west point. And, as this
would mean that the different combatants had remained so close to each
other, some four or five months without moving, it is clearly
inadmissible. We are forced therefore to the unexpected conclusion that
_it is practically impossible that Joshua could have been in any place
from whence he could have seen, at one and the name moment; the sun low
down in the sky over Gibeon, and the moon over the valley of Ajalon_.

Is the narrative in error, then? Or have we been reading into it our own
erroneous impression? Is there any other sense in which a man would
naturally speak of a celestial body as being "over" some locality on the
earth, except when both were together on his horizon?

Most certainly. There is another position which the sun can hold in
which it may naturally be said to be "over," or "upon" a given place;
far more naturally and accurately than when it chances to lie in the
same direction as some object on the horizon. We have no experience of
that position in these northern latitudes, and hence perhaps our
commentators have, as a rule, not taken it into account. But those who,
in tropical or sub-tropical countries, have been in the open at high
noon, when a man's foot can almost cover his shadow, will recognize how
definite, how significant such a position is. In southern Palestine,
during the three summer months, the sun is always so near the zenith at
noon that it could never occur to any one to speak of it as anything but
"overhead."

And the prose narrative expressly tells us that this was the case. It is
intimated that when Joshua spoke it was noon, by the expression that the
sun "hasted not to go down about a whole day," implying that the change
in the rate in its apparent motion occurred only in the afternoon, and
that it had reached its culmination. Further, as not a few commentators
have pointed out, the expression,--"the sun stood still in the midst of
heaven,"--is literally "in the bisection of heaven"; a phrase applicable
indeed to any position on the meridian, but especially appropriate to
the meridian close to the zenith.

This, then, is what Joshua meant by his command to the sun. Its glowing
orb blazed almost in the centre of the whole celestial vault--"in the
midst of heaven"--and poured down its vertical rays straight on his
head. It stood over him--it stood over the place where he was--Gibeon.

We have, therefore, been able to find that the narrative gives us, by