Hawker on Joshua 10:12-13

This memorable event (Joshua 10: 12-13), one of the most extraordinary we meet with in history, has mightily amused sceptics.  But it is the misapprehension of the thing itself, which has occasioned their folly, and not the real fact. God was pleased to suspend the light of the heavenly bodies, for the purpose of Joshua's carrying on the great victory.  It was not the body of the sun that stood still in Gibeon, not the moon itself in Ajalon; but the reflected light of those heavenly bodies. The original word, which means the sun or body of the sun, in Scripture is Chemah, and that of the moon, Libnah, whereas, in this passage, the original is Shemish, solar light; and Jarech, lunar light; evidently meaning, the Lord miraculously caused the reflected light of the sun and moon, to answer the purposes intended.  Can any thing be too hard with God?  At the death of our glorious Joshua, which was the hour of His victory over death, hell, and the grave, the reverse of this miracle took place; for the sun was darkened at midday.

Robert Hawker