Joshua got up early in the morning; and they moved from Shittim and came to the Jordan, he and all the children of Israel. They camped there before they crossed over. After three days, the officers went through the middle of the camp; and they commanded the people, saying, “When you see the ark of Yahweh your God’s covenant, and the Levitical priests bearing it, then leave your place and follow it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it of about two thousand cubits by measure—don’t come closer to it—that you may know the way by which you must go; for you have not passed this way before.”
Joshua said to the people, “Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow Yahweh will do wonders among you.”
Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and cross over before the people.” They took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people.
Yahweh said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to magnify you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. You shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, saying, ‘When you come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.’ ”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6 1. And Joshua rose early, etc We must remember,…
1. And Joshua rose early, etc We must remember, as I formerly explained, that Joshua did not move his camp till the day after the spies had returned, but that after hearing their report, he gave orders by the prefects that they should collect their vessels, as three days after they were to cross the Jordan. His rising in the morning, therefore, does not refer simply to their return, but rather to the issuing of his proclamation. When the three days were completed, the prefects were again sent through the camp to acquaint the people with the mode of passage. Although these things are mentioned separately, it is easy to take up the thread of the narrative. But before it was publicly intimated, by what means he was to open a way for the people, the multitude spread out on the bank of the river were exposed to some degree of confusion.
It is true, there were fords by which the Jordan could be passed. But the waters were then swollen, and had overflowed, so that they might easily prevent even men altogether without baggage from passing. There was therefore no hope, that women and children, with the animals, and the rest of the baggage, could be transported to the further bank. That, in such apparently desperate circumstances, they calmly wait the issue, though doubtful, and to them incomprehensible, is an example of faithful obedience, proving how unlike they were to their fathers, who, on the slightest occasions, gave way to turbulence, and inveighed against the Lord and against Moses. This change was not produced without the special agency of the Holy Spirit.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 8 Which according to the Hebrews was in March, and…
Which according to the Hebrews was in March, and about 40 days after Moses’ death.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–8 Jos 3:1 And Joshua rose early in the morning;…
Jos 3:1 And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over.
Ver. 1. And Joshua rose early in the morning,] viz., Of the ninth day of the first month, called Abib; as on the tenth day {Jos 4:19} - which was the day wherein the paschal lamb was set apart - the Israelites entered the land of Canaan under the command and conduct of Joshua, who was a type of Jesus Christ, by whom we have "the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory." {Eph 1:14}
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Removed from Shittim.] In the plains of Moab. See Jos 2:1.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–8 In the morning; not after the return of the…
In the morning; not after the return of the spies, as may seem at first view; but after the three days, as it follows, Jos 3:2.
Lodged there that night, that they might go over in the day time; partly that the miracle might be more evident and unquestionable; and partly to strike the greater terror into their enemies.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 7 Rahab, in mentioning to the spies the drying up…
Rahab, in mentioning to the spies the drying up of the Red Sea (Jos 2:10), the report of which terrified the Canaanites more than anything else, intimates that those on that side the water expected that Jordan, that great defence of their country, would in like manner give way to them. Whether the Israelites had any expectation of it does not appear. God often did things for them which they looked not for, Isa 64:3. Now here we are told,
I. That they came to Jordan and lodged there, Jos 3:1. Though they were not yet told how they should pass the river, and were unprovided for the passing of it in any ordinary way, yet they went forward in faith, having been told (Jos 1:11) that they should pass it. We must go on in the way of our duty though we foresee difficulties, trusting God to help us through them when we come to them. Let us proceed as far as we can, and depend on divine sufficiency for that which we find ourselves not sufficient for. In this march Joshua led them, and particular notice is taken of his early rising as there is afterwards upon other occasions (Jos 6:12; Jos 7:16; Jos 8:10), which intimates how little he loved his ease, how much he loved his business, and what care and pains he was willing to take in it. Those that would bring great tings to pass must rise early. Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty. Joshua herein set a good example to the officers under him, and taught them to rise early, and to all that are in public stations especially to attend continually to the duty of their place.
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II. That the people were directed to follow the ark. Officers were appointed to go through the host to give these directions (v. 2), that every Israelite might know both what to do and what to depend upon.
1. They might depend upon the ark to lead them; that is, upon God himself, of whose presence the ark was an instituted sign and token. It seems, the pillar of cloud and fire was removed, else that would have led them, unless we suppose that it now hovered over the ark and so they had a double guide: honour was put upon the ark, and a defence upon that glory. It is called here the ark of the covenant of the Lord their God. What greater encouragement could they have than this, that the Lord was their God, a God in covenant with them? Here was the ark of the covenant; if God be ours, we need not fear any evil. He was nigh to them, present with them, went before them: what could come amiss to those that were thus guided, thus guarded? Formerly the ark was carried in the midst of the camp, but now it went before them to search out a resting-place for them (Num 10:33), and, as it were, to give them livery and seisin of the promised land, and put them in possession of it In the ark the tables of the law were, and over it the mercy-seat; for the divine law and grace reigning in the heart are the surest pledges of God's presence and favour, and those that would be led to the heavenly Canaan must take the law of God for their guide (if thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments) and have the great propitiation in their eye, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
2. They might depend upon the priests and Levites, who were appointed for that purpose to carry the ark before them. The work of ministers is to hold forth the word of life, and to take care of the administration of those ordinances which are the tokens of God's presence and the instruments of his power and grace; and herein they must go before the people of God in their way to heaven.
3. The people must follow the ark: Remove from your place and go after it, (1.) As those that are resolved never to forsake it. Wherever God's ordinances are, there we must be; if they flit, we must remove and go after them. (2.) As those that are entirely satisfied in its guidance, that it will lead in the best way to the best end; and therefore, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. This must be all their car, to attend the motions of the ark, and follow it with an implicit faith. Thus must we walk after the rule of the word and the direction of the Spirit in every thing, so shall peace be upon us, as it now was upon the Israel of God. They must follow the priests as far as they carried the ark, but no further; so we must follow our ministers only as they follow Christ.
4. In following the ark, they must keep their distance, v. 4. They must none of them come within a thousand yards of the ark. (1.) They must thus express their awful and reverent regard to that token of God's presence, lest its familiarity with them should breed contempt. This charge to them not to come near was agreeable to that dispensation of darkness, bondage, and terror: but we now through Christ have access with boldness. (2.) Thus it was made to appear that the ark was able to protect itself, and needed not to be guarded by the men of war, but was itself a guard to them. With what a noble defiance of the enemy did it leave all it its friends half a mile behind except the unarmed priests that carried it as perfectly sufficient for its own safety and theirs that fallowed it! (3.) Thus it was the better seen by those that were to be led by it: That you may know the way by which you must go, seeing it, as it were, chalked out or tracked by the ark. Had they been allowed to come near it, they would have surrounded it, and none would have had the sight of it but those that were close to it; but, as it was put at such a distance before them, they would all have the satisfaction of seeing it, and would be animated by the sight. And it was with good reason that this provision was made for their encouragement: For you have not passed this way heretofore. This had been the character of all their way through the wilderness, it was an untrodden path, but this especially through Jordan. While we are here we must expect and prepare for unusual events, to pass ways that we have not passed before, and much more when we go hence; our way through the valley of the shadow of death is a way we have not gone before, which makes it the more formidable. But, if we have the assurance of God's presence, we need not fear; that will furnish us with such strength as we never had when we come to do a work we never did.
III. They were commanded to sanctify themselves, that they might be prepared to attend the ark; and with good reason: For tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you, v. 5. See how magnificently he speaks of God's works: he doeth wonders, and is therefore to be adored, admired, and trusted in. See how intimately acquainted Joshua was with the divine counsels: he could tell before-hand what god would do, and when. See what preparation we must make to receive the discoveries of God's glory and the communications of his grace: we must sanctify ourselves. This we must do when we are to attend the ark, and God by it is about to do wonders among us; we must separate ourselves from all other cares, devote ourselves to God's honour, and cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit. The people of Israel were now entering into the holy land, and therefore must sanctify themselves. God was about to give them uncommon instances of his favour, which by meditation and prayer they must compose their minds to a very careful observation of, that they might give God the glory, and take to themselves the comfort, of these appearances.
IV. The priests were ordered to take up the ark and carry it before the people, v. 6. It was the Levites' work ordinarily to carry the ark, Num 4:15. But on this great occasion the priests were ordered to do it. And they did as they were commanded, took up the ark, and did not think themselves disparaged, went before the people, and did not thing themselves exposed; the ark they carried was both their honour and their defence. And now we may suppose that prayer of Moses used, when the ark set forward (Num 10:35), Rise up, Lord and let they enemies be scattered. Magistrates are here instructed to stir up ministers to their work, and to make use of their authority for the furtherance of religion. Ministers must likewise learn to go before in the way of God, and not to shrink nor draw back when dangers are before them. They mus expect to be most struck at, but they know whom they have trusted.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–8 And Joshua rose early in the morning,.... The morning…
And Joshua rose early in the morning,.... The morning after the spies had returned and made their report; which, as Kimchi rightly observes, was the ninth of Nisan; for on the morrow, which was the tenth, the people passed over Jordan, see Jos 3:5. Moses, according to the Jewish writers, died on the seventh of Adar or February; the thirty days of his mourning ended the seventh of Nisan or March; two days before they were ended the spies were sent, who returned on the eighth day of the month; and the morning following Joshua rose early, which shows his readiness and alacrity to proceed in the expedition he was directed and encouraged to:
and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan; from Shittim in the plains of Moab, to the river Jordan:
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he and all the children of Israel; he as their general, and they an army of six hundred thousand fighting men under him, besides women and children, and others that came along with them:
and lodged there before they passed over; lay there encamped a night before they passed over the river Jordan.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–8 The people decamp from Shittim, and are directed to…
The people decamp from Shittim, and are directed to follow the ark, and sanctify themselves, ver. 1-5. The priests are ordered to go first, ver. 6. Joshua being encouraged and directed as God, tells the people what God is about to do, ver. 7 - 13. Jordan is divided, and Israel marches through, ver. 14-17
In the morning - Not after the return of the spies, but after the three days, chap. i, 11, as it follows, ver. iii, 2. Lodge there - That night, that they might go over in the day time, that the miracle might be more evident and unquestionable, and strike the greater terror into their enemies.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 The Israelitish camp removes frown Shittim to Jordan, 1.
CHAPTER III
The Israelitish camp removes frown Shittim to Jordan, 1.
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The officers inform them how they are to pass the river, and the
distance they are to keep from the ark, 2 4.
Joshua directs the people, 5, 6;
and the Lord gives directions to Joshua, 7, 8.
He delivers the Lord's message to the people, and foretells the
miraculous passage and division of Jordan, 9-13.
The priests, bearing the ark, enter the river, and immediately
the waters are cut off, and the priests stand on dry ground,
in the bed of the river, till all the camp passes over, 14-17.
NOTES ON CHAP. III
Verse 1. Joshua rose early] Archbishop Usher supposes that this was upon Wednesday, the 28th of April, A. M. 2553, the fortieth year after the exodus from Egypt. From Shittim, where they had lately been encamped, to Jordan, was about sixty stadia, according to Josephus; that is, about eight English miles.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Jos 3:1. Joshua rose early in the morning —…
Jos 3:1. Joshua rose early in the morning — Not after the return of the spies, as may seem at first view, but after the three days mentioned Jos 1:11, when orders were given to the army to make all necessary provision for invading the enemies’ country. They came to Jordan — and lodged there — That night, that they might go over in the day-time, that the miracle might be more evident and unquestionable, and might strike the greater terror into their enemies.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 7 “The acacia groves” (Exo 25:5 note) of Shittim on…
“The acacia groves” (Exo 25:5 note) of Shittim on both sides of Jordan line the upper terraces of the valley (compare 2Ki 6:4). They would be in this part at some six miles distance from the river itself.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2–8 Heralds. Shoterim, chap. i. 10. Protestants, "the officers went…
Heralds. Shoterim, chap. i. 10. Protestants, "the officers went through the host." (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 3. The Passage of the Israelites through the Jordan
3. The Passage of the Israelites through the Jordan
Joshua 3-4
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a. Joshua’s Regulations concerning the Passage through the Jordan
Jos_3:1-13
1And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed [broke up1] from Shittim and came to [the] Jordan, he and all the children [sons] of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. 2And it came to pass after three days, that the officers 3[overseers] went through the host [camp]; and they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord [Jehovah] your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove [break up] from your place, and go after it. 4Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.
