“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days,” Hebs 11:30.

I want to look at one matter in this verse which I believe is very important. When it says that the walls ‘fell down’ it does not mean they fell outward unto the ground! No, I believe that the walls sank down straight into the ground.

1. This makes it a more wonderful miracle. An earthquake could make the walls collapse but it would take the mighty power of God to cause the earth to open and swallow the walls! Boys and girls, there is nothing that the Lord cannot do. Numbers 16:29-33.

2. The miracle was necessary in order for Israel to freely enter the city. “The wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city,” Joshua 6:20. Note what it says. The words ‘straight before him, and they took’ comes from one Hebrew word, ‘lakad’. It means to ‘take’ or ‘possess’. There was no rubble from collapsed walls to hinder them. They were mighty walls, Deut 1:28, and would have created a mountain of rubble. (Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy, 1944. Allied bombing destroyed the hilltop monastery occupied by Germans but the rubble made even better defences!)

3. The miracle was, above all, necessary to save Rahab. “Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall,” 2:15. If the walls simply collapsed in to heaps she would have been killed. Rehab feared the Lord and believed that He was God alone and that He planned to give Israel the land of Canaan. 2:9-13. She sought for herself and her family to be spared from the judgment that was coming. Such is the faith of all who go to heaven.