The first mode was [that] which [has been] often noted hitherto — that the Lord addressed Joshua of his own accord, whether through certain species and phantasms impressed on his mind, or through the sonorous voices of some Angel, or [that] the Lord [was] questioned by him through the priest, the oracle of Urim and Thummim being employed. For [that] Joshua consulted the Lord in a matter so arduous, and of so great peril, seems clear from what was said (ch. 9, v. 14).
The second. On the day before the battle to be joined with the enemy, the Lord confirmed Joshua, as appears from the words of v. 6: “Tomorrow, at this same hour, I will deliver all these to be slain in the sight of Israel.” For “hour,” in the Hebrew [it] is “at this time.” For I know not whether at that time the day had yet been divided into 12 parts, which we have called 12 hours. Certainly, in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word by which the Rabbis today signify “hour” — namely “Schagah” [shaʿah] — is nowhere found, except in Daniel, and somewhere in the Chaldee text — for example, [in] Canticles 1. Yet our [Interpreter] here imitated the 70, who render [it] ταύτην τὴν ὥραν [tautēn tēn hōran, “this hour”]. But of old, “hour” signified in the day, as at night, the certain and fitting time of some diurnal or nocturnal action — as “the hour of dinner, the hour of supper, the hour of sleep” — which is otherwise called by the Latins “tempestas” [a season/time], as in Cicero (On Laws): “Let sunset be the last tempestas [time-limit]” — which was transferred from the laws of Solon, in which [it is] thus: ὁ ἥλιος ἐπὶ τῶν ὁρῶν ἐσχάτη ὥρα ἔστω [ho hēlios epi tōn horōn eschatē hōra estō, “let the sun upon the mountains [horizons] be the last hour”]. And, alluding to which, in Stobaeus (serm. 1), Musonius names “the first and last hour,” when he said of Socrates, [who was] about to die, [that] οὐ προσήκειν τὴν ἐσχάτην ὥραν παρατηρεῖν, εἰ ὅσον ἥλιος ἐπὶ τῶν ὁρῶν, ἀλλ᾽ εὐθαρσῶς τῇ προθεσμίᾳ [ou prosēkein tēn eschatēn hōran paratērein… all’ eutharsōs tē prothesmia, “that it did not befit [him] to watch the last hour — [to see] whether the sun [were still] upon the mountains — but [to meet it] courageously, at the appointed term”]. And so the Apostle (Rom. 13:11): “it is the hour now for us to rise from sleep.” But elsewhere concerning “hour” again, as in Ruth ch. 2, q. 24.
The third. But why the Lord confirmed Joshua, Josephus gives the cause: that so great a multitude of enemies greatly terrified him and the Israelites. For Joshua, forsooth, was a man, [and] the Israelites men; and therefore nothing human [was] alien from them. But because they had experienced divine help and aid, so great and so present, in so many and so great things, Josephus adds [that] God reproved this fear in them — which, however, is not in the text.