5And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves; for to-morrow the Lord 6[Jehovah] will do wonders among you. And Joshua spake2 unto the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the people. And they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people.7And the Lord [Jehovah] said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that as I was with Moses, so I will 8be with thee. And thou3 shalt command the priests that bear the ark of the covenant, saying, When ye are come to the brink of the water of [the] Jordan, ye shall stand still in [or, at the] Jordan.
9And Joshua said unto the children [sons] of Israel, Come hither, and hear the words of the Lord [Jehovah] your God. 10And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the [a] living God is among you, and that he will without fail4 drive out from before you the Canaanites [Canaanite], and the Hittites [Hittite], and the Hivites [Hivite], and the Perizzites [Perizzite], and the Girgashites [Girgashite], and 11the Amorites [Amorite], and the Jebusites [Jebusite].1 Behold the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth passeth over before you into [through the] 12Jordan. Now therefore [And now] take you twelve men out of the tribes of Israel,out of every tribe a Man_1:13 And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord [Jehovah] the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters6 of [the] Jordan, that the waters of [the] Jordan shall be cut off from [omit; from], the waters that come down from above; [,] and they [omit; they] shall stand upon a heap [in, or, as a heap.]
b. The Passage of the Jordan
Jos_3:14 to Jos_4:17
14And it came to pass, when the people removed [broke up] from their tents to pass over [the] Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the 15people; and as2 they that bare the ark were come unto [the] Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, (for [the] Jordan overfloweth all his [its] banks all the time of harvest,)3 16that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap, very far from [by 4] the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan; and those that came down toward the sea of the plain [the Arabah 5] even [omit: even] the salt sea, failed, and were cut off [were entirely cut off]: and the people passed over right against Jericho. 17And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord [Jehovah] stood firm on [the] dry ground in the midst of [the] Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on [the] dry ground, until all the people [nation, הַבּוֹי] were passed clean over [the] Jordan.
IV. 1And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over [the] Jordan, that the Lord [Jehovah] spake unto Joshua, saying, 2Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a Man_1:3 and command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of [the] Jordan, out of the place where the priests’ feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging-place where ye shall lodge this night.
4Then [And] Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children 5[sons] of Israel, out of every tribe a man; And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord [Jehovah] your God into the midst of [the] Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel: 6that this may be a sign among you, that [omit: that] when your children ask their fathers [omit: their fathers] in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? 7Then ye shall answer them [say to them], That the waters of [the] Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord [Jehovah]; when it passed over [the] Jordan, the waters of [the] Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children 8[sons] of Israel forever. And the children [sons] of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of [the] Jordan, as the Lord [Jehovah] spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children [sons] of Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there. 9And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of [the] Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant 10stood, and they are there unto this day. For [And] the priests which bare the ark stood in the midst of [the] Jordan, until every thing was finished that the Lord [Jehovah] commanded Joshua to speak unto the people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua: and the people hasted and passed oJoshua Jos_3:11 And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over, that the ark of the Lord [Jehovah] passed over, and the priests in the presence of [before] the people. 12And the children [sons] of Reuben, and the children [sons] of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh passed over armed [eager for war, or, in companies Jos_1:14] before the children [sons] of Israel, as Moses spake unto them. 13About forty thousand prepared for [the] war passed over before the Lord [Jehovah] unto battle, to the plains [desert plains, steppes, עַרְבוֹת5] of Jericho.
14On that day the Lord [Jehovah] magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel, and they feared him [,] as they [had] feared Moses, all the days of his life.
15And the Lord [Jehovah] spake unto Joshua, saying, Command the priests that bear the ark of the testimony [law, Gesenius] that they come up out of [the] Jordan. 16Joshua therefore [And Joshua] commanded the priests, saying, Come ye up 17out of [the] Jordan. And it came to pass, when the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord [Jehovah] were come up out of the midst of [the] Jordan, and [omit: and] the soles of the priests’ feet were lifted up [plucked out נִתְּקוּ] unto the dry land, that [and] the waters of [the] Jordan returned unto their place, and flowed over all his [its] banks, as they did before.
c. The Erection of the Memorial at Gilgal
Jos_4:19-24
19And the people came up out of [the] Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho. 20And those twelve stones which they took out of [the] Jordan, did Joshua pitch [set up] in Gilgal. 21And he spake unto the children [sons] of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? 22Then ye shall let your children [sons] know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on [the] dry land. 23For the Lord [Jehovah] your God dried up the waters of [the] Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord [Jehovah] your God did to the Red sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over: 24that all the people [peoples] of the earth might know the hand of the Lord [Jehovah], that it is mighty, that ye [Fay: they] might fear the Lord [Jehovah] your God for ever.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
a. Joshua’s Arrangements for the Passage of the Jordan.—And Joshua rose early. וישׁכם as in Gen_19:2; Gen_19:27; Gen_20:8; Gen_22:3; Gen_28:18; Gen_32:1, with and without the addition “in the morning.” Properly הִשְׁכִּים is a denom. from שְׁכֶם, “to load up, on the backs of beasts of burden, which among the nomads is done early in the morning,” = צָעַןIsa_33:20.—This breaking up took place immediately after the return of the spies, and this verse accordingly belongs properly to ch. ii.
Jos_4:2 is in continuation of Jos_1:10-16. The three days here are the same as in Jos_1:11. In ch. ii. which is otherwise very appositely inserted, and in a way completely suiting the connection, the differences in the dates were not, we must simply admit, duly taken into account. On the other hand it seems to us unnecessary, to assume a contradiction between Jos_4:1 on one side and Jos_4:2-6 on the other, on the grounds that (a.) the people, according to Jos_4:1, were at the Jordan and not 2,000 cubits off from it; (b.) the Israelites spent only one night (וילינוּ) there, and so could not have been there after three days. Although we grant that the word here translated “lodge” commonly means to “spend the night” (Gen_19:2; Gen_24:25; Gen_28:11; Gen_32:14; Gen_32:22), still in view of such passages as Job_19:4; Job_41:14; Psa_25:13; Psa_49:13], we may well take it here in the sense of to encamp, to tarry, as the Vulgate, when it translates morati sunt. [The English word “lodge” very appropriately represents לון.] Again: “they came to the Jordan,” ויבאוּ עד־הירדּן is certainly not to be understood with literal preciseness. It means: they came near to the Jordan, not exactly on the brink of the river. Two thousand cubits may very naturally still have intervened, especially when we take into account the great extent of the camp. This view is very evidently supported by Jos_4:14-15, which, according to Knobel from the same author as Jos_4:1 a, state that the people removed out of their tents and the priests came to the Jordan. Had they encamped close on the riverbrink, as Jos_4:1 is interpreted by Knobel, we should have been told immediately of the dipping of their feet in the water, but not certainly of their coming to the Jordan.
Jos_4:3. Overseers. As in Jos_1:11 so also here שׁטרים, LXX. γραμματεῖς: Vulg. prœcones; Luther, Hauptleute (head-men); Stier, Amtleute (officials); at first probably altogether general officers, head-men of the people (Exo_5:6-19; Num_11:16), those who knew how to write. Later, the magistrates in the towns (Deu_16:18; 1Ch_33:4). In Arabic שטר signifies simply to write. In 2Ch_26:11שׁטֵר and סֹפֵר stand side by side. In Pro_6:7, the former, English Vers. “overseer,” stands with משֵׁל “guide” and קָצִיו“ruler.”6
Ark of the Covenant. Here “ark of the covenant of Jehovah,” elsewhere also “ark of God,” 1Sa_3:3, “ark of the testimony” [law], Exo_25:22 : the sacred ark with the tables of the law (according to Heb_9:4, with other objects also), prepared by Moses (Exo_25:10 ff.) after a divine pattern. It was two and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits high, and the same in breadth. It was made of acacia wood, overlaid within and without with gold plate. The name ארון is derived from אָרָה, to bore out, hollow out, and signifies properly something hollow, hence also “a coffin,” Gen_1:26. Figures may be seen in Hoffmann and Redslob, Universal Bibel-Lexicon for the People, i. 244; Kiepert, Bible Atlas, v. Fig. 15. [Smith’s and other Bible Dictionaries, and works of the same design, may be consulted. Also Jahn, Coleman, and other writers, on Hebrew antiquities.—Tr.]
Jos_4:4. Yet there shall be a space.... two thousand cubits by measure. As a reason it is given that the ark should show the way. Had the masses of the people, who by no means marched as soldiers, crowded around it, those that were behind could not have seen it. The sacredness of the ark is not here directly the reason, as various interpreters have supposed (Mas., C. a Lapide, Seb. Schmidt, v. Lengerke and Knobel), but yet may come in as a secondary consideration. According to Num_4:15 the sons of Kohath bore the sanctuary, but might not touch it. Uzziah died when he did this (2Sa_6:7). We may notice also what Starke has pointed out, that no longer the pillar of cloud but the ark of the covenant leads the way. The manna likewise ceased at this time. The days of the pilgrimage are past. Two thousand cubits = one Sabbath day’s journey (Act_1:12) = three thousand feet. The Kethib בינו is to be retained instead of Keri, ביניו. So also Jos_8:11, “since the plural ביניו is limited almost entirely to the case where the suff. also has the plural sense. Comp. Ewald, § 266 a.” (Keil).
Jos_4:5. [Sanctify yourselves. “The sanctification of the people consisted not in the washing of their clothes, which is mentioned Exo_19:10-14 with the קַדֵּשׁ, for there was no time for this; nor in the changing of garments merely, which according to Gen_35:2, might take the place of washing, and in abstinence from conjugal intercourse, Exo_19:15. These were only the outward signs of the sanctification which really consisted at the same time in the spiritual purification, the turning of the heart to God, in faith and trust in his promise, and in willing obedience to his commands, that they might rightly take to heart the wonder of grace which the Lord would the next day perform among them.” Keil.—Tr.]
To-morrow. According to Jos_4:19 the 10th of Nisan.
Jos_4:6. And they took up the ark of the covenant. This statement is not exact [not in place here], the correct account is given in Jos_4:15, since Jos_4:7-13 could not be spoken after the procession was already in motion. Keil: “Whether the command in Jos_4:6 was given the evening before, as Maurer, or on the morning of the crossing, as Rosenmüller supposes, cannot be determined, since both were equally possible. The former is the more probable; but it is certain that the execution of this command in the last words of the verse is anticipated. For the following revelation of God to Joshua, together with Joshua’s discourse to the people, cannot have taken place after the priests with the ark had already begun the march.” Knobel refers the words to the breaking up of the camp from Shittim.
Jos_4:7-8. Revelation of God to Joshua, in which the Lord promises to make him great from this day forward as he had made Moses great; agreeing substantially with Jos_1:2-9. Then follows, Jos_4:8, God’s command that “Joshua should direct the priests bearing the ark to halt when they came to the edge of the water of the Jordan, i. e., as soon as they reached the water in the bed of the Jordan, and their feet stood in it, and to remain standing. On עָמַד comp. Gen_43:15. What Jehovah communicated further is not here told, because it appears from the following.” (Knobel).
Jos_4:9-13. In these verses we have to think of ourselves as addressed in a solemn assembly of the people, a congregation of Jehovah. They contain the purport of the divine revelation, and more fully than it had been stated in Jos_4:7-8.
Jos_4:9. “גּשׁוּ with accent drawn back as in Rth_2:14; 1Sa_14:38, comp. Ewald, § 100 a, and 227 b.” (Keil).
