Thursday, May 2, 2024

"Jericho"

In the impromptu version of "Jericho" from the Headquarters sessions (listed as "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" on the super deluxe edition), there are the lines:
You can talk about your men of Gideon
You can talk about your men of Saul
But there's none like good old Joshua
At the battle of Jericho
The contrast between the nearly identical first two lines and the line about Joshua highlights his uniqueness ("there's none like... Joshua").

I neglected to note this before, but the Biblical event that the song relates is recounted in Joshua 6.  "Your men of Saul" seems to be just a general allusion, but "your men of Gideon" refers to Judges 7, in which Gideon and three hundred men attack the Midianites.  Like Joshua's attack on Jericho, Gideon's attack was also preceded by the blowing of trumpets.