And the sun halted
and the moon stood still
till the nation wreaked vengeance on its foes.
It is not written in the Book of
Jashar—“And the sun stood still in the middle of the heavens and did not hasten
to set for a whole day. And there was nothing like that day before it or after
it, in the LORD’s heeding the voice of man, for the LORD did battle for Israel.”
(Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2019], 2:38)
the Book of Jashar. This
lost text is also mentioned in 2 Samuel 1:18 as the literary source in which
David’s elegy for Saul and Jonathon appears. It is safe to assume that it is a
very old book, largely poetic or even epic, in which martial themes are
prominent. The name jashar would appear to mean “the upright,” though
Shmuel Ahituv, mindful of the practice of calling books by their opening words,
interestingly proposes that it could mean “he sang” (revocalizing jashar as
jashir). (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:38)