Jos_4:10. Hereby shall ye know that a living God is among you. The design of the miracle, the furtherance of the knowledge of God as a living mighty God, is significantly put first. אֵל חַי; God is here called אֵל from אוּל, prop. the Strong One in opposition to the gods of the heathen, which are אֶלִילִים, Lev_19:4; Lev_26:1, nothings, הַבָלִים, prop. breaths, Deu_32:21; Jer_8:19; Jer_14:22; Psa_31:7, or even הַבלֵי שָׁוְא, Jon_2:8, “lying vanities.” He is, however, not called אֵל merely, which term in the plural occurs also of the gods of the heathen (Exo_15:11), but אֵל חַי, to indicate that he is not dead like them, comp. Jer_10:9-10. On the original inhabitants of Palestine see the Introduction, § 7. As here, so previously in Deu_7:1, and again in this book Jos_9:1; Jos_11:3; Jos_24:11, seven races are enumerated, but in varying order. The Jebusites, however, always, except in Jos_11:3, stand last.
Jos_4:11. Lord of the whole earth. A significant appellation of God, where the conquest of a land is in question. From Him Israel has his title to Canaan.
Verse 12 compared with Jos_4:2 occasions difficulty. Two questions arise: (1.) When was this direction given; before the crossing or during the crossing? The former according to this passage, the latter according to Jos_4:2. The former seems more probable, because the twelve men could not possibly be chosen during the passage. (2.) Does the choice of the twelve men rest as Knobel teaches, according to our passage, on the regulation of Joshua alone, or on the divine command, as Jos_4:1 expressly says. Answer: The author has here the same view of the divine authority of the command as in Jos_4:1, otherwise he would not have incorporated these words in a discourse which contains the solemn announcement of a divine revelation.
Jos_4:13. Soles of the feet, comp. Jos_1:3.—The water. ... shall be cut off, יִכָּרֵתוּן, Luther: be broken off; De Wette: part; literally: “shall be cut off,” that is, the water above the place of crossing stood still, so that no more flowed by. The water below ran away toward the Dead Sea.
b. Chaps, Jos_3:14 to Jos_4:18. The Passage of the People through the Jordan. This took place according to Jos_4:19, on the tenth day of the first month (called Nisan or Abib), hence in the same month as formerly the departure out of Egypt. This like that was immediately before the Passover, which according to Joshua 5 was celebrated four days later for the first time on the soil of the Holy Land. The harvest here, in the deeply sunken heated valley of the Jordan, was already begun. The “yellow” water of the river stands high at this season, because the snows are melting on the mountains (comp. Furrer, p. 154). So much more wonderful was the event, a proof of the actual help of the “living God.”
Jos_4:15. And the Jordan overfloweth.. . . harvest. A parenthetical sentence. The Jordan-valley, the Ghor, is two hours across, the proper river-bed, through which the stream flows, only a quarter of an hour, and the stream itself, according to Furrer’s estimate (p. 154), only 90 feet in breadth. This latter valley was overflowed, and is still overflowed, by the “high-water” at the time of harvest, precisely as then. See Seetzen, Burckhardt, Robinson, [Stanley, S. & P.,] Furrer. The last named says: “When, late in the spring, the snow on Hermon begins to melt, the Jordan commonly overflows its lower bank, and puts reeds and bushes under water. So found it, as was related in Israel, the fathers under Joshua; “The Jordan was full on all its banks all the time of harvest.’ ”
Jos_4:16. Near Adam. Heb. בְּאָדָם. The Kethib is to be preferred, since its meaning is that very far from the place of crossing, by the city Adam which lay at the side of Zaretan, the water stood still. This city Adam was situated, probably, where now we find the ford Damieh with remains of a bridge of the Roman period (Lynch’s Report, p. 150 f., Van de Velde, Narrative, ii. p. 322 f.), “Several hours north of Jericho” (Knobel). Zaretan. “Not improbably Kurn Sartabeh, near the ford Damieh, a long, prominent rocky ridge, from which a lower range of hills reaches almost to the Jordan, and seems to extend itself obliquely through to the eastern mountains. Here the Jordan valley is compressed within its narrowest limits, and the Ghor divides itself into the upper and the lower. On Kurn Sartabeh it is reported that there are still ruins.” So Knobel after Robinson (Lat. Bibl. Res. pp. 283 f., 217 f.). It is worthy of remark that just here the water “is cut off” where from both sides the mountain ridges narrow the river, and the river valley. The name Zaretan, perhaps identical with Zareda, the home of Jeroboam (1Ki_11:26), as Knobel conjectures, is explained from the Arabic: elatus montium locus. Gesenius likewise holds the two names identical, but derives from צָרַד, according to the Arabic, to be cool = cooling, also a suitable name for a town on a fresh hilltop in the vicinity of a river. The name Adam calls to mind Admah, one of the five cities in the vale of Siddim (Gen_10:19; Gen_14:2; Hos_11:8), as also Adami, a city of the tribe of Naphtali (Jos_19:33). Edom may also be compared with it.
Failed and were cut off. [The conception of this scene indicated by the Keri (“very far from Adam,)” is different from that of our author and the recent commentators generally. It coincided with (although not necessary to) what we suppose to have been the common (popular) view, well stated and explained by Gill (among others) on the place. He naively remarks, indeed, that “both readings, as is usually, if not always the case, are to be received,” but his own exposition does not require anything so unreasonable. Let the waters have been actually “cut off” above where the priests stood, in full view of the people (as the spirit of the whole account seems to lie in the visibility of the wonder to the people), and still the water would be arrested and “stand,” before the crossing was finished, “very far off.” The current might have ceased “at Adam,” though that were thirty or even more miles above. Not only would this be immeasurably more impressive to the multitude as an exhibition of the divine power than the mere phenomenon of a bare river bed, the reason for which they could not see, but thus the fear with which “they hasted and passed over” (see on Jos_4:10), is much more naturally accounted for. This view of the miracle ought, at least, not to be wholly ignored. Indeed, Keil seems so to conceive the scene, and he even represents (on Jos_4:8) the priests with the ark (symbolizing the divine presence) as constituting the dam, so to speak, by which the rushing waters were restrained and piled up in a heap.—Tr.].
Toward the sea of the plain (Arabah), the salt sea. It is evident that the Dead Sea is meant, concerning whose origin we have a report in Gen_19:24. It is called sea of the plain in Deu_3:17; Deu_4:49 also.7 The region round about is desolate, yet birds sing on the shore of the sea in numerous choirs and fly freely over the water (Furrer, p. 258, Robinson, Phys. Geog., p. 219). The water of the sea is clear but very strongly tinctured with salt, and hence fatal to fish. Bathers become covered with an oily envelope, sometimes painful, sometimes not. From the southern point of the Dead Sea clear to Elath stretches the desert valley in which the Israelites wandered for forty years.[8]
Jos_4:17. הכין: “Properly: firmando, i. e. firmiter, with solid foot.” גּוֹי used here of Israel, as Jos_4:1; Jos_5:6; Jos_5:8; Jos_10:13; Exo_19:6; Exo_33:13; Deu_32:28. Where the passage took place cannot now be determined.
Chap. 4. After the author has, in Jos_3:14-17, briefly related the history of the crossing, he completes his report in this chapter. The account is not strictly speaking without order, and confused, as some have said, but yet neither is it without repetitions which indicate a variety of authorities, blended together by a later hand. These, however, we cannot assume that it is possible to determine accurately, according to their original parts, as Knobel has with much acuteness attempted to do.
Jos_4:1. And it came to pass when all the people were clean passed over the Jordan. These words were omitted by Luther in his translations. Why? Did he possibly consider the immediately following Piska (o) as a sign of their spuriousness? This Piska is, according to Keil (Bib. Com. in loc), “a sign in use before the Masoretes, and by them left remaining to denote a division in the middle of a verse where a Parasche begins: comp. Hupfeld, Ausführl. Heb. Gramm. pt. i. pp. 86 and 89. Gesenius in his Lehrgeb. p. 124, takes a different view.”
Jos_4:2. See Jos_3:12.
Jos_4:3. For הָכִין we should read הָכֵן, as in Jos_3:17.
Jos_4:4. Knobel regards this as a continuation of Jos_4:1, a. What intervenes he refers to the second source of his Jehovist, according to which the choice of the twelve men rested on a divine direction, while the first knew nothing of it. We confidently hold that Jos_3:12 presupposes a divine direction, which however is first stated here in the way of a supplement.
Jos_4:6-9. When your children ask. Comp. Jos_22:27-28; Exo_13:8-14.—Stones. Here it is a heap of twelve stones, in Gen_28:18; Gen_35:14 a single stone, but in Gen_31:46, again as here, a heap of stones. They were sacred memorials of the simplest kind. According to Jos_4:9, “Joshua takes twelve other stones, and sets them up in the bed of the Jordan on the spot (תחת as in Exo_10:23; Exo_16:29) where the feet of the priests stood, and where the stones have remained till the time of the narrator” (Knobel). It has been asked: To what purpose, since afterwards the water streamed over them again? They might become visible in a low stage of the water.9 This second measure Joshua adopts of himself without express divine direction.
Unto this day. A very common phrase in our book, as Bleek (Introd. to O. T. § 135) observes: Jos_5:9; Jos_6:22; Jos_7:26 (bis); Jos_8:28-29; Jos_9:27; Jos_10:27; Jos_13:13; Jos_14:14; Jos_15:63; Jos_16:10.
Jos_4:10. The priests remain standing in the Jordan until all the people have passed through. They had therefore, when the camp broke up, only gone the two thousand cubits in advance to show the way, then remain standing after they have taken their position in the midst of the dried bed of the stream until the passage is completed. Their quiet waiting was well calculated to impart courage to the people who hasted and passed over through fear. The contrast well deserves consideration. Knobel assumes that this very standing still of the priests was the ground of this haste. He says: “The people passed as quickly through as possible, and that on account of the priests, who during this long passage must stand in one place and bear the ark.” This reason may possibly have operated also, yet such a consideration is rather modern than conformable to the sentiment of antiquity. The chief reason for the haste was certainly fear.[10]
Jos_4:11 After the passage, the ark again takes the lead, as in Jos_3:3 ff.
After the history of the crossing has thus been given first briefly in Jos_3:14-17, then more completely Jos_4:1-11, we have some supplementary notices in Jos_4:12-17, and finally the conclusion Jos_4:18 announcing the return of the water.
On Jos_4:12-13 comp. Jos_1:12-18.
On Jos_4:14 comp. Jos_3:7.
What is related in Jos_4:15-17 is a more particular statement of the fact mentioned in Jos_4:11 of this chapter, referred by Knobel, on account of the designation of the ark as “the ark of the testimony,” to the Elohistic original. This he supposes to have been used here first in the book of Joshua.
Jos_4:18. States the conclusion, pointing back to Jos_3:16.
c. On Jos_4:19-24. Erection of the Monument at Gilgal.
Jos_4:19. The date, on the tenth (day) of the first month, is very exact, and on this account Knobel ascribes the verse to the Elohist. The first month (as Exo_12:2; Exo_12:18; Exo_40:2; Exo_40:17 and often) is elsewhere called also Abib, i. e. month of green ears (Exo_13:4; Exo_23:15; Deu_16:1), and subsequently Nisan (Neh_2:1; Est_3:7.) “This name is probably of Persian origin, and to be explained from the Zend navaçan, new day, which was transferred to the first month of the year, from New Year’s day. See Benfey, Names of the Months, p. 131 ff.” Gesenius.[11] Fürst, in his Hist. of Bibl. Lit. p. 400, fixes the year as having been 1454 b. c. There were four days before the Passover which fell on the 14th, Jos_5:10.
Jos_4:20. Gilgal, see Jos_5:9.
Jos_4:21 like Jos_4:6, with Epic breadth as in Homer.
