Bible Study · Joshua 6, The Dig, And The Shout

How Did The Walls Of Jericho Fall?

Joshua 6 says they fell when a silent army finally shouted. The archaeologists have argued about the rubble for ninety years. Here is the text, the dig, and what the shout still means.

By Apostle Johnny Ova · Sound of Heaven · 9 Min Read

The Short Answer

At A Trumpet Blast And A Shout

Straight Answer

According to Joshua 6, the walls of Jericho fell after Israel marched around the city once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh. When the priests blew the rams' horns and the people shouted, the wall collapsed and the army went straight in.

The text gives God the credit, not engineering. Archaeology has found a walled city at Jericho that was violently destroyed, but when that happened is one of the longest running arguments in the field.

So there are really two questions hiding in this one. What does the Bible say happened, and what does the ground say happened. I want to answer both honestly, and then get to what walls come down by today.

The Text

Walking Through Joshua 6

Israel has just crossed the Jordan, and Jericho is the first city on the other side. The chapter opens with the gates shut tight because of the Israelites, and nobody going in or out.

Before the march

God Speaks In The Past Tense

Joshua 6:2. See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands. The victory is announced before a single step is taken.

Days one to six

One Lap A Day, In Silence

Armed men in front, seven priests with rams' horns, the ark, then the rear guard. Joshua 6:10 is strict: no war cry, no raised voices, not a word until the day he tells them to shout.

Day seven

Seven Laps And A Long Blast

They rise at daybreak and circle the city seven times. On the seventh lap the horns sound and Joshua gives the order in verse 16: Shout, for the Lord has given you the city.

The collapse

Everyone Straight In

The wall falls and the army goes up into the city from every side, each man straight ahead from where he stood. There is no siege and no ladder.

Afterward

A Curse And A Rebuilder

Joshua 6:26 curses anyone who rebuilds Jericho at the cost of his firstborn and his youngest. 1 Kings 16:34 reports that Hiel of Bethel rebuilt it in Ahab's time and lost both sons.

“When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.”

Joshua 6:20

One household is spared. Rahab, who had hidden Israel's spies, is brought out with her family before the city is destroyed. I will not retell her story here because we have given it its own study, who Rahab was in the Bible, and it deserves the room. For the wider campaign this chapter opens, see Joshua in the Bible.

Takeaway

The chapter is built as worship more than warfare. Priests lead, the ark is at the center, the number seven runs through all of it, and the fighting men do nothing until the wall is already down.

The Words

What Kind Of Shout Was It?

People picture a scream loud enough to crack stone, as if the decibels did the work. The Hebrew does not point you there.

HebrewTeruahתְּרוּעָהJoshua 6:5, 6:20

Basic sense

A shout, a blast, an alarm. It is used for human voices and for the sound of horns, which is why verse 20 can run the trumpet and the shout together.

In battle

A war cry or battle signal. The shout that tells an army to move.

In worship

The same word names the day of trumpet blasts in Leviticus 23:24 and Numbers 29:1. A shout of alarm and a shout of joy are one word in Hebrew.

The collapse

Where many English Bibles say the wall fell down flat, the Hebrew word underneath is tachteha, literally underneath it. The wall fell in its place.

Notice that the text says the wall came down where it stood. It says nothing about which way the bricks landed, which matters when we get to the archaeology.

The day before the march, Joshua met a man with a drawn sword outside Jericho and asked whose side he was on. The answer in Joshua 5:14 is one of my favorite lines in the Old Testament: “Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Before the walls ever fell, Joshua had to learn that God is not a mascot. The question was never whether God was on Israel's side. It was whether Israel would stand where God stood.

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The Archaeology

What The Dig At Jericho Found

Ancient Jericho is the mound called Tell es-Sultan, just outside the modern city. Its results have been used to prove the Bible and to disprove it, sometimes from the same layer of dirt. Four names come up again and again.

John Garstang, 1930s

Found a burned city with collapsed walls and dated its destruction to about 1400 BC, which fit the biblical timeline many conservative readers held. His wall dating was later shown to be wrong, since the walls he had in mind were much older.

