The Seventh Trumpet: Jericho's Walls and the Last Trumpet
Old Testament: Josue 6:4, 16, 20
And on the seventh day the priests shall take the seven trumpets, which are used in the jubilee, and shall go before the ark of the covenant: and you shall go about the city seven times, and the priests shall sound the trumpets. ... And when in the seventh going about the priests sounded with the trumpets, Josue said to all Israel: Shout: for the Lord hath delivered the city to you: ... So all the people making a shout, and the trumpets sounding, when the voice and the sound thundered in the ears of the multitude, the walls forthwith fell down: and every man went up by the place that was over against him: and they took the city,
New Testament: Apocalypse 8:2; Apocalypse 11:15; 1 Corinthians 15:52
And I saw seven angels standing in the presence of God; and there were given to them seven trumpets. ... And the seventh angel sounded the trumpet: and there were great voices in heaven, saying: The kingdom of this world is become our Lord's and his Christ's, and he shall reign for ever and ever. Amen. ... In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed.
The connection
On the seventh day of the siege seven priests took "the seven trumpets, which are used in the jubilee" and went round Jericho seven times (Josue 6:4). "When in the seventh going about the priests sounded with the trumpets", the people shouted, and "the walls forthwith fell down" (6:16, 20). Hebrews remembers it as a work of faith: "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, by the going round them seven days" (Hebrews 11:30). And the man who gave the word bore the Saviour's name. In the Greek Josue is Iesous, Jesus, so the Septuagint reads that Jesus said to the children of Israel, "Shout: for the Lord hath delivered the city to you", and the Douay keeps the name at Hebrews 4:8: "if Jesus had given them rest". The Apocalypse sounds the same number at the end of history. "I saw seven angels standing in the presence of God; and there were given to them seven trumpets" (Apocalypse 8:2), and when the seventh sounds, the whole world is taken as Jericho was, not by arms but by the kingdom: "The kingdom of this world is become our Lord's and his Christ's, and he shall reign for ever and ever" (11:15). St Paul hears the same trumpet from the other side of the grave: "at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52). St Jerome reads the siege as the Church's: the Lord's host "was represented by the trumpets of the priests", and "we may see in Jericho a type of the overthrow of the world by the preaching of the Gospel." St Gregory Nazianzen counts the mystery in it: "the seven trumpets of Jesus, the son of Nave, and the same number of circuits and days and priests, by which the walls of Jericho were shaken down." The Catechism teaches that the dead will rise with their own bodies, changed and made incorruptible (CCC 999).
Moral sense
Jericho fell to obedience, silence and praise. For six days the people walked round the walls in silence, at Josue's command: "You shall not shout, nor shall your voice be heard ... until the day come wherein I shall say to you: Cry, and shout" (Josue 6:10). The walls that stand against the soul come down the same way, for "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God unto the pulling down of fortifications" (2 Corinthians 10:4). Origen hears the priests' trumpets as the Gospels and the letters of the apostles, sounded one after another until the walls give way. Our part is to keep circling in patience, to be silent when bidden, and to shout when the Lord gives the word.
Anagogical sense
The seventh day is the day of the end. When Jericho's walls fell, "every man went up by the place that was over against him" (Josue 6:20); at the resurrection St Paul says the dead rise "every one in his own order" (1 Corinthians 15:23). The last trumpet is the jubilee trumpet sounded once for all, proclaiming the remission that the fiftieth year only foreshadowed (Leviticus 25:10): the graves open, the walls between this world and the kingdom come down, and the city is given. One house was spared at Jericho, the house with the scarlet cord (Josue 6:25); at the last trumpet, those who go up into the city are the ones marked by the Blood of the Lamb.
The Fathers
St Jerome, Against Jovinianus I.21: "For if the armed host of the Lord was represented by the trumpets of the priests, we may see in Jericho a type of the overthrow of the world by the preaching of the Gospel." St Gregory Nazianzen, On Pentecost IV: "And I think of the seven trumpets of Jesus, the son of Nave, and the same number of circuits and days and priests, by which the walls of Jericho were shaken down."
Warrant
Patristic because St Jerome calls Jericho a type in so many words (Against Jovinianus I.21) and St Gregory Nazianzen counts its sevens as a mystery (On Pentecost IV). Origen's seventh homily on Josue, which the site's corpora do not hold, reads the priests' trumpets as the Gospels and the letters of the apostles bringing down the walls of idolatry; it is described here, not quoted. The New Testament recalls the fall of Jericho only as an example of faith (Hebrews 11:30). Setting its seventh trumpet beside the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse and the last trumpet of 1 Corinthians 15:52 is the entry's own reading, built on the number and on the word. Checked in the Greek: salpinx, the trumpet, stands in the Septuagint at Josue 6:20 and at Apocalypse 8:2 and 1 Corinthians 15:52, and the verb salpizo at Josue 6:16 and 6:20, Apocalypse 11:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:52. The Hebrew calls the trumpets shopherot hayyobelim, rams' horns of the jubilee (Josue 6:4), and 6:5 has qeren hayyobel, the horn of the jubilee, which is why the Douay says they "are used in the jubilee". The Septuagint gives Josue his Greek name throughout, Iesous, the name the Douay keeps for him at Hebrews 4:8. Rahab's house and scarlet cord belong to the entry on the blood on the threshold and are only named here.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 999.
The verses
Josue 6:4 · Josue 6:16 · Josue 6:20 · Apocalypse 8:2 · Apocalypse 11:15 · 1 Corinthians 15:52