Jos_4:22-23, might, from the repetition of הַיַבָּעָה׳ הוֹבִישׁ׳ הוֹבישׁ, seem to be a citation from a poetical panegyric on the Passage of the River, as Bunsen assumes in Jos_4:7 when he translates:—
“As through the Jordan passed the Ark,
Flowed away the waters of the Jordan.”
Here we are reminded of the “Book of Jasher,” mentioned Jos_10:13, which, however, was not a “Law-book” but precisely the opposite, a poetical Hero-book. See Introd. and on Jos_10:13.
Jos_4:24. All the peoples of the earth, [Keil: of the land, sc. of Canaan. But not well.] Might know the hand of Jehovah. A beautiful catholicity! The miracle made the passage possible and easy for Israel, but was at the same time to serve also for imparting to the heathen nations of all ages a knowledge of the power of Jehovah, and a fear of the Almighty,” (Knobel). Instead of יְרָאתֶם read יִרְאָתָם (Ewald, Maurer, Knobel), with reference to the coördinate לְמַעַו דַּעַת. [This is quite doubtful; we rather agree with Keil, that the Masoretic pointing should stand.—Tr. ]
[Stanley in the following paragraphs has finely combined the various incidents of this marvelous event, and we have only to regret that he should, as his custom too often is, bring in the Septuagint version, and Josephus, and what not, as if of about equal authority with the inspired text. His work thus wears, with all its charms of learning, arrangement, and style, too much the air of a secular relation of the history of the ancient “Church.”
“The scene of the passage of the Jordan is presented to us in the Sacred Narrative in a form so distinct, and at the same time so different from that in which it is usually set forth in pictures and allegories, that it shall here be given at length, so far as it can be made out from the several notices handed down to us, namely, the two separate accounts in the Book of Joshua, further varied by the differences between the Received Text and the Septuagint, the narrative of Josephus, and the 114th Psalm.
“For the first time they descended from the upper terraces of the valley, they ‘removed’ from the acacia groves and came to the Jordan, and ‘stayed the night’ there before they passed over.
“It was probably at the point near the present southern fords, crossed at the time of the Christian era by a bridge. The river was at its usual state of flood at the spring of the year, so as to fill the whole of the bed, up to the margin of the jungle with which the nearer banks are lined On the broken edge of the swollen stream, the band of priests stood with the Ark on their shoulders. At the distance of nearly a mile in the rear was the mass of the army. Suddenly the full bed of the Jordan was dried before them. High up the river, ‘far, far away,’12 ‘in Adam the city which is beside Zaretan,’ ‘as far as the parts of Kirjath-jearim,’13 that is, at a distance of thirty miles from the place of the Israelite encampment, ‘the waters there stood which “descended” from the heights above,’—stood and rose up, as if gathered into a water skin;14 as if in a barrier or heap, as if congealed;15 and those that ‘descended’ towards the sea of ‘the desert,’ the salt sea, failed and were cut off.’ Thus the scene presented is of the ‘descending stream’ (the words employed seem to have a special reference to that peculiar and most significant name of the Jordan), not parted asunder, as we generally fancy, but, as the Psalm expresses it, ‘turned backwards;’ the whole bed of the river left dry from north to south, through its long windings; the huge stones lying bare here and there, embedded in the soft bottom; or the shingly pebbles drifted along the course of the channel.
“The ark stood above. The army passed below. The women and children, according to the Jewish tradition, were placed in the centre, from the fear lest they should be swept away by the violence of the current. The host, at different points probably, rushed across. The priests remained motionless, their feet sunk in the deep mud of the channel. In front, contrary to the usual order, as if to secure that they should fulfill their vow, went the three Transjordanic tribes. Their own memorial of the passage was the monument already described.16 But the national memorial was on a larger scale. Carried aloft before the priests as they left the riverbed, were the twelve stones, selected by the twelve chiefs of the tribes. These were planted on the upper terrace of the plain of the Jordan, and became the centre of the first sanctuary of the Holy Land,—the first place pronounced “Holy,” the “sacred place” of the Jordan valley, where the tabernacle remained till it was fixed at Shiloh. Gilgal long retained reminiscences of its ancient sanctity. The twelve stones taken up from the bed of the Jordan continued at least till the time of the composition of the Book of Joshua, and seem to have been invested with a reverence which came at last to be regarded as idolatrous.17 The name was joined with that of the acacia groves of the farther side, in the title, as it would seem given in popular tradition or in ancient records, to this passage of the history: from Shittim to Gilgal” [?] Lects. on Jewish Church, i. 255 ff.—Tr.].
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
The ark which was borne by the priests and Levites in front of the people, takes henceforth, as was noticed above, the place of the pillar of cloud and fire which had led Israel through the wilderness (Exo_13:21-22). It may take this place because it not only serves for the preservation of the tables of the Law (Exo_25:16), but is also a symbol of the presence of God among his chosen people. On the cover of the ark, the Kapporeth adorned with the Cherubim, God sits enthroned (Exo_25:17-22; Num_7:89; Psa_99:1), and from this place speaks with Moses (Exo_25:22; Num_7:89). Hence, as follows indirectly from our passage, and directly from passages like Num_4:20; 1Sa_6:19; 2Sa_6:6 (compared with Lev_16:13), the ark is unapproachable. But hence also, on the other hand, here is the true place of atonement for the people, where the blood of atonement was sprinkled on the cover of the ark (Lev_16:15), once in the year only, on the great day of atonement, by the high-priest’s hand. To this Paul refers, Rom_3:25, when he calls Christ the true mercy-seat, whom God has set forth before (προέθετο) all the world, as a manifestation of his righteousness, for those who through faith in the efficacy of Christ’s reconciling death, approach this New Testament place of atonement. “The ἱλαστήριον is brought out of the most holy place into the public view of the whole world for those who believe” (Lange on Rom. iii. 2). In Christ God dwells among his New Testament congregation (Joh_1:14), goes before them (Joh_14:6), and is reconciled to them (2Co_5:19.)
2. The conception of the living God, the אֵל חַי (Jos_3:10), is of great importance for the present day also, since it appears to have vanished utterly from the consciousness of many of our contemporaries, especially that of the Materialists. These, after the example of Epicurus, substitute for this living author of all things, Chance, that is, an ultimate cause which they omit to define because it is utterly incapable of logical definition. Other thinkers, better schooled in philosophy, replace the living God with an Order of Nature determining everything by inevitable law, to which order, as such, they deny self-consciousness and maintain that it comes to self-consciousness only in the consciousness of rational beings—never in and of itself. This they do from fear of transferring human limitations to the Absolute, especially the conception of personality. Of personality it is maintained that it is predicable of the human individual, never of the Godhead; as if Goethe were unquestionably in the right when he says,—
“The professor is a person
But God is none.”18
But still we think humanly of God even then when we identify him with the Order of Nature, nay, it is absolutely impossible for us to think in any other way concerning God than consistently with our faculties, that is humanly. We certainly shall not, therefore, be found in the wrong course if we again turn more and more toward the sound Biblical realism which recognizes a living God who is at the same time “the Lord of the whole earth” (Jos_3:11); therefore a God who is the conscious, independent and free Creator and Ruler of all things, of whom, in whom, and for whom we are, who also wakens life in us, so that we possess power, develope power, and bring forth new power. For life is fullness of power; where powerlessness enters—there is death.
Such a living God can perform even miracles. He can, since He is independent and free, establish exceptions to rule, which are and remain exceptions, but which, because planned by his wisdom, no more endanger the continuance of order than any exceptions to rule which a wise house-father may make will disturb the order of his house. Compare Rothe, Dogmatik, p. 80 ff.
Rationalistic explanations of miracles, such as have been attempted in reference to the passage of the Jordan by the people of Israel, are to be avoided. On the other hand, investigation of the Scripture, reverent and believing but not fettered by the spirit of prescription, cannot be avoided. Every report of any miraculous transaction is as much to be examined as the report of any other fact (Introd. p. 17). Such investigation will readily concede that reports, especially these reaching back to the most ancient times, may possibly have acquired a mythical coloring; the more readily, when it is demonstrated that poetical elements have been admitted into the text. As such mythical coloring we regard what is said in the passage before us (Jos_3:16) about the water of the Jordan standing by Zaretan.19
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The regulations of Joshua touching the passage of the Jordan (Jos_3:1-13).—Even without pillar of cloud and without ark of the covenant, the Lord still and forever goes before his people.—Sanctify yourselves! A word of preparation for the Lord’s supper.—Whom the Lord makes great, he is truly great, as once Moses and Joshua.—Joshua’s discourse to the people. It contains: (1) a demand to hear the word of the Lord; (2) a promise of the effectual help of the living God.—By what do we also recognize the presence of a living God among us? (1) By his word which He still causes to be perpetually published among us; (2) by his deeds which He is still perpetually performing.—The Living God! (Jos_4:10). How should we think of God? (1) Not as a rigid order of nature, but (2) as the living God and ruler over all the earth. The ruler over all the world: (1) The mightiest, (2) the best Ruler.
The wonderful passage of Israel through the Jordan (Jos_3:13-14; Joshua 18) to be treated as a Bible Lesson, for which use all these longer sections are generally speaking, well adapted.—As Israel went dryshod through the Jordan so we go unharmed through many a danger.—The memory of God’s mighty deeds. It is (1) to be faithfully preserved by the parents, (2) carefully to be impressed on the children.—The erection of the memorial at Gilgal.—After the pilgrimage comes the rest.—Increase of the knowledge and fear of God is the holy aim of all his works.
Starke: He that will enter into the promised land on high must also be up early and waste no time, otherwise he will not reach it, Mat_6:33.—Whoever will be and be called a right spiritual priest must not only have Christ in his heart but also by an edifying example make him known to others and praise him, 1Ti_4:12; Eph_5:25-27.—God may indeed well allow us to erect memorials by which we may remember his wonderful works and his benefits, Gen_28:18; Gen_31:45; 1Sa_7:12; Est_9:27, but we must not worship such things, for that is an abomination to the Lord, Mat_4:10.—Teachers and preachers must be an example in faith and constancy, and let no danger terrify them.—A Christian on the journey towards the heavenly fatherland must not tarry, must not put off repentance, nor be lazy and slothful in God’s ways, Php_3:14; 1Co_9:24.—It is not enough to begin to be pious, but one must persevere even to the end, Rev_2:10.—A Christian should never act without, but always according to, God’s will and word, Mat_21:6.—It is the duty of the magistracy also to care that the youth should be educated in the fear of the Lord, Luk_7:5.—Parents should relate to their children and hold before them, not their own vile deeds but God’s merciful deeds, Exo_10:1-2, Deu_6:20.—That is the right application of God’s marvelous and beneficent acts when we learn from them truly to know, fear, and love him, Joh_2:11.
Cramer: When we go to church to hear God’s God’s word and to receive the holy sacraments, we should carefully prepare ourselves, and approach God with a chaste, temperate heart, and hold up holy hands, 1Ti_2:8.—Whom God will make great, him he first makes small through wearisome cross, and care, and toil, and danger, Psa_18:36.—If often the faithful God before our eyes graciously helps others out of need and peril, while we, in our own thought, are left far behind, still our hour also shall yet come. Let us only await the right time, (Jos_4:17.) God has patience even with the weak, Rom_14:4; Mat_8:25; Mat_14:30.—So long as Christ, the true mercy-seat, is under us, and his ministers in this unquiet life preach the gospel, we need not fear; the great floods of sins and of the wrath of God must retire, because for them that are in Christ Jesus there is now no condemnation, Rom_8:1. Nor can the enemies of the Church proceed further than has been appointed to them. But if Christ and his word depart from us then must we be eternally overwhelmed and perish and experience the wrath of God.—Christ with many saints has passed over into his father’s house through much water of affliction, which came in even unto his soul, Psa_69:1. But he has left a memorial behind him, namely, his twelve apostles and their writings. Happy they who understand this, and thank him therefor.
Hedinger: If those who are to be merely spectators of the great works of God should first sanctify themselves, how much more have those need of sanctification whom God will employ as his servants for the performance of his work, 1Co_9:27.
