Please explain Joshua 10:13, where it says that the sun stood still and the moon stayed. In school I was taught that the sun stood still, and never moved. Explain in connection with this Isa. 38: 8.
The language of the Bible, like the language of every-day life, is often the language of appearance, especially as regards every-day phenomena. You will find scientists now, just the same as the common people, speaking of the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun,—that is, it appears to us to rise, and it appears to us to set. The earth seems to be a big thing because we are right close to it, and the sun small because it is a long distance from us, and we do not really take that into account. So the language in Joshua is the language of appearance. To the appearance of the people there the sun stood still, and the moon did not go down.
There are two things that would bring about this appearance, as also in the 38th chapter of Isaiah. First, there could be a reflection of light that would seem to prolong the day; or, secondly, the earth might cease its rotations. God is able to do either; and the earth could cease in its rotations for about a day, as stated in Joshua, chapter 10, without any disturbance in any wise, if God were so disposed. He has all power to do this. Certainly there was a mighty miracle wrought. The very words of Scriptures indicate that that is the case. We are expressly told, "And there was no day like that before it or after it, that Jehovah harkened unto the voice of a man." It might just as well have been that incident as any other; but God left on record there for us what He is willing to do in order to save His people, just the same as He opened the Red Sea and the River Jordan before Israel as they journeyed from Egypt to the promised land.
