Joshua 6 Summary and Study Guide

God’s plan for taking Jericho was a walk. It was the first order Israel received inside the promised land, and it asked an army for patience rather than for force. This Joshua 6 summary and study guide follows what happened when they obeyed it.

Setting the Stage

God promised this land to Abraham’s family hundreds of years before anyone marched on Jericho (Genesis 12:7). The people who came out of Egypt reached its border, refused to go in, and died in the desert. Their children crossed the Jordan under Joshua and camped at Gilgal, near the first city in their way.

Two of their men had already been inside that city. A woman named Rahab hid them on her roof and made them swear to spare her household when Jericho fell (Joshua 2:12-14). She tied a scarlet cord in her window and waited. Joshua 6 opens with that oath still owed, and with Joshua outside the walls facing a man who tells him He is captain of the LORD’s army (Joshua 5:13-15).

Comprehensive Joshua 6 Summary

Jericho had locked itself down. Nobody went out and nobody came in, because the city had heard what God did in Egypt and to the kings east of the Jordan (Joshua 2:9-11). Verse 2 picks up where the end of chapter 5 left off. The captain of the LORD’s army tells him Jericho is already his, and hands him a plan with no siege in it.

Israel was to walk around the city once a day for six days. Seven priests would carry seven horns in front of the ark of the covenant, armed men would go ahead of them, and a rear guard would follow. Nobody was to say a word. On the seventh day they would circle seven times, the priests would blow a long blast, the people would shout, and the wall would come down.

Joshua passed the order on without arguing, and Israel did it. Six mornings the procession went out, made its circuit and came back to camp with the wall still standing. On the seventh morning they started at dawn and went round seven times.

At the seventh circuit Joshua told the people to shout, because God had given them the city. He also told them what the city was for: everything in Jericho belonged to God, Rahab and her household were to live, no soldier was to take anything for himself, and the metal was to go into the LORD’s treasury.

They shouted. The wall fell, Israel went straight up into the city and took it, and everything alive in it was killed. The two spies brought Rahab and her whole family out and settled them outside the camp, and the army burned Jericho.

Joshua then put the people under oath that nobody would rebuild it. God was with Joshua, and word of him spread through the country.

One Word Summary

• Given: the verb God and Joshua both reach for when they speak about the city (6:2, 6:16).
• Devoted: everything in the city belongs to God, not to the army (6:17-19).
• Silence: six days of marching with nobody allowed to speak (6:10).

In One Sentence

Israel walks around Jericho for seven days, Joshua orders the shout, the wall falls and the city is destroyed apart from Rahab and her family, because God had already handed Jericho over before anyone moved.

Theme of Joshua 6

Joshua 6 is about a victory God gives rather than a victory Israel wins. That controls the rest of the chapter. The plan carries no military sense, so the credit cannot be split. The six days of walking test whether Israel will keep obeying an order that produces nothing visible.

The ban on the spoil stops the army turning God’s gift into its own profit. Alongside all of that runs the mercy shown to Rahab. She was a Canaanite inside a condemned city, and she lived, which tells the reader what was open to anyone in Jericho who turned to Israel’s God.

Joshua 6 Outline

• Joshua 6:1: Jericho shuts its gates against Israel so that nobody can go out or come in.
• Joshua 6:2-5: The LORD tells Joshua the city is already given and lays out the seven-day plan.
• Joshua 6:6-7: Joshua passes the order on to the priests and to the people.
• Joshua 6:8-11: The procession makes its first circuit in silence and returns to camp.
• Joshua 6:12-14: Israel repeats the same circuit each morning for five more days.
• Joshua 6:15-16: On the seventh day they circle seven times and Joshua orders the shout.
• Joshua 6:17-19: Joshua sets the terms for the city, for Rahab, for the spoil and for the metal.
• Joshua 6:20-21: The people shout, the wall falls, and Israel takes the city and destroys it.
• Joshua 6:22-25: The spies bring Rahab and her household out, and Jericho is burned.
• Joshua 6:26-27: Joshua puts the people under oath against rebuilding Jericho, and the LORD is with him.

Joshua’s Curse on Jericho

The chapter ends with a formal oath. Joshua does not simply express a wish; he puts the nation under a binding promise and attaches a price to breaking it.