Kathleen Kenyon, 1950s

Using more careful methods, she dated the destruction of the fortified Bronze Age city to around 1550 BC and concluded there was little or nothing of a walled city left for Joshua to conquer.

Bryant Wood, 1990

Reworked the pottery evidence in Biblical Archaeology Review and argued that the destruction took place “at the end of the 15th century BC (end of the Late Bronze I period), exactly when the Bible says the Conquest occurred”.

The radiocarbon, 1995

Hendrik Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht tested charred grain from Kenyon's excavation and concluded, “The final destruction of MBA Jericho occurred during the late 17th or the 16th century BC.”

Piotr Bienkowski answered Wood in the same magazine that year, arguing Jericho was destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, not the Late Bronze Age. Most archaeologists today side with Kenyon's date, and Wood's reading remains a minority position held largely by conservative scholars. Wood's defenders question the radiocarbon calibration.

A few things nearly everyone agrees on. The city was fortified with a stone revetment at the base of an earthen bank and a mudbrick wall above it. It burned. And the fire caught a city full of food. Wood's own summary notes that both Garstang and Kenyon found “many storage jars full of grain that had been caught in the fiery destruction.” A city taken by long siege would not have had that much food left.

What did the 1995 radiocarbon study of charred grain from Jericho conclude?

It confirmed a destruction in exactly 1400 BC

It placed the final destruction in the late 17th or the 16th century BC

It found no destruction layer at all

Bruins and van der Plicht dated grain from Kenyon's dig and placed the end of Middle Bronze Age Jericho in the late 1600s or the 1500s BC, closer to Kenyon than to Wood. Wood's supporters dispute the calibration, so the debate continues.

Saying It Plainly

Two Things We Should Stop Saying

Some of the folklore around Jericho sits on our side of the argument. It still has to go.

What Gets Preached

The walls fell outward, which never happens in war, so archaeology has proven the miracle. The walls were so thick that chariots raced along the top.

What The Evidence Supports

Kenyon did record, in Wood's words quoting her, “fallen red bricks piling nearly to the top of the revetment”. That shows a wall came down. It does not show when, or by whose hand.

Where We Stand, Plainly

The walls fell outward claim is overstated. A mudbrick wall sitting on top of an earthen bank will tumble down the slope however it comes down, from an earthquake, a fire, or an enemy. The bricks at the foot of the revetment are real, and they belong to a destruction layer whose date is exactly what is in dispute. And the chariots on the wall line is not in Joshua or anywhere in Scripture. Ancient writers like Herodotus told stories like that about Babylon.

So here is our position at Sound of Heaven. Archaeology has not proven Joshua 6, and anyone who tells you it has is selling more certainty than the dirt holds. Archaeology has not disproven it either, and anyone who says the question is closed is doing the same thing from the other side. Our faith rests on Jesus, not a pottery sequence, and that frees us to read the evidence honestly.

Then there is the harder part of the chapter. Joshua 6:21 says Israel devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed every living thing in it, men and women, young and old. This is the herem, the ban. The writers of Joshua believed God commanded it. But in Jesus we do not see a God who orders the killing of children. We see the One who rebuked James and John for wanting to call fire down on a Samaritan village in Luke 9:54 to 55. We work through this in the Canaanites in the Bible and what the Bible says about war.

The Application

What Brings Your Walls Down

Hebrews 11:30 says by faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days. The New Testament reaches back to this story for trust, not volume or technique. And Paul tells us what fortified walls are now.

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

2 Corinthians 10:4 to 5

Look at what Paul calls a stronghold. Arguments. Pretensions. Thoughts. The walls we face are built out of lies we have believed about God and about ourselves. That is spiritual warfare in the New Testament: truth against deception, not people against monsters, and not a church shouting at unseen enemies until something breaks.

The wall of shame

You are what you did. The truth that brings it down is that in Christ you are forgiven and made new, and God is not waiting to use your worst day against you.

The wall of fear

It will always be like this. The shout on day seven was agreement with what God had already said, and what He has said about you is not fear.

