Chapter 8

¹ But perhaps someone will say, This is impossible to happen. O man, what is impossible for God? Did he not himself from the beginning fashion the whole creation out of things that were not, and set the elements in it to give light for the day and the night—he whom all things obey and serve in subjection, and trembling hearken to his voice? Therefore the things that are impossible among men are possible with God.

² And we have yet another testimony to this, readily to be accepted.

³ For when Joshua the son of Nun was warring against the Amorites, while the sun was already declining toward the west and the battle was pressing hard all at once, the blessed Joshua, fearing lest, when night came on, the foreigners might escape, cried out, saying: Let the sun stand still over Gibeon, and the moon over the valleys of Aijalon, until I have made an end of warring against this people. And the sun and the moon stood still in their station; the sun did not go forward toward the west until the end of one whole day, so that that day became twenty-four hours long. And on account of this the Scripture bore witness, saying: There was never such a day, that God should so hearken to a man.

⁴ He, then, who from the beginning set the bounds of the elements in heaven and ordained for them their ever-moving courses according to his own authority—how shall he not be able to transfer them and turn them and alter them whenever he wills?

⁵ For in the case of Joshua the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon over the valleys of Aijalon for one day; but in the case of Hezekiah the moon turned back together with the sun, so that there might be no collision of the two elements borne disorderly against each other. But in the case of the Lord, when he suffered, not only the elements, but the very day itself and the whole world were shaken.