Joshua’s Long Day
And Other Pole Shifts Recorded in the Bible
ABSTRACT: Several important
events in the Scriptures involved pole shifts—where the North and South Poles
moved thousands of miles to a new location in less than a day. These events
include Joshua’s long day and Hezekiah’s going back of the shadow of the sun. Understanding
these events gives understanding of the mighty works God has done in our world
throughout history. The Lord fought important battles for
CopyrightÓ2007
To index file: www.scripturescholar.com/JoshuasLongDay.htm
Lists of Pole Shifts
Probable Pole shifts evidenced in the Bible starting with the most recent
- In Hezekiah’s days c. 704 B.C. Going back of the shadow of the sun (2Ki 20:8-11).
- In Joshua’s days c. 1398 B.C. the long day of Joshua (Josh 10:9-13).
- In Peleg’s days c. 2669-2436 B.C. the earth was divided (Gen 10:25).
- In Noah’s days c. 3200 B.C. the Flood of Noah (Gen 7:17-8:14).
- On the third day of creation when the land was divided from the sea (Gen 1:9-10).
The Pole shifts will be discussed in reverse chronological order.
Going Back of the Shadow of the Sun
2 Kings 20:8-11 Hezekiah
had asked Isaiah, “What will be the sign that Yahweh will heal me and that I
will go up to the
Isaiah 38:7-8 “’This is Yahweh’s sign to you that Yahweh will do what he has promised: 8 I will make the shadow cast by the sun go back the ten steps it has gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.’” So the sunlight went back the ten steps it had gone down.[2]
Commentaries usually interpret this passage about the going back of the shadow of the sun as some strange refraction of the sun light. It has also been interpreted as a weird shadow, resulting from an eclipse, but it is a change in the apparent position of the sun due to a pole shift.
In the time of Hezekiah c. 704 B.C.,
the pole shifted to its current position. It shifted from a position where the
North Pole was near the western side of the
The sign of the going back of the
sun on the sundial of Ahaz was widely observed. The going back of the sun was
not some local eclipse phenomena or some strange refraction of the sun. This
was why Emissaries came from
When the poles shift, the earth continues to spin on its axis and the North Pole continues to point at the North Star. The tilt axis of the earth remains the same. The crust does not slip over the interior of the earth. What happens is that an asteroid hits the earth, which can cause the gyroscope earth to have a few hour hiccup, resulting in a new point on the crust of the earth pointing at the North Star. After the poles shifted, the magnetic poles gradually lines up with the true poles over the course of a few thousand years. The magnetic poles are still attempting to line up. Currently the magnetic poles are moving toward the North Pole at the rate of 36 miles (58 km) per year.
Daniel preserves a memory of this event when he says that He (God) changes the times and the seasons (Daniel 2:21). Changing the times refers to the length of the year. When this event happened, the length of the year changed from 360 days to 365.242 day/year and from 30 days/month to 29.6 days/month.[3] The earth does not take longer to get around the sun, but rather the earth rotates more slowly so the length of the day is slightly shorter than it was.
If the stairs of Ahaz was an early sundial, then the pole shift caused it to become useless because all sundials are latitude specific. A sundial at the wrong latitude does not display the proper time.
The great blast that destroyed the Assyrian army was probably a meteor shower or a bolide. When God needs to defend His people he is able to unleash some spectacular power.
Because this pole shift occurred during the day, the meteor shower that caused it was less visible.
The pole shift had to be fairly rapid (a few hours), because if it had taken longer than this amount of time, there would have been no apparent reverse movement of the shadow of the sun on the stairs of Ahaz.
There are hints in the Bible of
the change of climate.
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Patrich's reconstruction of the Solomon’s |
Solomon’s |
The Tabernacle and therefore the
The angle of the
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The center of the depression and therefore, the likely spot for the previous North Pole location is approximately 55° N by 98°W |
Dynamic ice cap over
Figure 1 Location of pole preceding the current position
In this figure, the surface level of the ground is rebounding following the removal of the ice cap when the pole moved to its current position. The pole moved quickly enough that it did not cause a depression of its path as it moved.
When this pole shift happened,
For the shadow of the sun to appear to go backwards the movement of the pole had to be quick, no more than a few hours to make the entire transit.
For a book that describes what happens when the pole shifts see Charles Hapgood The Path of the Pole, for an article describing how the pole might change position if hit by a meteor see “On the Possibility of Very Rapid Shifts of the Poles” by Flavio Barbiero [5].