Bibl. Tub.: Before thee also, O soul! there stand waters of affliction, through which thou must travel, before thou canst enter the heavenly Canaan. But only go in with good heart, and trust thyself to God’s help; He will open a way for thee, so that the streams cannot drown thee, Psa_66:12; Isa_43:2.
Osiander: Dear Christian, remember here the twelve apostles, who have by the preaching of the gospel spread through the world the kindness of Christ in that He would lead us, through the power of his death unto everlasting life; remember them, and heartily thank God for them,—God can cause respect for the magistracy, and also take it from them again and cover them with contempt because of their ungodly life, Psa_107:4.
[Matt. Henry: Those that would bring great things to pass must rise early, “Love not sleep lest thou come to poverty.” Joshua herein set a good example to the officers under him, and taught them to rise early, and to all that are in public station, especially to attend continually to the duty of their place.—They must follow the priests as far as they carried the ark, but no further; so we must follow our ministers only as they follow Christ.—Though the opposition given to the salvation of God’s people have all imaginable advantages, yet God can and will conquer it.—God’s works of wonder ought to be kept in everlasting remembrance and means devised for preserving the remembrance, of them.—God had said in his wrath, that they should wander forty years in the wilderness, but to make up that forty years we must take in the first year, which was then passed, and had been a year of triumph in their deliverance out of Egypt, and this last, which had been a year of triumph likewise on the other side of Jordan, so that all the forty were not years of sorrow; and at last he brought them into the land of Canaan five days before the forty years were ended, to show how little pleasure God takes in punishing, how swift He is to show mercy, and that, for the elects’ sake, the days of trouble are shortened.—Those that will be wise when they are old must be inquisitive when they are young. Our Lord Jesus, though He had in himself the fullness of knowledge, has, by his example, taught children and young people to hear and ask questions.—In all the instructions and informations parents give their children, they should have chiefly in their eye to teach and engage them to fear God for ever.
Scott (on Jos_3:3): We cannot in general go wrong in keeping close to the ordinances of God, and thus, as it were, following the ark in all its removals. In so doing we need not fear rivers of trouble, mountains of difficulty, nor hosts of opposing foes; but confiding in the faithful promise, the Almighty power and covenant-love of our God, “the living God, the Lord of the whole earth,” we may proceed with boldness and alacrity.
The Same (Jos_4:10): When with careful attention to the commands and providence of God, we have taken the place and engaged in the service assigned us, we ought patiently to abide in it, and not to attempt to remove till He evidently commands us thence.—Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][Jos_3:10.—The Gentile names here are all in the sing., and although the Hebrew usage in this respect does not always coincide with the English, in the present case at least our version would gain as much in force as in fidelity by an exact imitation of the original.—Tr.]
[2][Jos_3:15.—Our version is here particular to mark the difference between כּ with Inf. const. (כְּבוֹא) and בּ in the same connection in ver 13 (בִּנְסֹעַ). The distinction is slight, and in many cases probably none was deliberately aimed at in the choice of the particle; yet strictly the latter (בּ) denotes an action as contained in another (in time) the former (כּ) denotes it as bearing a comparison with that other in respect to time (or quality or condition), as simultaneous, following close upon, about the same as, etc.—Tr.]
[3][Jos_3:15.—Literally, and the Jordan was full on all its banks all the days of harvest.—Tr.]
[4][Jos_3:16. Very far (“sc. from the place of crossing,” Keil) at or by the city of Adam. Our version followed the Keri here apparently without good reason.—Tr.]
[5][Jos_3:16.—The Arabah (as in Jos_18:18; Jos_18:22) the definite, individual “plain,” which bordered the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. See the Exeget. Note on this verse.—Tr.]
[6][Leyrer, in Herzog’s Encyklop., vol. xiv. p. 1, note, supposing the ground-meaning of שָׁטַר to have been “to put in order,” “set in a row, hence to make a row, of letters,” says: “we may rather conceive that the שֹׁטְרים, from the ground-meaning of the word and from their primary function, are called ordinatores, than from a derived meaning and from a mere accident of their office. See Vater, vol. iii. of his Com.; Von Bohlen, Genesis, p. xlii.; Lengerke, Kenaan, p. 374, Anm.; Hoffman, the Art. “Hebr. Schrift” in Ersch u. Gruber’s Encyklop.”—Tr.]
[7][“The plain” here (הָעְרֲבָה), is the arid bottom land in the gorge of the Jordan—“the Ghor” (see Introd. § 6). To this remarkable feature of the country the name is uniformly applied throughout our book, where it is never applied to anything else. It always has the article in this connection, and nothing seems to hinder its being understood simply as a proper name (in which sense our version twice views it, Jos_15:6; Jos_18:18) except the occurrence of the plural form to denote the broader parts of the depressed balley, as about Jericho. Robinson (Phys. Geog. p. 73) nevertheless declares it decidedly “the proper name of this valley.” This plain encompassed the Dead Sea also, more or less distinctly, and then stretched on in the modern Wady el-Arabah to the head of the Elanitic Gulf. But see, for a complete account of this very extraordinary natural phenomenon, Mr. Grove’s article on the Arabah in Smith’s Dict. of the Bible, and Ffoulke’s on the Jordan, in the same work.—Tr.].
[8][A very full and interesting digest of what is known concerning the Dead Sea is given in Smith’s Dictionary, Art. “Sea, the Salt.” In reference to the relation between this sea and the cities of the plain, the criticisms of Dr Wolcott on the views of Mr. Grove in the article just named and in those on Sodom and Zoar, and Siddim, should by all means be carefully considered. See also Conant’s instructive note on his Revised Version of Genesis, p. 79. Nor should Stanley’s vivid and flowing representation in ch. ix. of Sin. & Pal., “The Jordan and the Dead Sea,” be overlooked. The colored views of the sea and its surroundings in Tristram’s Land of Israel assist the imagination greatly in picturing to itself the scene.—Tr.].
[9][Or might it be that the “midst of the Jordan” where the priests stood in this time of the freshet, was at the edge of the dry flat in ordinary seasons? Then the pile of twelve stones would in general be visible and less exposed to the force of the water when high. Here the caution of Maurer, Ne premas, תָּוֵךְ vocabulum, is to be heeded.—Tr.].
[10][This fear would evidently be much more natural on the supposition stated above on Jos_3:16, that the waters were cut off and stood in a threatening precipice immediately above the place of crossing. But is not the haste of the people sufficiently explained by the fact which Keil emphasizes, that so vast a multitude must cross in one day?—Tr.].
[11][But see this disputed in Smith’s Dict. of the Bibl. s. v. Months, p. 2006.—Tr.]
[12]Μακρὰν σφοδὰ σφοδρῶς
[13]LXX.
[14]Symmachus, as the LXX. in Psa_33:7.
[15]LXX.
[16][This is Professor Stanley’s interpretation of the occurrence mentioned Jos_22:10-11.—Tr.]
[17][The passages adduced in support of this only show that a superstitious sanctity was afterwards ascribed to the place Gilgal.—Tr.].
[18] [Against the arrogance and unreason of godless science some of the Essays of Rev. James Martineau (2 vols. Bost. 1866, 1868) are very effectively directed, e. g that on Nature and God, i. 121 ff. See also a recent article by the same author: “Is there any Axiom of Causality?” in the Contemporary Review for August, 1870.
The Materialism of the Present Day, a critique of Dr. Büchner’s system; translated from the French of Janet by Gustave Masson, London, 1866 (in Baillière’s Library of Contemporaneous Philosophy), is a very able and convincing refutation, in short compass, of the doctrines which would explain the universe without a God.—Tr.]
[19][This statement, however, seems quite consistent with the rest. If we are to imagine the water cut off perpendicularly above the path of the Israelites, the fluid wall would continually be raised by the down-coming flood, and the distance to which the water would set back (“stand”), must depend on the time during which the interruption lasted So that there is no need of suspecting myth particularly in this.—Tr.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 5, 6, 7 the officers went through the host; And they commanded…
the officers went through the host; And they commanded the people--The instructions given at this time and in this place were different from those described (Jos 1:11).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–8 THE PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. Jos_3:1-17.
THE PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. Jos_3:1-17.
Immediately after the return of the spies, or possibly before this event, the Israelites leave their long occupied camp at Shittim, and move to the banks of the Jordan. A nation moving toward a swollen and angry river with perfect confidence that they should cross it, and yet in perfect ignorance of the manner of such an achievement, is a spectacle of thrilling moral sublimity. Thus marched Moses with the Hebrew people to the Red Sea.
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1. Rose early in the morning — According to a necessary custom in hot countries to work by night or early dawn and rest at noonday. Compare Gen_19:2; Gen_19:27; Gen_20:3; Gen_28:18.
Came to Jordan — Not close up to the brink of the river, but within some two thousand cubits of it. Jos_3:4.
Lodged there — Not merely spent one night there, as some understand, but abode there (for לון often has this sense) three days, as the next verse most naturally explains.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–6 Ch. Jos_3:1-13. The Preparation for the Passage of Jordan
Ch. Jos_3:1-13. The Preparation for the Passage of Jordan
1. they removed from Shittim] They descended from the upper terraces of the valley of Jordan, from “the Grove of Acacias,” to the level of the river.
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to Jordan] Speaking strictly, Jordan has a threefold bank:—
(a) The lowest, at the edge of the river, which in spring is frequently inundated, owing to the melting of the snow on Hermon;
(b) The middle bank, which is covered with a rich vegetation;
(c) An upper bank, which overhangs the river.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 7 THE PASSAGE OF JORDAN (Jos_3:1 to Jos_4:18, inclusive).
III.
THE PASSAGE OF JORDAN (Jos_3:1 to Jos_4:18, inclusive).
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Jos_3:1-6, preliminaries; 3:7- 4:14, the passage of the people and Jos_4:15-18, the passage of the ark itself.
(1) They removed from Shittim.—See Note on Jos_2:1. Shittim may be called the last stage of the Exodus of Israel, “their journeyings according to their goings out” (Num_33:2). The march from Shittim to Jordan is their first march under Joshua—the first stage of their Eisodus or coming in.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–8 And Joshua rose up early in the morning, i.e.,…
THE COMMAND.
And Joshua rose up early in the morning, i.e., after the return of the spies, and most likely (see Jos_1:10, Jos_1:11) on the morning on which the announcement was made to the children of Israel that they were to cross the Jordan. "This news is brought but overnight, Joshua is on his way by morning, and prevents the sun for haste. Delays, whether in the business of God or our own, are hateful and prejudicial. Many a one loses the land of promise by lingering; if we neglect God"s time, it is just with Him to cross us in ours" (Bp. Hall). And they removed from Shittim. Literally, from the acacias. (see note on Jos_2:1) To do this completely, and to be quite ready for the crossing, would, as Rosenmuller thinks, require the greater part of three days. But it adds that "they lodged (yli) there before they passed over.
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But this need be no difficulty. The great mass of the people could easily leave the acacia meadows on the higher ground, and encamp on the brink of the Jordan, while the remaining two days might be spent in making the necessary arrangements for the crossing. For we must remember (as Keil observes) that, not only a body of armed men, but their women and children, and all their possessions, had to be led safely across. "Though they were not told how they should pass the river, yet they went forward in faith, having been told, (Jos_1:11) that they should pass it" (Matthew Henry).
Vers. 1-6. The command to cross Jordan.
We have here a chapter replete with instruction, whether we take the words in their natural and literal or in their figurative and allegorical sense. The instruction is of a kind which it is difficult to gather up into one point of view, so various and many-sided is it. It will be best, therefore, to follow the events of the narrative seriatim, and endeavour to notice the various points which may be observed for instruction and exhortation, rather than to gather up the whole into the materials for one or two separate discourses. We may therefore observe
I THAT JOSHUA WAS AN EXAMPLE OF DILIGENCE AND PROMPTITUDE. This is urged upon us in matters
(1) of this world;
(2) of the soul.
