The use of the appositional each carrying a trumpet may be avoided if the first sentence of this verse is either broken into two sentences or else made into two coordinate clauses joined by “and.” For example, “Seven priests are to go in front of the Covenant Box. Each one of them is to carry a trumpet.” Or “Seven priests are to go in front of the Covenant Box, and each of them is to carry a trumpet.” It may even be advisable to translate “Seven priests are to go with you each time you march around the city. Each one of them is to carry a trumpet, and they are to go immediately in front of the Covenant Box.”
On the seventh day (verses 4b-5) the march is to be made seven times; the priests are to blow the trumpets; and at the end of the seventh march, one long note is to be sounded, at which time the soldiers are to give a loud shout, and Jericho’s walls will collapse.
The reader may get a false assumption from the statement that your soldiers are to march around the city seven times while the priests blow the trumpets. That is, it is possible to conclude that only Joshua and the soldiers are to march around the city, while the priests stand aside, blowing the trumpets. To avoid this misunderstanding, one may translate “On the seventh day all of you are to march around the city seven times while the priests blow the trumpets.” Or “On the seventh day you, your soldiers, and the priests are to march around the city seven times. While all of you are marching around the city, the priests are to blow the trumpets.”
Since in the last sentence the text mentions soldiers before priests, the reader may automatically assume that in the order of the march the soldiers went ahead of the priests. But this is not the case; only an advance guard marched ahead of the priests (verse 7). The order of this procession would have been: an advance guard of soldiers, the priests, the Covenant Box, and then the rest of the soldiers. This is basically a religious procession, though the ancient Israelites would hardly have distinguished between a religious and a military procession. To help the reader understand the order of the procession, one may translate “On the seventh day all of you are to march around the city seven times. The priests will march in front of the Covenant Box and blow the trumpets, and you will march behind the Covenant Box.” The information regarding the advance guard can then be delayed until verse 7, where it is given in the Hebrew text.
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 .