Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin P. Edgecomb" <kevin AT bombaxo.com>]

Yigal wrote: "But the principle is still, that the whole purpose of the
story is to emphasize to Israel and to everyone else that the victory is
God's. So having it all look like a freak storm would defeat the purpose."

I write:
Yes, but this is only part of it.  Notice the narrator finds especial import
not only in the victory, but in Joshua's request being instantly answered.
Verse 14 ends with the narrator's idea of what was most important: "There
has been no day like it before or since, when the LORD hearkened to the
voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel" (RSV). The narrator tells us
the purpose of his story with that, one of dual import.  In that sense, it
wasn't just "a freak storm" but the storm that God sent at Joshua's request,
which killed the Canaanites.

Looking at it from a phenomenological perspective, an ancient would have
seen precisely the situation we see the narrator describe. The Israelites
were not killed by hailstones, but the Canaanites were.  Therefore, the
storm that dropped the hailstones was sent by Israel's God.  The ancients
wouldn't have considered it "a freak storm" occasioning unfortunate
weather-related deaths. That wasn't their mindset.  They would've seen
Divine warfare on behalf of the Israelites.  And there, the narrator agrees,
as do you and I.

Regards,
Kevin P. Edgecomb
Berkeley, California