The maxim
(1) as regards the affairs of this world, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," has been exemplified in the history of God"s servants in all ages. They have not been wont to let the grass grow under their feet. "Not slothful in business," is the precept of St. Paul, and he laboured energetically at his craft while he preached the gospel. When we have a work to do, it is our duty to do it, and not to take our rest till it is done. Procrastination is not only foolish, it is wrong. Habits of industry, punctual attendance to duty, business-like habits, as they are called, are required of every Christian by his profession. And it is remarkable that in no other saint of the Old Testament do we find that virtue so conspicuous as in the great captain, who alone among them was privileged to bear the Saviour"s name.
(2) This is also the case in the affairs of the soul. It is our duty to wait until the will of God is made known. So Samuel waited, (1Sa_13:10) and Saul for his unwise haste was censured. But when it is made known, there should be no hesitation, no delay. By such hesitation Moses provoked God"s wrath. (Exo_4:10-14) It is a question whether Gideon did well to prove the Lord repeatedly. (Jud 6:36-40) Balaam was involved in the most grievous sin by not being content with God"s decisive answer to his prayer. (Num_22:12) Many a good man makes shipwreck of his work, and some of their faith also, by hesitating to carry out a plain command of God, by waiting for some additional manifestation of His pleasure, or some opportunity to do that for which an opportunity should be made. The time of waiting in Joshua"s case was over. The spies had brought back their report; the way was open; the command clear. The very next morning, and that early, the preparations were made for the decisive step which committed Israel to the struggle which lay before them. So in the work which God has set us. When the path of duty is clear, we are bound to enter upon it at once.
II OBSERVE THE FAITH OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. They implicitly obeyed Joshua"s command, though it seemed the very height of folly. Jordan was overflowed; the ordinary fords were impassable; there was no way through the river. They had been told that "within three days they should cross Jordan, and there is neither murmuring nor disputing. So we ought to follow the directions of our Joshua, even where success seems hopeless. It is want of faith alone which hinders us from performing like impossibilities now. The mountain of difficulty will ever be removed by the purpose of faith. When a duty lies before us, we must set about performing it as far as our human strength goes. What lies beyond it, we must leave to God. And we shall find that the same power which rolled back the waves of the Jordan can arrest the overrunning flood of ungodliness, the headlong stream of the opposition of evil men. Where no way appears to human eyes, there can He make one when He pleases, "Whose way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters.
III THE ARK OF THE COVENANT MUST GO BEFORE, i.e. , the visible signs and symbols of God"s presence. The ark contained the law of God and the manna that is, God"s Word, and His sacraments and ordinances. Over it was the mercy-seat, the token of the presence of Christ, in whom sin and pardon meet. We can but go in the path marked out for us by these. His Word is "a lantern to our feet, and a light unto our paths." His earthly life has been lived as a pattern to us. His presence is "with us always, even unto the end of the world," to animate and to guide. The visible signs and tokens of His presence among us are to be reverenced and kept in view, lest the "remembrance of Him, which He ordered to be kept up, should perish from off the earth. By thus keeping Him ever in view, in public as well as in private, in the visible sanctuary as well as in the sanctuary of our own hearts, we shall pass through the "waves and storms of this troublesome world," and attain to the eternal rest at last.
IV THERE MUST BE NO UNDUE FAMILIARITY WITH SACRED THINGS. A space is kept between the people and the ark. So between His perfect example and our imperfect obedience there is a gulf which cannot be passed over. We are ever pressing forward in the direction of it; we never thoroughly attain to it. (Php_3:13, 14) Again, we learn that reverence is the best means towards knowledge of spiritual things. "Not to be wise above what is written" is good advice. The mysteries of the kingdom of God are hidden from the "wise and prudent" in their own estimation, and are "revealed unto babes". (cf. 1Co 2) This is true, both in opinion and in action. Those who think that all the deepest questions that concern humanity are to be settled by argument and logic, rather than by teachableness, experience, and prayer, are likely to end with a very moderate acquaintance with the "deep things of God." Those who look upon God"s Word as a common book, or Christ"s sacraments as simple symbols, without any mystery about them, even to the faithful worshipper, are likely to deprive themselves of a very necessary help and guidance in their way through the world. Awe, and reverence, and a sense of the mystery as well as the nearness of the Unseen, are among the most necessary features of a life that seeks aright after the perfection of man"s nature.
V THE MINISTERS MUST LEAD THE WAY. Without any undue sacerdotal pretensions, it may at least be said that if the ministers of Christ"s Church be not the guides and teachers of the people, we were better without them. Yet, as Matthew Henry remarks, we are only to follow them when they follow Christ. Nor is there any contradiction in this. It is our duty ever to "search the Scriptures, whether these things are so." We are to "prove all things," to "hold fast" only "that which is good." But it is the duty of those whose province it is to "rule the Church of God" to be ever foremost in every good work. It is idle to preach if we do not practice. It is useless to exhort men to follow the right path, unless we ourselves go before them in the way. An officer cheers his men into action not from behind, but from the front. So the officers of God"s army should be in the van of its progress. Therefore in all things which become the Christian, the Christian minister must set the example. In zeal for his Master"s cause, in unwearied efforts to promote it, in purity of life, in acts of love to the sick and aged, to the young and tender, in kindness to all, in public spirit moreover, and regard for the general welfare, in honour, in truth, in prudence, in self command, in self abnegation, the ordained servant of God should be in the forefront of the grand army. But the army must follow its leaders. It is not sufficient to lay down a high ideal for our officers, and to consider that the part of the privates is to criticise sharply and closely the actions of those who are set over them. Whatever. they do, we must do also. Where they go, we must go too. We are all pledged to the same work, and, taking our tone from those who are appointed to lead us, we must lead a life animated by the same spirit as theirs, the Spirit of the living God.
VI A SPECIAL WORK REQUIRES A SPECIAL PREPARATION. Joshua bids the Israelites "sanctify themselves" because God was about to "do wonders among" them. So when we set about any work of more than ordinary importance, be it sacred or be it secular, we are bound to prepare ourselves by prayer, by meditation, by reception of the Holy Communion, by a special study of God"s Word, by a cessation, as far as possible, of ordinary cares and engagements, for the task that awaits us. Thus Jesus Christ spent the night before choosing His apostles in prayer to God. Thus before His Passion He withdrew Himself for a while from the concourse of men. Thus the apostles waited in silence at Jerusalem for the descent of the Holy Spirit. Thus St. Paul spent three years in Arabia communing with God before he entered on his life-long work. God"s Spirit is ever near us, but at special times He requires to be specially sought. And he who never permits himself a moment"s retirement from the ordinary business and amusements of life may well doubt whether God"s Spirit have really a hold on his soul.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1–2 Joshua rose early in the morning.
Jos_3:1
Joshua rose early in the morning.
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Early rising
Why does Joshua rise early in the morning? He has important and responsible duties to discharge during the day, and this may be one reason. Perhaps this has been his habit during a long succession of years, and now it is as easy and natural to him as breathing. Much has been said by some in favour of early rising, and it has been the practice of many distinguished men. Franklin wrote these words, The morning has gold in its mouth. Dean Swift declared that he never knew any man come to greatness and eminence who lay in bed of a morning. Doddridge, Barnes, Wesley, Judge Hale, and others we could name, always rose before five oclock in the morning. As we look upon these sayings, and consider these examples, should we affirm that early rising is the imperative duty of every man? There are certain persons who live to do evil, only evil, and that continually. The longer they remain in bed the better it will be for themselves and others. There are some Who live a life of sheer indolence. Since their sleeping and waking hours are equal, so far as others are concerned, it is of no importance when they rise. In these times, too, when day is turned into night, there are multitudes, especially in our large cities and towns, who cannot go to rest till a late hour, and to whom early rising is therefore a physical impossibility. Besides, no hard and fast line can be drawn regarding measures of sleep, because some require more than others. We believe it would be highly beneficial to the bodies, the minds, and the souls of all, if the old custom--early to bed and early to rise--were constantly observed. Let every individual, however, endeavour to discharge every duty which is legitimately imposed upon him; and whether this is done by day or by night, he will fill up the outline of work which God gives to him, and find acceptance in His sight. (A. McAuslane.)
They removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan.
Advance
is the strong word that gathers up the teaching of the chapter.
1. The advance was from a notable past. Finis had been written to the first volume of the history of Israel; bondage its preface, vengeance its introduction, mercy its continual illumination. Sin had made their forty years a wilderness, in which they wandered from one oasis to another of heavenly grace set as with palm-trees and wells of water. And the present was rich and satisfying. Eastern Palestine was overflowing with honey and oil and milk. The stately oaks of Bashan, its sheep and goats and mighty bulls waiting to be herded among their riches, its abundant pasturage and countless watercourses, quite outrivaled the land beyond the river. Here they were already in possession; while beyond, fenced cities and disciplined troops forewarned of hardship and blood. This new volume opened to-day will show no such lavishness of miraculous helps. Still the word is Advance. If the leader is less, the people are more. If miracles and interventions are fewer, courage and skill and power are greater. Gods helps are transferred from without to within the hearts of men. He works best for them by working through them.
2. The advance was a long step toward their destiny. Gods purposes never turn back. His plan demanded the transfer of the people across the Jordan. Just because Eastern Palestine was broader and richer, they must go over. Their national growth and mission demanded a new type of life. Israel must set his feet by the shore of the great sea, and dwell upon the roads traversed by caravans and armies. Then Alexandria can supply its spiritual philosophy, Greece its culture and language, Rome its law and wide sway, to aid in recording and extending the gospel. Physical geography is potent in civilisation.
3. Advance requires spiritual preparation. It is not first for the sake of earthly reward. An eternal purpose, a holy destiny rules the progress. Before each Jordan is crossed, the people must be sanctified, the leader empowered. The past was no dead past to bury its dead, but was to live in remembrance of deliverance granted and mercies showered, of disastrous and destructive sins. (C. M. Southgate.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 CHAPTER VIII. JORDAN REACHED. Jos_3:1-7.
CHAPTER VIII. JORDAN REACHED. Jos_3:1-7.
THE host of Israel had been encamped for some time at Shittim on the east side of the river Jordan. It is well to understand the geographical position. The Jordan has its rise beyond the northern boundary of Palestine in three sources, the most interesting and beautiful of the three being one in the neighbourhood of Caesarea Philippi. The three streamlets unite in the little lake now called Huleh, but Merom in Bible times. Issuing from Merom in a single stream the Jordan flows on to the lake of Galilee or Gennesareth, and from thence, in a singularly winding course, to the Dead Sea. Its course between the lake of Galilee and the Dead Sea is through a kind of ravine within a ravine; the outer ravine is the valley or plain of Jordan, now called by the Arabs El Ghor, which is about six miles in width at its northern part, and considerably more at its southern, where the Israelites now were. Within this "El Ghor" is a narrower ravine about three-quarters of a mile in width, in the inner part of which flows the river, its breadth varying from twenty to sixty yards. Some travellers say that the Jordan does not now rise so high as formerly, but others tell us they have seen it overflowing its banks at the corresponding season. But ''the plain" is not fertilized by the rising waters: hence the reason why the banks of the river are not studded with towns as in Egypt. It is quite possible, however, that in the days of Abraham and Lot artificial irrigation was made use of: hence the description given of it then that it was "like the land of Egypt" (Gen_13:10). If it be remarked as strange that Jordan should have overflowed his banks ''in time of harvest" (Jos_3:15) when usually rain does not fall in Palestine, it is to be remembered that all the sources of the Jordan are fountains, and that fountains do not usually feel the effects of the rain until some time after it has fallen. The harvest referred to is the barley harvest, and near Jericho that harvest must have occurred earlier than throughout the country on account of the greater heat. The host of Israel lay encamped at Shittim, or Abel Shittim, "the meadow or moist place of the acacias," somewhere in the Arboth-Moab or fields of Moab. The exact spot is unknown, but it was near the foot of the Moabite mountains, where the streams, coming down from the heights on their way to the Jordan, caused a luxuriant growth of acacias, such as are still found in some of the adjacent parts. Sunk as this part of the plain is far below the level of the Mediterranean, and enclosed by the mountains behind it as by the walls of a furnace, it possesses an almost tropical climate which, though agreeable enough in winter and early spring, would have been unbearable to the Israelites in the height of summer. It was while Israel "abode in Shittim," during the lifetime of Moses, that they were seduced by the Moabites to join in the idolatrous revels of Baal-peor and punished with the plague. The acacia groves gave facilities for the unhallowed revelling. That chastisement had brought them into a better spirit, and now they were prepared for better things.
