Joshua 10:13 –
So the sun stood still and the moon stayed in place until the nation of Israel had defeated its enemies.
This chapter is full or more conquests and battles, which are cool but getting old. I locked on this God event that defies the physical world and is difficult to explain. Think about what this is saying. The rotation of the earth stopped and the sun just stayed in place. Now did the orbits stop also? It does say the moon stopped, which would imply at least that orbit stopped, or that it just never got dark. Did the orbit of the earth stop?
This is one of those events that as a geek I like to explore. It doesn’t say how long the sun hung in the sky, so was it saying they defeated the enemy in a day? Or did God just provide another light source so it appeared the night never came? When one gets into the nuts and bolts of physical events like this it spawns more questions than answers. If you take what happened literally, the rotational mass of the earth is huge, so it’s difficult to imagine the force required to do this. Then what about the momentum of everything spinning?
If you explore this more and more one interesting thing you will find, there is a claim that NASA computers have found a “missing day”. No idea if there is any fact to back this up, or if it’s “internet folk lore”, but it’s fun to see science may have proof of this event. There are stories through the Bible that make you wonder and are almost impossible to prove. So the question is do we believe them wholesale or just assume they are “illustrations” to help our faith? That I cannot answer for you, I tend to believe much wholesale and figure I’ll get the “how” after I die.