After Israel crossed the Jordan into Canaan, the first city in their path was Jericho — heavily walled and shut against them. The Lord told Joshua to march the armed men once around the city each day for six days, with seven priests carrying ram's horns before the Ark of the Covenant. On the seventh day, they were to march seven times, blow the horns, and have the people shout.
On the seventh circuit of the seventh day, Joshua said: 'Shout! For the LORD has given you the city.' The people shouted with a great shout, the trumpets blew, and 'the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city' (Joshua 6:20).
Rahab the prostitute, who had hidden the Israelite spies, was preserved with her household — a scarlet cord in her window marking her family's door. She is named in the genealogy of Christ (Matthew 1:5). The ruins of Tell es-Sultan, on the western edge of the modern city of Jericho in the Jordan Valley, are universally identified with the biblical site, though the dating of the fallen walls remains debated among archaeologists.