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The Jordan was not crossed then by bridges nor by ferry boats; the only way of crossing was by fords. The ford nearest to Jericho, now called El Mashra'a, is well known; it was the ford the Israelites would have used had the river been fordable; and perhaps the tradition is correct that there the crossing actually took place. When the spies crossed and recrossed the river it must have been by swimming, as it was too deep for wading at the time; but though this mode of crossing was possible for individuals, it was manifestly out of the question for a host. That the Israelites could by no possibility cross at that season must have been the forlorn hope of the people of Jericho; possibly they smiled at the folly of Joshua in choosing such a time of the year, and asked in derision, How is he ever to get over?
The appointed day for leaving Shittim has come, and Joshua, determined to lose no time, rises ''early in the morning." Nor is it without a purpose that so often in the Old Testament narrative, when men of might commence some great undertaking, we are told that it was early in the morning. In all hot climates work in the open air, if done at all, must be done early in the morning or in the evening. But, besides this, morning is the appropriate time for men of great energy and decision to be astir; and it readily connects itself with the New Testament text - ''Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." The benefits of an early start for all kinds of successful work are in the proverbs of all nations; and we may add that few have reached a high position in the Christian life who could not say, in the spirit of the hymn, "early in the morning my song shall rise to Thee." Nor can it easily be understood how under other conditions the precept could be fulfilled - ''Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
From Shittim to the banks of the Jordan is an easy journey of a few miles, the road being all over level ground, so that the march was probably finished before the sun had risen high. However strong their faith, it could not be without a certain tremor of heart that the people would behold the swollen river, and mark the walls and towers of Jericho a few miles beyond. Three days are to be allowed, if not for physical, certainly for moral and spiritual preparation for the crossing of the river. The three days are probably the same as those adverted to before (Jos_1:11), just as the order to select twelve men to set up twelve stones (Jos_3:12) is probably the same as that more fully detailed in Jos_4:2. The host is assembled in orderly array on the east bank of the Jordan, when the officers pass through to give instructions as to their further procedure. Three such instructions are given.
First, they are to follow the ark. Whenever they see the priests that bear it in motion, they are to move from their places and follow it. There was no longer the pillar of fire to guide them - that was a wilderness-symbol of God's presence, now superseded by a more permanent symbol - the ark. Both symbols represented the same great truth - the gracious presence and guidance of God, and both called the people to the same duty and privilege, and to the same assurance of absolute safety so long as they followed the Lord. Familiar sights are apt to lose their significance, and the people must have become so familiar with the wilderness-pillar that they would hardly think what it meant. Now a different symbol is brought forward. The ark carried in solemn procession by the priests is now the appointed token of God's guidance, and therefore the object to be unhesitatingly followed. A blessed truth for all time was clearly shadowed forth. Follow God implicitly and unhesitatingly in every time of danger, and you are safe. Set aside the counsels of casuistry, of fear, and of worldly wisdom; find out God's will and follow it through good report and through evil report, and you will be right. It was thus that Joshua and Caleb did, and counselled the people to do, when they came back from exploring the land; and now these two were reaping the benefit; while the generation, that would have been comfortably settled in the land if they had done the same, had perished in the wilderness on account of their unbelief.
Secondly, a span of two thousand cubits was to be left between the people and the ark. Some have thought that this was designed as a token of reverence; but this is not the reason assigned. Had it been designed as a token of reverence, it would have been prescribed long before, as soon as the ark was constructed, and began to be carried with the host through the wilderness. The intention was, ''that ye may know the way by which you must go" (Jos_3:4). If this arrangement had not been made, the course of the ark through the flat plains of the Jordan would not have been visible to the mass of the host, but only to those in the immediate neighbourhood, and the people would have been liable to straggle and fall into confusion, if not to diverge altogether. In all cases, when we are looking out for Divine guidance, it is of supreme importance that there be nothing in the way to obscure the object or to distort our vision. Alas, how often is this direction disregarded! How often do we allow our prejudices, or our wishes, or our worldly interests to come between us and the Divine direction we profess to desire! At some turn of our life we feel that we ought not to take a decisive step without asking guidance from above. But our own wishes bear strongly in a particular direction, and we are only too prone to conclude that God is in favour of our plan. We do not act honestly; we lay stress on all that is in favour of what we like; we think little of considerations of the opposite kind. And when we announce our decision, if the matter concern others, we are at pains to tell them that we have made it matter of prayer. But why make it matter of prayer if we do so with prejudiced minds? It is only when our eye is single that the whole body is full of light. This clear space of two thousand cubits between the people and the ark deserves to be remembered. Let us have a like clear space morally between us and God when we go to ask His counsel, lest peradventure we not only mistake His directions, but bring disaster on ourselves and dishonour on His name.
Thirdly, the people were instructed, - "Sanctify yourselves, for to-morrow the Lord will do wonders among you." It is an instinct of our nature that when we are to meet with some one of superior worldly rank preparation must be made for the meeting. When Joseph was summoned into the presence of Pharaoh, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon, "he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh." The poorest subject of the realm would try to wear his best and to look his best in the presence of his sovereign. But while ''man looketh on the outward appearance the Lord looketh on the heart."
And our very instincts teach us, that the heart needs to be prepared when God is drawing near. It is not in our ordinary careless mood that we ought to stand before Him who ''sets our iniquities before Him, our secret sins in the Hght of His countenance." Grant that we can neither atone for our sin, nor cleanse our hearts without His grace; nevertheless, in God's presence everything that is possible ought to be done to remove the abominable thing which He hates, so that He may not be affronted and offended by its presence. Most appropriate, therefore, was Joshua's counsel, - "Sanctify yourselves, for to-morrow the Lord will do wonders among you." He will surpass all that your eyes have seen since that night, much to be remembered, when He divided the sea. He will give you a token of His love and care that will amaze you, much though you have seen of it in the wilderness, and in the country of Sihon and Og. Expect great things, prepare for great things; and let the chief of your preparations be to sanctify yourselves, for ''the foolish shall not stand in His sight, and He hateth all workers of iniquity."
Next day (compare Jos_3:5, ''to-morrow," and Jos_3:7, ''this day ") Joshua turns to the priests and bids them ''take up the ark of the covenant." The priests obey; ''they take up the ark, and go before the people."
Shall we take notice of the assertion of some that all those parts of the narrative which refer to priests and religious service were introduced by a writer bent on glorifying the priesthood? Or must we repel the insinuation that the introduction of the ark, and the miraculous effects ascribed to its presence, are mere myths? If they are mere myths, they are certainly myths of a very peculiar kind. Twice only in this book is the ark associated with miraculous events - at the crossing of the Jordan and at the taking of Jericho. If these were myths, why was the myth confined to these two occasions? When mythical writers find a remarkable talisman they introduce it at all sorts of times. Why was the ark not brought to the siege of Ai? Why was it absent from the battles of Bethhoron and Merom? Why was its presence restricted to the Jordan and Jericho, unless it was God's purpose to inspire confidence at first through the visible symbol of His presence, but leave the people afterwards to infer His presence by faith?
The taking up of the ark by the priests was a decisive step. There could be no resiling now from the course entered on. The priests with the ark must advance, and it will be seen whether Joshua has been uttering words without foundation, or whether he has been speaking in the name of God. Shall mere natural forces be brought into play, or shall the supernatural might of heaven come to the conflict, and show that God is faithful to His promise?
Let us put ourselves in Joshua's position. We do not know in what manner the communications were carried on between him and Jehovah of which we have the record under the words ''the Lord spake unto Joshua." Was it by an audible voice? Or was it by impressions on Joshua's mind of a kind that could not have originated with himself, but that were plainly the result of Divine influence? In any case, they were such as to convey to Joshua a very clear knowledge of the Divine will. Yet even in the best of men nature is not so thoroughly subdued in such circumstances but that the shadow of anxiety and fear is liable to flit across them. They crave something like a personal pledge that all will go well. Hence the seasonableness of the assurance now given to Joshua - "This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." How full and manifold the assurance! First, I will magnify thee. I will endue thee with supernatural might, and that will give you authority and weight, corresponding to the position in which you stand. Further, this shall be but the beginning of a process which will be renewed as often as there is occasion for it. ''This day I will begin. You are not to go a warfare on your own charges, but ''as your days, so shall your strength be." Moreover, this exaltation of your person and office will take place "in the sight of all Israel," so that no man of them shall ever be justified in refusing you allegiance and obedience. And to sum up - you shall be just as Moses was; the resources of My might will be as available for you as they were for him. After this, what misgivings could Joshua have? Could he doubt the generosity, the kindness, the considerateness of his Master? Here was a promise for life; and no doubt the more he put it to the test in after years the more trustworthy did he find it, and the more convincing was the proof it supplied of the mindfulness of God.
It is an experience which has been often repeated in the case of those who have had to undertake difficult work for their Master. Of all our misapprehensions, the most baseless and the most pernicious is, that God does not care much about us, and that we have not much to look for from Him. It is a misapprehension which dishonours God greatly, and which He is ever showing Himself most desirous to remove. It stands fearfully in the way of that spirit of trust by which God is so much honoured, and which He is ever desirous that we should show. And those who have trusted God, and have gone forward to their work in His strength, have always found delightful evidence that their trust has not been in vain. What is the testimony of our great Christian philanthropists, our most successful missionaries, and other devoted Christian workers? Led to undertake enterprises far beyond their strength, and undergo responsibilities far beyond their means, we know not a single case in which they have not had ample proof of the mindfulness of their Master, and found occasion to wonder at the considerateness and the bountifulness which He has brought to bear upon their position. And is it not strange that we should be so slow to learn how infinite God is in goodness? That we should have no difficulty in believing in the goodness of a parent or of some kind friend who has always been ready to help us in our times of need, but so slow to realize this in regard to God, though we are constantly acknowledging in words that He is the best as well as the greatest of beings? It is a happy era in one's spiritual history when one escapes from one's contracted views of the love and liberality of God, and begins to realize that ''as far as heaven is above the earth, so far are His ways above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts"; and when one comes to find that in one's times of need, whether arising from one's personal condition or from the requirements of public service, one may go to God for encouragement and help with more certainty of being well received than one may go to the best and kindest of friends.
It is sometimes said that the Old Testament presents us with a somewhat limited view of God's love. Certainly it is in the New Testament that we see it placed in the brightest of all lights - the Cross, and that we find the argument in its most irresistible form - "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not, with Him also, freely give us all things?" But one must have read the Old Testament in a very careless spirit if one has not been struck with its frequent and most impressive revelations of God's goodness. What scenes of gracious intercourse with His servants does it not present from first to last, what outpourings of affection, what yearnings of a father's heart! If there were many in Old Testament times whom these revelations left as heedless as they found them, there were certainly some whom they filled with wonder and roused to words of glowing gratitude. The Bible is not wont to repeat the same thought in the same words. But there is one truth and one only which we find repeated again and again in the Old Testament, in the same words, as if the writers were never weary of them - "For His mercy endureth for ever." Not only is it the refrain of a whole psalm (Ps 136), but we find it at the beginning of three other psalms (Ps 106; 107; 118), we find it in David's song of dedication when the ark was brought up to Jerusalem (1Ch_16:34), and we find also that on the same occasion a body of men, Heman and Jeduthun and others, were told off expressly "to give thanks to the Lord, because His mercy endureth for ever" (1Ch_16:41). This, indeed, is the great truth which gives the Old Testament its highest interest and beauty. In the New Testament, in its evangelical setting, it shines with incomparable brightness. Vividly realized, it makes the Christian's cup to flow over; as it fills him likewise with the hope of a joy to come - "a joy unspeakable and full of glory."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 7 MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Jos_3:1-6
THE PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Jos_3:1-6
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THE PRESENCE OF GOD
Joshua had received the evening before, through their officers, the reply of the people to the charge which he had given (chap. Jos_1:16-18). Their unanimous and ardent fealty must have filled this fine-spirited man with thankfulness to God, and given him good hope in the people: “And Joshua rose early in the morning.”