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The red dot on the map to the left marks the spot where the crust has been replaced by the mantel. |
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Articles on the Missing Crust[7] |
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Hapgood’s North and South Pole positions and movements.[8] |
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The
This study starts with the knowledge that God makes epic events happen by forcing a pole shift.
This movement of the pole is the
end of the Ice Age in Europe and the start of the Ice Age in North America
(Pleistocene end in Europe and starts in
2 Chronicles 32:31 Envoys
were sent by the rulers of
Isaiah 37:36 Then the angel of Yahweh went out and put to death one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—they discovered all the dead bodies!
Joshua’s Long Day
One of the clearest pole shifts
in Scripture is recorded in Joshua 10:13. In Joshua’s day the North Pole was
located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of
The long day of Joshua can more
easily be understood in imagining as if Joshua climbed aboard a 747 in Europe
and flew west to the
Joshua 10:9-14 After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by
surprise. 10Yahweh threw them into confusion before
In Joshua 10:11 it mentions a large number of
stones (Hebrew, “eben;” Greek, “lithos”) from the sky killing the Canaanites.
Enough to kill tens of thousands of Amorites. I believe, with Immanuel
Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos, and
others), that these were meteors, hitting the earth. They changed the position
of the North and South Poles. The shift happened over the course of one day
(about 12 hours) and the day was lengthened, much as someone in an airplane
flying west experiences a very long day. The earth did not stop rotating, but
the day, as seen by Joshua, was longer because the position of the North Pole
was changing. The pole at the time of Joshua was off the coast of
The time of Joshua’s long day is
late in the year. This can be discerned from several factors, but the most
important is that it occurs after the reading of the law on Mounts Gerizim and
Ebal. It occurred during the feast of Booths, in around October. Nehemiah
mentioned that the feast of Tabernacles had not been properly celebrated since
Joshua’s day. The reading of the law, mentioned above, is the only mention in
Joshua of doing so. The people then return to Gilgal, where they make a
covenant with the people of
After the Joshua’s pole shift
There are some who doubt that the Bible, in Joshua 10, is accurate because of few supporting references. There is a second similar incident recorded in both 2 Kings and Isaiah. These passages support each other and bear witness to the change in the relative position in the sky from its expected position. Without destroying the continuity of day and night, seasons, etc. But one two different days recorded in the Bible the sun did not appear progress across the sky as it normally does.
There is evidence that the
There were super floods due to these ice caps
melting creating features like the
Formation of Dry Land
Today the oceans cover 70% of the surface area of the earth to an average depth of five miles.
The earth as created had no land. If the earth was covered with oceans several miles deep how did dry land appear? The short answer is there was a series of pole shifts. It was necessary to separate the water from the land, e.g. make dry land appear. Before there were plants or animals, but after the earth was rotating, there were a series of pole shifts, each causing the sea floor to spread and the continents to rise. If the earth had the same velocity of rotation that it has today, then with any one pole shift there would be a maximum of about 25 miles of expansion of the sea floor. If the earth’s crust split in two places, then at most there would be 12.5 miles, expansion of each ocean with each pole shift.
Pole shifts are recorded in the Bible, if you know how to look for them from, the very beginning. The earth originally had no land and the deep ocean (about 4 miles deep) covered the entire earth.
Genesis 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. To create land (the continents) God caused the earth to go through a series of pole shifts, each pole shift creating then widening the ocean basin (basalt) by about 25 miles on either side of the planet and forcing the granite of the continents to collect in one place. The granite of the continents floats on the basalt of the ocean basins. Genesis 1:9-10 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. For the continents to form, the position of the poles had to change hundreds of times, probably in a cyclic pattern.
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Before any pole shift |
After first pole shift |
After many pole shifts |
After a hundred pole shifts |
Figure 2 Formation of Dry Land
Figure 3 Picture of the Atlantic sea floor.
The description given will assume that the continents are composed mainly of granite and granite has a lower density than basalt.
Because the earth is 25 miles bigger around the equator than around the poles each shift can open up, at most, 25 miles of additional ocean floor and compress the continents 25 miles. If we imagine the planet earth being formed from a variety of elements and compounds, the denser ones would tend toward the core of the planet and the lighter ones toward the surface. So gases would be on top, then liquids, then low density solids (lets call it granite) and then a layer of medium density (lets call it basalt) and then a high density core (lets call it iron). The granite floats on the basalt, and the basalt on the iron.
