John Calvin Commentary Joshua 6:26

"And Joshua charged them with an oath at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before Jehovah, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of his first-born shall he lay the foundation thereof, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it." — Joshua 6:26 (ASV)

And Joshua adjured them, etc. This solemn charge, then, was not merely to take effect for one day, but to warn posterity through all ages that this city had been captured only by divine power. He wished, therefore, that the ruins and devastation should remain forever as a kind of trophy, because rebuilding it would have been equivalent to erasing the miracle. Therefore, so that the desolate appearance of the place might keep the memory of divine power and favor alive among posterity, Joshua pronounced a heavy curse upon anyone who would again build the ruined city. From this passage, we gather that the natural sluggishness of human beings requires stimulants to prevent them from burying divine favors in oblivion; and so this spectacle, in which divine agency was made clearly visible to the people, was a kind of indirect rebuke for their ingratitude.

The substance of the curse is that if anyone ever attempts to rebuild Jericho, he might be made to realize by the unfavorable and mournful result that he had done a cursed and abominable work. For to lay the foundations in his first-born would be just as if he were to cast out his son to perish, crushed and buried beneath the mass of stones; and to set up the gates in his younger son means the same as planning a building that could not be erected without causing the death of a son. Thus, whoever would dare to make the insane attempt is condemned through his own offspring. Nor did Joshua utter this curse on his own initiative; he was only the messenger of heavenly vengeance.

This makes it all the more monstrous that among the people of God a man was found whom that fearful curse, couched in formal terms, could not restrain from sacrilegious recklessness. In the time of Ahab (1 Kings 16:34), Hiel, a citizen of Bethel, arose, who dared, as it were, openly to challenge God in this matter. But Sacred History at the same time testifies that the condemnation which God had pronounced through Joshua did not fail to take effect; for Hiel founded the new Jericho in Abiram his first-born, and set up its gates in his younger son Segub. Thus, he learned from the destruction of his offspring what it means to attempt anything against the will and in opposition to the command of God.