Where did Joshua make the sun stand still?

Question

Accepted Answer

Over Gibeon and the valley of Aijalon, in the hills north-west of Jerusalem: “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.” Gibeon is el-Jib, about 9 km north-west of Jerusalem in a straight line; the valley of Aijalon, where the map point stands, opens about 21 km further west, below the pass of Beth-horon. Joshua spoke in the battle to save Gibeon, as he drove five Amorite kings down from the hills towards the plain. The Gibeonites had made peace with Israel, and the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon besieged them. Joshua “came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal all night”, a climb of about 26 km in a straight line from the Jordan valley, routed them at Gibeon and chased them “along the way that goeth up to Beth-horon”, about 8 km to the west, while hailstones fell on them as far as Azekah, about 29 km to the south-west. The kings hid in a cave at Makkedah, about 40 km from Gibeon. “And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.” Readers explain the words in several ways. Many take them as a miracle in which the day was lengthened, as Josephus did; others as poetry, since the text says it is “written in the book of Jasher”, a lost collection of songs. The Hebrew verb can mean “be silent” or “cease”, and some read a darkening rather than a longer day: C. J. Humphreys and G. Waddington linked it with the annular eclipse of 30 October 1207 BC, while J. H. Walton read sun and moon standing opposite each other as an omen against the enemy. In the fourth century Eusebius placed the valley three miles east of Bethel; Jerome added that the Jews put Aijalon two miles from Nicopolis, which fits Yalo, the village above the valley the map shows.