Repeated pole shifts can break the granite and push it together and the gap would be filled in with basalt from the layer beneath the granite. But the basalt is denser than the granite so gravity would try to even things out. Basalt would tend to settle at a lower elevation then the granite. Water, seeking the lowest level, would tend to cover the basalt because it is at the lowest level.
After enough pole shifts (done in an orderly manner), enough of the granite would gather to poke out of the water, somewhat like an iceberg floating on the basalt. Water will float on both granite and basalt.
If the shifts were not orderly, then the breaks would occur in a random manner. The breaks in the crust would go across the continents and the granite would form into a checkerboard pattern, rather than gather into continental masses.
It takes a finite amount of time for the earth’s poles to change position. Joshua’s long day describes one pole shift. The poles would have to shift many hundreds of times, and probably thousands of times for the continents to gather and the sea floor to spread. This would imply that the third day lasted at least several years. (Remember it is not until the fourth day that the sun, moon and stars are made and have any chance to control the length of the day).
Joshua’s Long Day
On Joshua’s long day, the earth
continued to revolve on its axis and the earth continued to move in its orbit
around the sun. The moon continued to move in its orbit around the earth. The
earth did not stop. What did happen is that an additional, but temporary, spin
was placed on the earth as the poles moved from their place. This additional
movement made the length of the daylight hours in
Joshua’s long day occurred during the shorter days at the end of the Fall or the early Winter. We can discern that it was winter because Joshua had celebrated the feast of Tabernacles in Fall, sometime before these events.
The story of Joshua’s long day is preserved in several other places in the Scriptures. In Habakkuk 3:11, the memory of the sun and moon stopping is preserved.
The changing Earth
God has changed the earth and He will change it again. The word for new, as in new heavens and new earth is “kainos,” that is, new in quality as opposed to “neos,” which means new in time.
The Earth was Divided
Genesis 10:25 Two sons were born
to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his
brother was named Joktan. This is the least clear pole shift and it is not even
for sure that it is a pole shift. In Jasher 7:19 “… to Eber were born two
children the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the sons of men were
divided, and in the latter days, the earth was divided.” This seems to imply
there were two divisions: one of men, presumably, languages at
The Flood
For water to cover the whole earth, an enormous amount of water has to be added to the earth. There is another way for water to cover the whole earth and that is for the land to sink. The land can sink if it is moved toward the equator. If the land sinks enough, it will be covered by the ocean, without adding any extra water to the earth.
The flood is another place where pole shifts can be assumed, but not detailed. When a pole shift occurs, land moving away from the equator towards the poles rises, so land masses on the globe moving toward the equator sink. The breaking open of the fountains of the deep, sounds like volcanoes, which incidentally spew a great deal of water into the atmosphere. Secondly, volcanoes send a great deal of particulate matter into the atmosphere. Rain requires dust to form. Dust is a seed around which the rain water collects. God would also be sending a great deal of extra-planetary water on to the earth. For documentation that this extra planetary water is still coming on the earth small comets of ice regularly striking the atmosphere of the earth.[11] The end of the flood came with another pole shift bringing the land back above sea level. So the different things cause the land to go below sea level. While the pole shift is the most important reason for bring the land under the water there are other reasons: extra-planetary water, water from the earth’s interior and dust from the volcanism that seed the rain drops. Near the end of the flood, there was at least one more pole shift where the now submerged land masses were moved toward the poles, causing the land to rise above sea level.
There is nothing in the Genesis record that says the whole earth was covered with a flood at the same time.
Genesis 7:18-21 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.
When we read that water covered the tops of all the mountains to at least 15-cubits, it is natural for us to think that this happened at the same time, but the Bible does not say so. It could be that one section of the world was submerged on one day and, on another day, another part of the world was submerged. A great tsunami could sweep across vast sections of the continents, covering everything and destroying all life, yet not be simultaneously submerging all land world-wide. I do believe that the waters where the ark was, remained one vast ocean during much of the year that the flood lasted.
Conclusion
Throughout history God has used
pole shifts as a ways He imposed His will on man. From creating a place for man
to dwell by raising land from the depths of the ocean, to placing barriers
between groups of men to limit their interaction. He covered the whole world
with a flood to allow a more righteous family to restart the world’s
population. On several occasions, the events were used to destroy armies of
nations, which were formed to destroy