And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.

Joshua 6:26

Joshua made the people swear an oath, and the words of it were these: anyone who raises this city again will pay for its foundation with his oldest son and for its gates with his youngest.

The two halves of the oath match each other. Foundation answers gates, oldest son answers youngest, so the price runs from the first day of the work to the last. What it forbids is the rebuilding of Jericho as a fortress, so the site could be lived on afterwards without anyone falling under it.

Jericho is listed among Benjamin’s towns (Joshua 18:21), and David sends his humiliated messengers to wait there (2 Samuel 10:5). A company of prophets was living there in Elisha’s day (2 Kings 2:4-5).

The oath was kept for about five hundred years, and then it was broken. In the reign of Ahab, a man from Bethel built Jericho again:

In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.

1 Kings 16:34

Hiel rebuilt Jericho, and it cost him his oldest son when he began and his youngest son when he finished, exactly as Joshua had said. Kings names Joshua as the man who spoke the word it was fulfilling, five centuries after he spoke it.

Observations from Joshua 6

The Promise and the Report Use the Same Words (6:5, 6:20)

God tells Joshua in verse 5 that the wall will “fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.” Verse 20 reports that the wall “fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him.” The wording of the promise comes back unchanged in the wording of the outcome. Israel did not get something like what God said; they got what God said, down to how the men would walk in.

The Horns Were Jubilee Horns (6:4)

The instruments in verse 4 are not the silver trumpets Israel used for signalling the camp (Numbers 10:1-2). The Hebrew calls them horns of jubilee, the same kind blown on the Day of Atonement to open the year of release: “then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month” (Leviticus 25:9).

That horn announced that every Israelite was going back to land his family had lost. Israel takes its inheritance to the sound of the horn that hands property back, and the same blast reaches the people inside the wall who are about to lose everything. The horns may be saying both things at once.

Seven and the Trumpet Each Sound Fourteen Times (6:4-20)

Seven priests, seven horns, six days and then seven circuits on the seventh. The word “seven” and the word “seventh” together come up fourteen times in this chapter, and “trumpet” comes up fourteen times as well. In Scripture seven usually carries the sense of something finished, and the Hebrew verb for swearing an oath is built on the same root as the number. A chapter this thick with sevens may be telling Israel that God is completing something He swore to do.

Joshua Forbids Speech Three Ways in One Verse (6:10)

One prohibition would have been enough. Joshua gives three: “Ye shall not shout, nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I bid you shout.”

Hold back the war cry, keep silent altogether, and say nothing to the man beside you until I give the word. Against those three commands, the word “shout” turns up nine times in the chapter. The one thing Israel most wanted to do was the one thing held back until God’s moment for it came.

The Warning About the Spoil Comes Before the Shout (6:17-18)

Joshua does not wait until the city is open to tell the army to keep its hands off. He says it while they are still outside: take any of the devoted things, “and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.” Joshua’s warning was that taking what belonged to God would bring trouble on the whole camp, not only on the man who took it. The word “accursed” appears four times, all inside these two verses, and the very next chapter opens on a man who did it anyway (Joshua 7:1).

Difficult Verses Explained

Why Did God Command the Killing of the Children in Jericho?

Scripture gives reasons for this. God told Abraham four hundred years earlier that his descendants would wait for this land, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Genesis 15:16). Judgment was held back until the measure filled up.

What filled it up is described in Leviticus 18:24-25, where the land itself is said to vomit out the people living on it, and in Deuteronomy 12:31, where the practice named is burning children to death in worship. Jericho also knew who Israel’s God was and what He had done, because Rahab said so plainly (Joshua 2:9-11), and Joshua later records that no Canaanite city except Gibeon sought peace with Israel (Joshua 11:19-20).

Two limits matter as much as the reasons. First, Israel is told flatly that the land came for reasons other than Israel’s goodness: “Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land” (Deuteronomy 9:5). The nation carrying out the judgment was told it stood under the same standard.

Second, this was a command given once, to one nation, about one land, and it is reported here rather than commanded to anyone since. No later people has been handed it. Rahab is the proof that mercy was open inside the city on the day of judgment.

What Does It Mean That the City Was “Accursed”?