The wall of accusation

The accuser's whole work is a verdict that is not true. See who Satan is for why we read him as the adversary and accuser rather than a horned creature.

The wall of performance

If I march harder, God will finally move. Israel did not earn the city with laps. God gave it in verse 2 and they walked in it.

I want to correct one popular practice while we are here. Some teachers sell the Jericho march as a technique: circle the house you want, the job, the courthouse, the clinic, or somebody else's home seven times and claim it. It gets used on people in hard seasons, who are then told the wall stayed up because their faith was weak. That is not Joshua 6 and it is not Jesus. Walls come down by truth, and deliverance is the renewing of the mind, which we unpack in what deliverance is and the belt of truth.

If Your Wall Has Been Up A Long Time

Some walls went up to protect you. After loss, betrayal, or years of being hurt, a wall can feel like the only thing that kept you standing. Nobody gets to shame you for that.

Jesus does not march around you with a battle cry. He comes close and tells you the truth gently until the wall is no longer needed. If that takes time, it is not a failure of faith. If you want someone to walk with you, ask us to pray with you.

Where This Lands

The Wall That Fell In Its Place

Read through Jesus, Jericho stops being a template for conquering neighbors and becomes a picture of how the Kingdom advances: not by the sword, but by truth spoken in agreement with God.

Jesus is the full revelation of what the commander of the Lord's army was always like. He took no city by force. He walked into Jerusalem on a donkey, went to the cross, and on the other side of the empty tomb the walls between people started coming down. Ephesians 2:14 says He has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility that kept Jew and Gentile apart. That Kingdom is here now, and you live in it today, not someday.

So start where Joshua started. Hear what God has already said, stop rehearsing the lie out loud, and when the time comes, say the truth with your whole chest.

The Whole Thing In One Line

Joshua 6 says the walls of Jericho fell at a trumpet blast and a shout after seven days of silent marching, the archaeology confirms a destroyed walled city but its date is still honestly disputed, and in Jesus the walls that matter most fall to truth, not to force.

Facing A Wall That Will Not Move?

Tell us what you are up against. Someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you and stand with you in the truth.

Questions People Ask

Questions About The Walls Of Jericho

How did the walls of Jericho fall?

Joshua 6 says Israel marched around Jericho once a day for six days in silence, with seven priests carrying rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day they circled seven times, the priests sounded a long blast, the people gave a great shout, and the wall collapsed so the army went straight in. The text credits God, not military skill.

Is there archaeological evidence for the walls of Jericho?

Yes and no. Excavations at Tell es-Sultan found a fortified city with a stone revetment and mudbrick walls that was burned and destroyed, with storage jars still full of grain. The dispute is the date. Kathleen Kenyon placed the destruction around 1550 BC, and a 1995 radiocarbon study pointed to the late 17th or 16th century BC. Bryant Wood argued for about 1400 BC. Most archaeologists follow Kenyon, so the evidence is real but its connection to Joshua is honestly disputed.

Why did the Israelites march around Jericho seven times?

Seven is the number of completion in Scripture, echoing the seven days of creation and the Sabbath. The whole chapter is structured around it: seven priests, seven horns, seven days, seven laps on the seventh day. The point was not that laps have power. It was that Israel took the city by trusting what God had already promised in Joshua 6:2, rather than by their own strength.

What does the fall of Jericho mean for Christians today?

Hebrews 11:30 says the walls fell by faith. Paul picks up the language of fortified walls in 2 Corinthians 10:4 to 5 and says our strongholds are arguments and pretensions against the knowledge of God. So the walls we face are mostly lies we believe about God and ourselves. They come down by truth, prayer, and the renewing of the mind, not by shouting at unseen enemies or marching around property seven times to claim it.

Why did God command the destruction of Jericho?

Joshua 6:21 describes the herem, the ban, in which the city was devoted to destruction. The writers of Joshua believed God commanded it, and we should be honest that the text says so. At Sound of Heaven we read all of Scripture through Jesus, the final revelation of God, and in Jesus we do not see a God who orders the killing of children. He rebuked His disciples for wanting fire called down on a village. The Bible is progressive revelation, clarified in Him.