Joshua 6:26

Adjured them. That is, “caused them to swear.” He no doubt made the elders and heads of their several tribes bind themselves by a solemn oath, so that a knowledge of their pledge might be passed on from generation to generation.

Cursed be the man. In the case of Jericho the curse was doubtless intended to keep the memorial of the destruction of the city ever before the eyes of coming generations. The ruins of the city would go on bearing mute testimony, but a new city on the old site would obliterate the traces of such a memory. The curse was uttered by divine direction (see 1 Kings 16:34).

In his firstborn. The fulfillment of the prediction by Hiel the Bethelite is recorded in 1 Kings 16:34. The absence of this record in the book of Joshua is further proof that Joshua was written some time before Kings. Five centuries after this curse was pronounced Hiel, following the example of the wicked king Ahab in resisting the word of the Lord, rebuilt the city of Jericho. Hiel might have thought that time had rendered the curse null and void, or that such a pronouncement could not have come from God. Perhaps he could see no reason at all for the strange command. But human reasonings are not a sufficient pretext for disobedience or unbelief.

There are records of a settlement in the vicinity of Jericho antedating the rebuilding of the city by Hiel. Deut. 34:3 makes mention of a city called the “city of palm trees.” This was an inhabited place early in the period of the judges (Judges 1:16), a short time after the death of Joshua. The same city appears to have been taken from the Israelites by Eglon, king of Moab (Judges 3:12, 13). Moreover, David’s ambassadors, who were maltreated by Hanun, king of the Ammonites, were commanded to tarry at Jericho till their beards were grown (2 Sam. 10:4, 5). It appears, therefore, that there was a town called by the name long before the time of Hiel. Yet probably this was not on the mound, but in the neighborhood. Josephus speaks of the site of the old city as if in distinction from a modern one; New Testament Jericho was a mile south of the mound.

Archeologists have never discovered remains of the walls of Hiel’s 9th-century city, built probably on a much smaller scale on the ruins of the old city, and eventually eroded away. The fragmentary evidence from before Hiel’s day tends to indicate that there had been only a few intermittent occupants of the site, and no city had been built, for an interim of about 500 years after the fall of the old city. This fact agrees with the Scriptural account of the rebuilding by Hiel. Men may challenge God’s Word, but when they have spent their arrows of challenge and criticism, the ruins uncovered by the pick and shovel of the archeologist silently testify to the truthfulness of the Scripture record.