NOTES for Jos 6:2-27
There have been many attempts to explain rationally what the trumpets whose sound brought down the walls of Jericho might “really” have been. It is far more important for us to remember that the priests blew those trumpets, and that the jubilee trumpets were carried before the Ark of the Covenant. Whatever technical means were used to overcome the enemy, they would have had no effect if the people had not been led by the Lord.
The assault on Jericho was cruel, like every war of that time. Yet the warriors did not storm the city for plunder, as the ban on taking the spoils of war confirms. Jericho was to be destroyed not as a conquered fortress but as a stronghold of resistance to God. Who knows: had the inhabitants of Jericho accepted the true God, might they not have survived, just as Rahab's relatives did?