Imagine standing on top of Jericho's wall, armed and ready, watching an invading army approach. Now imagine that army does not charge, does not raise ladders, does not fire a single arrow. Instead they walk. Silently. Once around the city, and then they turn around and go back to camp. This happens again the next day, and the next, for six straight days, accompanied only by the sound of ram's horn trumpets. From the top of that wall, it would have been impossible not to laugh.
That is precisely the picture Joshua six gives us, and we should not rush past its strangeness. God did not give Israel a clever siege strategy. He gave them a command that, by every standard of ancient warfare, made no sense at all. Marching around a fortified city with no weapons, no ladders, no plan of assault beyond walking and eventually shouting, was not a tactic. It was an act of trust dressed up as a military maneuver, and everyone watching from a position of strength had every reason to assume Israel had lost their minds.
This is worth pausing on because it tells us something essential about how obedience to God often appears from the outside. To the world, faith frequently looks like foolishness. It looks impractical, inefficient, even embarrassing. The person who forgives instead of retaliates looks weak. The family that gives generously instead of building a larger cushion looks reckless. The believer who waits on God's timing instead of forcing an outcome looks passive, maybe even foolish, to everyone standing on the wall of worldly wisdom looking down.
Israel was commanded to do this for six days before anything visible changed. There was no partial collapse on day three to reward their patience, no encouraging sign that the strategy was working. Just repeated, quiet obedience with no observable return. We often want our faith rewarded on a shorter timeline than God is willing to give. We want the third lap to show cracks in the wall. But God was not interested in giving Israel evidence along the way. He was interested in their obedience regardless of evidence.
And notice who was leading. Not the soldiers, not the generals, not anyone equipped for battle. The priests carried the ark at the center of the procession, protected by an armed guard whose job was not to attack but to shield what led them. The presence of God, not the strength of Israel's army, was the centerpiece of the whole procession. Whenever we are tempted to think that our strength, our strategy, or our resources are what will bring the walls down in our own lives, this ordering corrects us. God's presence leads. Our obedience follows.
Perhaps the strangest detail is the command to march in total silence for six days, then shout only once, at the appointed signal, on the seventh. Every human instinct says that shouting louder or longer would somehow help bring a wall down, and yet God specifically choreographed an action that had no natural power to accomplish anything. The shout did not topple the wall. God did. The shout only demonstrated that Israel would obey even when obedience made no logical sense, and that demonstration was the entire point.
This is where many of us stall out in our own walk with God. We are willing to obey when obedience looks reasonable, when we can trace a straight line from our action to the outcome we want. But God frequently asks for obedience that has no visible mechanism attached to it. Prayer that seems to change nothing external. Patience that seems to accomplish nothing productive. Generosity that seems to leave us with less rather than more. In each case, the call is the same one given at Jericho: obey the instruction, and let God be the one who moves the wall.
We are not asked to manufacture the miracle. We are asked to walk faithfully toward it, even when it looks absurd from where the world is watching. The people on top of Jericho's wall had every reason to believe they were safe behind their fortifications, right up until the moment they were not. Faith that looks foolish is not faith that has failed. It is often faith exactly where God wants it, walking in silence, waiting for His timing, trusting that the outcome was never dependent on how convincing the walk appeared to anyone watching from above.
Dr. William C.K. Yomes is the founding apologist of Faith Makes Sense and the Senior Pastor of Catalyst Community Church in Wilmington, Delaware. This article is part of his ongoing teaching ministry at Catalyst Community Church.