The word behind “accursed” in verse 17 means devoted, handed over to God completely. The law says of anything given that way, “every devoted thing is most holy unto the LORD” (Leviticus 27:28), and the verse after it puts those devoted persons under death (Leviticus 27:29).

What is handed to God like this belongs wholly to Him and cannot be bought back or turned to any other use. Jericho was the first city Israel took in the land, so it was treated the way a first portion of a harvest was treated, given whole to God rather than kept.

That also means this was not Israel’s normal rule of war. At the very next city God says the opposite: “the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves” (Joshua 8:2). Israel was allowed to keep the plunder at Ai. Jericho was the exception, because Jericho was the firstfruits.

Why Were Rahab and Her Family Left Outside the Camp?

Rahab was rescued, and then held at a distance for a while: the spies “brought out all her kindred, and left them without the camp of Israel” (Joshua 6:23). They took her whole family out of Jericho and settled them outside Israel’s camp rather than inside it. Verse 25 says that she went on to live in Israel, so the arrangement did not last. Her house had been built on the wall (Joshua 2:15), and how it survived a wall that fell is a question the chapter leaves open.

Scripture never gives the reason, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. What it does say is that Israel’s camp was governed by laws about who could be inside it (Numbers 5:1-3), and that Rahab’s household came out of a city God had just judged. Many Bible teachers read the pause as the time it took for a Canaanite family to be brought properly into the covenant people. The chapter reports the pause and then the outcome: she stayed.

Common Misunderstandings

• God brought the wall down, not the noise. Readers often assume the shout knocked it over, but the shout and the collapse simply happen together in verse 20, and neither verse 5 nor verse 20 makes one the cause of the other. The New Testament assigns the cause elsewhere: “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days” (Hebrews 11:30). Hebrews credits the collapse to faith, and behind that faith stands the God who had promised it.
• Joshua did not fight the battle of Jericho; God gave him the city. The old song has outlived the chapter it came from. Israel walked, kept silent and shouted, and both times the chapter says who did the winning it says God: “I have given into thine hand Jericho” (6:2) and “the LORD hath given you the city” (6:16). God had put the city into Joshua’s hand, and Joshua told the people so.
• The ban on the spoil took plunder away from the army rather than approving it. Some read the conquest as God blessing loot. The ban did the opposite here, and where God did permit spoil, at Ai in the next chapter, He said so out loud (Joshua 8:2). Jericho’s silver and gold went into God’s treasury and not into anybody’s tent.

Christ Connection

The New Testament reads both halves of this chapter as faith, and it reads them together. Hebrews puts the wall and the woman in consecutive verses: the walls fell “by faith”, and “by faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not” (Hebrews 11:30-31).

The same power that flattened the defence saved one household inside it, and both are credited to trust in God rather than to anything Israel or Rahab supplied. That is where the chapter meets the gospel. Nobody at Jericho was saved by strength, and the one household that came out alive came out because a woman believed a promise and did what she was told with it.

The chapter points forward at four more places:

• Rahab is in the family line of Jesus. Matthew names her among His ancestors: “Salmon begat Booz of Rachab” (Matthew 1:5). Salmon and Rahab were the parents of Boaz, so a Canaanite woman pulled out of a condemned city stands in the genealogy of Christ.
• The shout and the trumpet come back at the end. Paul describes the Lord’s return in the same two sounds: “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Jesus will come back with a shout and a trumpet blast, the same two sounds that were the last thing Jericho heard.
• The name Joshua is the name Jesus. Joshua’s name means the LORD saves, and Jesus is the same name in Greek, given for the same reason: “he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The man who led Israel into its inheritance carries the name of the One who leads His people into theirs.
• Jericho is where Jesus said salvation had come. The rebuilt city is where He healed a blind beggar (Mark 10:46-52) and called a tax collector down out of a tree, telling him, “This day is salvation come to this house” (Luke 19:9). Today salvation has arrived at this house. The town that stood under judgment in Joshua 6 is the town where Christ said that.

