The sun stands still JOS 10:13

Five Amorite kings attacked Gibeon right after it made peace with Israel, and Joshua marched all night from Gilgal to come to its defense. Israel surprised the enemy at dawn and routed them completely, and a hailstorm killed even more of them than the fighting did. With daylight running short and the battle not yet finished, Joshua asked the Lord for the sun and moon to stand still so Israel could complete the victory.

This battle secures the alliance Israel had just made with Gibeon and breaks the strength of the southern Amorite coalition, which was a turning point in the conquest of the land. It also shows Joshua speaking directly to the Lord in front of the whole army and being answered in a visible way. The narrator underlines how exceptional it was by saying there has been no day like it, before or since.

The passage describes the sun and moon stopping in the sky using the everyday language of someone watching from the ground, not the language of modern astronomy. Christians read this differently: some take it as a literal halt in the sun's visible movement, others as a poetic way of describing an unusually long day, and others as a description of unusual light rather than a stopped sky. The text itself does not explain the mechanism; it simply reports that the sun stood still until Israel finished defeating its enemies.

The verse itself says the line about the sun standing still is written in the Book of Jashar, an older collection that no longer survives, which suggests the writer was quoting a poem about the day's victory. Because of this, many readers treat the statement as vivid poetic language celebrating an unusually long and decisive day rather than as a technical report. Other readers prefer a straightforward, literal reading of the event as a miracle. The chapter does not settle the question, so both approaches are held within the Christian tradition.