude of them was slipping away from the swords of the pursuing Israelites by the rushing onset of the hail, he sought that more daylight be given for pursuing them, and for slaying them with the sword and (as I indeed think) [the longer] with the hail. For if [the day] did not press on, it would not have been permitted to pursue them further; nor would the hail have caught the fugitives, or have seemed so clearly to catch [them].
Secondly [manner]. Joshua brought about the same standstill by commanding the two heavenly bodies, the Sun and Moon (verse 12): “Sun, against Gabaon move not, and Moon, against the valley of Aijalon.” St. Jerome, in the Epitaph of Paula: “Jesus [Joshua], son of Nun, fighting against the five kings, commanded the Sun and Moon.” And the same [Jerome], book 2 Against Jovinian: “Jesus, son of Nun, commanded a standstill upon the Sun and Moon, and prolonged the fasting, and the victory of the army, beyond one day.” Tertullian, in the book Against the Psychics [On Fasting]: “Jesus of Nun commanded a standstill upon the very elements; the Sun stood still at Gabaon.” And in the Poem Against Marcion, book 3:
He stayed the Sun together with the Moon, while he conquered the enemy.
The Author of the Marvels of Sacred Scripture [pseudo-Augustine], book 2, chapter 4: “When the five kings of the Chananaeans were gathered into one, to fight against the children of Israel, and when the cohorts were joined from the opposite side, and the victory was passing over to the side of God’s people, Jesus, son of Nun, prince of the people of Israel, commanded the Sun, at mid-day, that it should not move, and the Moon to stand where it had been, until God’s people should take vengeance on the enemy.” Nor indeed did Joshua exercise this command of his secretly and silently, but openly and clearly, before the children of Israel, says the text (verse 12); and it was so serious and imperious that Ecclesiasticus (chapter 46, verse 5) ascribes it to [God’s] mighty hand.
[Translator’s note: at “his hand” the print has a Greek word that does not resolve clearly at the available resolution; the reference (Sirach 46:5) and the sense (“by his hand the Sun was stayed”) are not in doubt.]
But there can be here a doubt which, because [it is] rather long, can have its own question.