When, Where, and Why

• When: in the spring, only days after Israel crossed the Jordan. They kept the Passover on the plains of Jericho, ate the produce of the land, and the manna stopped (Joshua 5:10-12), which puts the march right after the barley harvest. The calendar year of the conquest is debated among historians and archaeologists, and the chapter does not date itself.
• Where: Jericho, a walled town near the Jordan about six miles north of the Dead Sea, sitting far below sea level in the valley. It was small in area, roughly six to nine acres by the usual estimates, and its defences made it formidable: excavators at the site describe a stone base wall carrying a mudbrick wall above it, with a plastered slope behind. Israel came out of the desert without the equipment an army needed to break a wall, so the walls were the whole problem.
• Why: Jericho guarded the way up from the valley into the hill country, so it was the gate to everything else Israel had been promised. Joshua records the first city falling without a battle because that settles the question the rest of the book depends on: the land is a gift from God, held on His terms, and not a prize the army won for itself (Deuteronomy 9:5).

Key Verses

And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.

Joshua 6:2

The LORD tells Joshua that Jericho, its king and its best soldiers are already in his hand. God says this in the past tense before Israel has taken one step around the walls. Everything the people do for the next seven days is therefore a response to a promise God has already kept, not an effort to make Him keep it.

And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given you the city.

Joshua 6:16

At the seventh circuit, with the horns sounding, Joshua tells the people to shout because the LORD has handed them the city. The reason arrives before the result. Israel shouts on the strength of what God said, at a moment when the wall in front of them is exactly as high as it was on the first morning.

So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

Joshua 6:20

The people shouted at the trumpet blast, the wall collapsed where it stood, and the army walked straight in and captured Jericho. The Hebrew behind “fell down flat” is closer to fell down under itself, meaning the wall came down where it stood rather than being pushed over from outside, which is why the men could go up straight ahead of them instead of crowding through one breach.

Key Lessons from Joshua 6

• Obedience that produces nothing visible on the third morning is still obedience (6:14).
• Silence was as much a part of the plan as the shout, and Israel had to keep both at God’s timing rather than its own (6:10, 6:20).
• What God claims for Himself is not available to be quietly kept, and taking it can bring trouble on people who never touched it (6:18).
• Rahab shows that mercy was open inside Jericho to anyone who trusted Israel’s God and did what His messengers told them (6:22-25).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: Lessons from Joshua 6. If you are meeting Joshua for the first time here, start with Lessons from the Life of Joshua in the Bible.

Bible Study Questions

1. What does God say about Jericho in verse 2, and how should that have changed the way Israel walked around it for the next six days?
2. Read verse 5 beside verse 20. What has the writer of Joshua done with the wording, and what is he telling the reader by doing it?
3. Joshua gives three separate commands about speech in verse 10. Why do you think total silence was part of the plan?
4. What exactly were the people forbidden to take in verses 18 and 19, and what did Joshua say the cost of taking it would be?
5. Rahab and her family were brought out and then left outside the camp before they were brought in (6:23, 6:25). What does that pause suggest about coming into the people of God?
6. Joshua’s oath in verse 26 cost Hiel two sons about five hundred years later (1 Kings 16:34). What does that gap say about how God treats His own word?
7. Where in your own obedience are you on the third morning, walking around something that has not moved yet, and what would keep you walking?

Frequently Asked Questions

Joshua 6, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.

2 And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.

3 And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days.

4 And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.

5 And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.

6 And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests, and said unto them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD.

7 And he said unto the people, Pass on, and compass the city, and let him that is armed pass on before the ark of the LORD.

8 And it came to pass, when Joshua had spoken unto the people, that the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams’ horns passed on before the LORD, and blew with the trumpets: and the ark of the covenant of the LORD followed them.

9 And the armed men went before the priests that blew with the trumpets, and the rereward came after the ark, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets.

10 And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout, nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I bid you shout; then shall ye shout.

11 So the ark of the LORD compassed the city, going about it once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the camp.

12 And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the LORD.

13 And seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD went on continually, and blew with the trumpets: and the armed men went before them; but the rereward came after the ark of the LORD, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets.

14 And the second day they compassed the city once, and returned into the camp: so they did six days.

15 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven times.

16 And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given you the city.

17 And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.

18 And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.

19 But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD.

20 So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

22 But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spied out the country, Go into the harlot’s house, and bring out thence the woman, and all that she hath, as ye sware unto her.

23 And the young men that were spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had; and they brought out all her kindred, and left them without the camp of Israel.

24 And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

25 And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

26 And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.

27 So the LORD was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout all the country.