Christian Pure

Jericho in the Bible: What the Name Means and the Spiritual Meaning of Jericho

Christian Pure Team

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Summary

  • Jericho was the first city Israel took in the promised land, and God told Joshua “I have given into thine hand Jericho” before the march began (Joshua 6:2).
  • No one is sure what the Hebrew name Yericho means: Strong’s offers a root meaning the moon or one meaning “fragrant”, and Scripture calls it “the city of palm trees”.
  • Israel went round the city once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh, and the wall fell at the shout; Hebrews 11:30 credits this to faith.
  • Rahab, who hid Joshua’s spies, was spared with her family and is praised in Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25; at Jericho Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus and stayed with Zacchaeus, saying “This day is salvation come to this house”.
  • A “Jericho” or Siege of Jericho is a seven-day prayer devotion modelled on Joshua 6; in its Catholic form it is continuous Eucharistic adoration for seven days and nights.
  • Archaeologists still disagree whether Jericho was destroyed about 1550 BC, as Kathleen Kenyon held, or about 1400 BC, as Bryant Wood argued in 1990.

Jericho is the first city Israel took in the promised land, and in the Bible it stands for a gift: a city handed to God’s people before they had struck a blow. Its walls fell at a shout (Joshua 6), Rahab found mercy there amid judgment, and Jesus stopped there for a blind beggar and a tax collector. The whole story turns on a verb in the past tense. Before Israel had walked once around the walls, the LORD told…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • King James Version (public domain), quoted from BibleGateway: Deuteronomy 34:1–5; Joshua 2:1–21; Joshua 6:1–26; 1 Kings 16:34; 2 Kings 2:19–21; Matthew 1:5–6; Matthew 20:29–30; Mark 10:32, 46–52; Luke 10:30; Luke 18:35; Luke 19:2–10; Hebrews 11:30–31; James 2:25. Also cited: Judges 3:13; 2 Kings 25:4–5; 2 Chronicles 28:15; Nehemiah 3:2.
  • Strong’s Hebrew 3405 and the Brown-Driver-Briggs entry for Yericho, Bible Hub.
  • “Jericho”, Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), jewishencyclopedia.com.
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 116–117, vatican.va.
  • Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 1.9, Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
  • Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 12, trans. John Keith, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 9, New Advent; date from John Chapman, “Pope St. Clement I”, Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), New Advent.
  • Commentaries on Luke 18:35 (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges), Bible Hub.
  • Gary A. Byers, “On the Jericho Road”, Bible and Spade 12:2 (1999), abstract at Galaxie.
  • “Sitio de Jericó”, Catholic.net.
  • “Opération Jéricho du 25 au 31 mars 2020”, Communauté Catholique Palavra Viva, Diocese of Soissons.
  • “Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan”, UNESCO World Heritage Centre; inscription date from “UNESCO adds ruins near ancient Jericho to list of World Heritage sites in Palestine”, Associated Press, 17 September 2023, PBS NewsHour.
  • Bryant G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence”, Biblical Archaeology Review 16:2 (March/April 1990), reprinted by Associates for Biblical Research; Kathleen Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho (London: Ernest Benn, 1957), as cited there.
  • Piotr Bienkowski, “Jericho Was Destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, Not the Late Bronze Age”, and Bryant G. Wood, “Dating Jericho’s Destruction: Bienkowski Is Wrong on All Counts”, Biblical Archaeology Review 16:5 (September/October 1990), BAS Library.
  • “The Italian-Palestinian expedition to Tell es-Sultan, Ancient Jericho (1997–2015)”, Lorenzo Nigro, Sapienza University of Rome.

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