At this time may need to be made more specific: “After Joshua and his men had destroyed the city of Jericho, Joshua….” This may be particularly important, especially in light of the intervening reference to the day in which the book is being written.

It may be obligatory to indicate the persons to whom Joshua gave the warning, and other languages will require that issued a solemn warning be translated solely as a verb instead of a verb (issued) followed by an object (solemn warning). Moreover, the fact that it is a solemn warning may have to be brought out in the manner in which the warning is stated, since this phrase may be difficult, if not impossible, to render into many languages. For example, “Joshua warned the people of Israel never to try to rebuild the city of Jericho” or “Joshua warned the people of Israel, ‘You must never try to rebuild the city of Jericho.’ ”

The story of the fall of Jericho ends with the solemn curse pronounced by Joshua. The Hebrew “cursed before the LORD” (see Revised Standard Version) means, as Good News Translation has it, under the LORD’s curse (see also New English Bible). The Hebrew word translated curse means the object of the Lord’s anger and punishment. Joshua was not merely predicting what would happen, but as a spokesman for the Lord he was causing the disaster to occur which he had described. The fulfillment of this curse is reported in 1 Kings 16.34 (during the reign of King Ahab of Israel, 874-853 B. C.).

Instead of the passive Anyone … will be under the LORD’s curse, a shift to an active structure may be more effective: “The LORD will place a curse upon anyone who tries to rebuild the city of Jericho.”

The last two statements of this verse indicate the content of the curse, but the relation between under the LORD’s curse and these two statements may need to be stated clearly: “under the LORD’s curse. And this is what the curse will be:….”

Contemporary cities do not have a foundation, and neither did ancient cities. The reference is to the foundation for the city walls, as the mention of gates in the last statement indicates. Moreover, maintaining the two parallel statements of the curse may well lead to a misunderstanding of its content. In fact, it is probably much better to combine than to retain the parallel curses. The meaning is that whoever attempts to rebuild the city of Jericho will lose all of his children, from the oldest to the youngest. The curse may then be stated, “Whoever starts to rebuild the city walls will lose all of his children,” or even “If a man even starts to rebuild the city of Jericho, the LORD will take the lives of all of his children.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Newman, Barclay M. A Handbook on Joshua. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1983. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .