Untitled Sermon

intro

Jericho’s Destruction. The wall of the final Bronze Age city of Jericho is referred to as a cyclopean wall that encapsulates the city, and its construction dates to Middle Bronze III around 1600 bc (Nigro and Taha, “Renewed Excavations,” 731, 734). Although the wall was built earlier than the period(s) given for the conquest, the massive fortifications continued to remain in use through the final destruction of the city, just as similar fortifications did at many other cities in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age. Especially important, though, is the manner in which the walls and city were destroyed. According to the book of Joshua, the walls fell down upon themselves rather than being battered back into the city; the Israelites then charged into the city and set it ablaze (Josh 6:20, 24). Archaeologically, this is exactly what was found—the mud brick walls fell down in front of the city; these bricks formed a crude ramp that would have allowed attackers to climb up into the city; and after

This impressive fortification included a main inner wall around 13 feet thick and 26 feet high (still visible as an emerging red edge on the southern, western, and northern flanks of the mound) and an outer wall 6.5 feet thick, each built in separated, juxtaposed blocks. The walls were made of reddish, square mud bricks, with a plastered revetment, and reeds and wooden beams inserted into the structure to ensure air circulation and structural linkage of the wall parts.

In between the two parallel walls there were blind rooms and passageways, at times left empty as storerooms, and sometimes filled with soil or white, clayish, sandy marl (in the past erroneously considered white ash from Joshua’s attack due to charcoal fragments from the burnt structure of the city wall). The sandy marl is visible on both sides of Kenyon’s Trench III.