aelites set out at once in the
pursuit of their enemies. It is probable that for the first six miles
they saw no trace of them, but when they reached Beth-horon the Upper,
and stood at the top of its steep descent, they saw the Amorites again.
As it had been with their fathers at the Red Sea, when the pillar of
cloud had been a defence to them but the means of discomfiture to the
Egyptians, so now the storm-clouds which had so revived them and
restored their their strength, had brought death and destruction to
their enemies. All down the rocky descent lay the wounded, the dying,
the dead. For "the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them,
unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones
than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword."

"The might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Had melted like snow in the glance of the Lord."

Far below them the panic-stricken remnants of the Amorite host were
fleeing for safety to the cities of the Maritime Plain. The battle
proper was over; the one duty left to the army of Israel was to overtake
and destroy those remnants before they could gain shelter.

But the narrative continues. "The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and
hasted not to go down about a whole day." This statement evidently
implies much more than the mere darkening of the sun by storm-clouds.
For its interpretation we must return to the remaining incidents of the
day.

These are soon told. Joshua pursued the Amorites to Makkedah,
twenty-seven miles from Gibeon by the route taken. There the five kings
had hidden themselves in a cave. A guard was placed to watch the cave;
the Israelites continued the pursuit for an undefined distance farther;
returned to Makkedah and took it by assault; brought the kings out of
their cave, and hanged them.

"And it came to pass at the time of the going down of the sun,
that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees,
and cast them into the cave wherein they had hidden
themselves, and laid great stones on the mouth of the cave,
unto this very day."

All these events--the pursuit for twenty-seven miles and more, the
taking of Makkedah and the hanging of the kings--took place between noon
and the going down of the sun, an interval whose normal length, for that
latitude and at that time of the year, was about seven hours.

This is an abnormal feat. It is true that a single trained pedest