- And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?
- And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant?
We must not understand by this declaration of the angel that he had come to supersede Joshua in the command of the armies of Israel. Joshua was still commander, as is seen by Chap.6:2:
- And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.
But the angel had come to Joshua’s aid, as captain of the heavenly host of loyal angels.
The captain of the host of the Lord is the head over angels, or the Archangel of Jude 9, and the Lord himself of 1 Thessalonians 4:16. And while it was appointed to Joshua to lead the armies of Israel around Jericho, a portion of the priests bearing the ark of God containing the ten commandments, and seven priests bearing seven trumpets of ram’s horns before the ark of God, the Son of God was to lead on the invisible armies. Joshua had no battering rams with which to break down the walls of Jericho. At his command the armed men passed on before the priests that blew the trumpets, and those that carried the ark of God. And the rearward came after the ark. In this simple display there was no manifestation of physical force. The work of casting down the massive walls of Jericho was left to the invisible hands of the heavenly host led on by the Son of God.
- So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
And it is an exceedingly interesting fact to those who keep “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” under the third message, Revelation 14:12, that prominent among the united agencies employed to achieve that grand victory, away back in the days of Joshua, were the ten commandments in the ark, and the leadership of the Son of God.