1. God gives us encouragements, not merely for our joy, but for action. The Lord loves the praise of His people; He loves it best when the songs of their lips are set to harmony with the tread of feet that run in the way of His commandments, and with the noise of labour made by hands which hasten to do His will. Mere praise is like a tune in one part; it is only a theme, pleasant for the moment as a solo, but poor and thin and insufficient, unless followed by these harmonies of labour.
2. God gives His servants the confidence of men, that they may use it promptly for the good of men. Nothing sooner loses its beauty and fades than the unused confidence reposed in us by our fellows. Changing the figure, service is, at once the exercise and the bread of trust; and when a leader does not use the confidence given him by those about him, he is simply allowing it to stiffen and die. He who hears over-night, “All that thou commandest us we will do,” had better rise “early in the morning,” and begin to turn this spirit of obedience to good account. This, again, cannot be better done than by leading the people manifestly nearer, not simply to their leader’s, but also to their own inheritance.
3. God gives some men wisdom to see into the possibilities of the future, but he who can read events to come should be careful not to disappoint his auditors. (Chap. Jos_1:11, with Jos_3:2.)
Thus the first two verses of this paragraph lead up to the important subject of the Divine presence, on which much stress is laid in the four verses that follow.
I. The sign for the special movement of God’s people is God’s presence going before them.
1. It is noteworthy that in both the Old and New Testaments this is repeatedly made the sign for going forward. This was the case during the marches of the wilderness; the pillar of fire and cloud preceded the host. David at Baal-perazim was to know that the Lord went out before him when he heard “the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees;” not till then was he to go forward to the battle. What else was the waiting for Pentecost by the men who were to tarry in the city of Jerusalem for this preceding presence of God? It was of no avail for even apostles to go, till God went before them. They were men of good ordinary ability, they had recollections of the Saviour’s example to guide them, and glorious memories of His love to inspire them; yet they were to tarry, as though they were helpless as children, waiting for the promise, of the Father. The Saviour’s words, “Without me ye can do nothing,” are written not simply in the Gospel of John, but throughout the Bible.
2. The Pillar of Fire and Cloud, and the Ark of the Covenant, were the two and only visible guides, indicating God’s presence, that the Israelites had to accompany them in their journeys. There is one feature which is common to them both: in times of rest they were with the people, in times of marching the Cloud always and the Ark sometimes went before them. Resting, the Cloud stood over the camp; marching, it went before the people. The Ark, too, was set up in the middle of the camp, and in ordinary marches was carried in the midst of the Israelites; but in a great emergency like this the Ark leads the way. Surely all this is significant, and intended not merely for the Jews; read in the light of the tarrying for Pentecost, does it not seem “written for our admonition”? God’s presence with us should always lead to praise, worship, and work; there are, however, solemn seasons in the history of the Church when God seems manifestly to go before His people, and then both Testaments teach that His people must follow. There must be no resting then, nor are ordinary methods of worship and work sufficient for periods like these. Does not this comprehend all great revival movements in the history of the Church, not excepting that which has recently excited so much attention throughout England, and is now stirring the multitudes of London to new thought and intense feeling? Is God with this work? Are men being saved, and helped to turn to holiness? If so, energy of this kind does not come from beneath, neither is this the manner of man. There cannot be the least doubt that ordinary methods of teaching and training are good for ordinary times; but ought we not to be prepared for God to sometimes go altogether before us? And if it be God who goes before, we must follow,—follow gladly, heartily, and earnestly. The Ark of His presence may get quite out of the usual track, it may wander even into the bed of the river; timid Israelites may fear lest it should be swept away in the flood; yet, if it be His presence, they will do well to follow, for even this unusual way leads to a rich inheritance for the teeming thousands of the people, who till it is trodden only experience the bitterness of a grievous bondage, and the possession of a barren desert. Holy fear and holy caution may be well, and none should be angry or harsh with any who are moved thereto, for things are not so visible to sense now as on the banks of the Jordan; yet those who fear harm from the flood of unusual feeling may do well to remember that the Ark commands the waters, and not the waters the Ark.
II. Even when God is most manifestly present with His people, He ever leaves ample scope for faith.
1. The Pillar of Cloud was, at this time, probably withdrawn. The people had only the every-day Ark. That which for forty years had been a supernatural assurance that the Lord was with them, had probably vanished altogether. This could not but have been a trial to those who were weak in faith.
2. Although the passage was to take place on the morrow, it does not seem that the people at this time had any idea of the manner in which it was to be made.
3. When they arrived at the river, much firmness would be needed by them all. Think of the faith required by those who were the first to cross, and of the demand made by the accumulated body of water on the trust of those who crossed last. However much faith may be taxed when we see few signs of God’s presence, let none think that poor faith will suffice when God is manifestly with us. Faith is taxed then more than ever. True, it has blessed encouragements, but the encouragements are not given for nothing. Those whom the Lord most helps, have temptations to unbelief which His ordinary servants know little of, and from which the boldest might well shrink. He is but poorly taught, who thinks that any of God’s children on earth ever walk by sight.
III. The consciousness of God’s presence best goes with deep reverence and profound humility. The people were not to come near the Ark by a space of more than half a mile. With so much reason to love God for His mighty works on their behalf, it is just at the point where His goodness should provoke love, that His wisdom finds an occasion to teach them reverence. Glowing with thankfulness for Divine help, the very distance at which they are kept teaches them to walk “in awe, and sin not.” The advance of the Ark for nearly three quarters of a mile in front was calculated no less to teach them humility. There was the Ark, borne only by a few weak priests quite away from its armed guard, and right in the direction of the enemy. It should have been enough to make Israel say once for all, “We can do nothing to protect that. Our many thousands of armed men are not needed to guard the Ark, however much, as these rising waters teach us, they may need the Ark to defend them.” Thus we have an inter-working of several things: Mighty works are wrought, which tend to provoke love, love must not forget reverence, triumph must go with humility; and then we are taught incidentally by the distant Ark that the position of reverence and humility is after all the very best position in which to see God. Had the Ark been close to the people, few would have seen it; the distance that is favourable for right feelings is also best for clear perception.
1. The tendencies of love to familiarity. Flippant thoughts; flippant quotations of Divine words; flippant prayers.
2. The tendencies of reverence to a cold and stately formality. God loves this no better than irreverence. David is called the man after God’s own heart; seemingly this was most of all on account of his enthusiasm.
IV. Reverence is nothing, and humility is nothing, unless there be also holiness. “Sanctify yourselves.”
1. Holiness is to be the rule of God’s people in every-day life. Luther said, “Holiness consisteth not in a cowl or a garment of gray. When God purifies the heart by faith, the market is sacred as well as the sanctuary; neither remaineth there any work or place which is profane.”
“We need not bid, for cloister’d cell,
Our neighbour and our work farewell:
The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us, daily, nearer God.”—Keble.
2. Yet there are solemn seasons in our lives, which demand our special consecration to God. The very work that we do, the journey that we take, the new period of life on which we enter, the special tokens which we have of God’s presence; these, in themselves, may urge on us this old commandment, “Sanctify yourselves.”
3. Remember that “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” It is said that an atheist, well known to the late Bp. Wilberforce, once contemptuously and flippantly accosted him by saying, “Good morning, sir: Can you kindly tell me the way to heaven?” With dignity and wisdom quite equal to the occasion, the Bishop is said to have immediately answered, “Turn to the RIGHT, and then go straight on.” Salvation is through Jesus Christ only; it is never by works, it is also never without works.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Jos_3:1-2. THE PENALTIES OF GREATNESS
I. Great encouragements are to be followed by diligent service. The people gladly owned Joshua as their leader, and Joshua at once began to enter on his arduous service. He “rose early,” and set to work diligently. (See introduction to previous discourse.) It is said that when an ancient Roman was once accused of witchcraft, in drawing away the fertility of his neighbours’ lands into his own, because he had great crops and theirs were but small, he had brought with him to the place of trial his well-fed oxen, his industrious servants, and the instruments of his husbandry: pointing to them in the presence of his judge, he exclaimed, “These are the instruments of my witchcraft, which I diligently apply, and besides these I use none.” The idle find that nothing prospers; the diligent, that there is little which fails. God’s blessing comes to men through their efforts, not instead of them.
II. The avowal of the public confidence should be succeeded by prompt efforts for the public good.
1. No one will trust for long those who are slothful.
2. Self-seeking is even worse than idleness. Joshua, in his energy, sought not so much an inheritance for himself, as for all the people.
“Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it, let thy enemies have part.
Grasp the whole world of Reason, Life, and Sense,
In one close system of Benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree,
And height of Bliss but height of Charity.”
Pope.
III. The utterances of a God-taught mind are to be sustained by the most scrupulous fidelity. It was in no mere enthusiasm that Joshua had promised that the Jordan should be crossed in three days; even if it were so, he here shews himself faithful to his word. Lavater wrote: “Words are the wings of actions;” with too many they are wings to nothing but the tongue. How much higher than the common estimate of the dignity of speech was that of the late Canon Kingsley, when he gave utterance to the following thoughts: “What is it which makes men different from all other living things we know of? Is it not speech—the power of words? The beasts may make each other understand many things, but they have no speech. These glorious things—words—are man’s right alone, part of the image of the Son of God—the Word of God, in which man was created. If men would but think what a noble thing it is to be able to speak in words, to think in words, to write in words! Without words we should know no more of each other’s hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog; without words to think in, for if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand ourselves. Without words to write in we could not know what our forefathers did—we could not let our children after us know what we do.”
If such be the dignity of speech, how sacred our words ought to be. Think of the careless words, the deceitful words, the vain words, the malicious words, the slanderous words, in which men sin with their tongues. No wonder, when we think of the high dignity and distinctive privilege of speech, that Jesus Christ should say, “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment.” When the Saviour speaks thus of men generally, what manner of persons ought His disciples to be in all holy conversation and godliness? And when God gives to men special light, and a prominent position, how carefully they should speak, and with what holy fidelity should they seek to let none of their words fall to the ground.
If preferred, the subject of these two verses might be thrown into some such form as the following: I. The responsibilities imposed by great encouragements. II. The responsibilities imposed by the confidence of our fellows. III The responsibilities imposed by words based on superior know edge.
Jos_3:3-4. FOLLOWING AFTER GOD.
I. He who follows God in His covenant must follow Him at all times and everywhere. Of what use would it have been for Israel to have marched after the pillar of cloud in the wilderness, where there were no rivers and no enemies, if they had refused to follow the ark through Jordan?
1. Men select the paths of life, even when conscience points clearly to one, and no better reason than personal preference can be found for the other. Even Christian men are found doing this. Unlawful callings, questionable companions; forbidden pleasures. Bye-Path Meadow looks fairer to walk in than the King’s highway, and men choose the pleasant, irrespective of where it leads.
2. Men select the principles which guide and direct life. Political society is made up of parties; it would be very interesting, but perhaps not a little humiliating, could we know how far father, mother, friends, and family traditions have had to do with the formation of these distinctive associations of men, and how far each member of political society has been guided and ruled by principles. Religious society is made up of many denominations; how far are these the outcome of taste, preference, and love of ease? It is not a little strange to think how many Christian men inherit not only their bodies from their parents, but also their consciences and their creeds. It is fashionable in high life to think much of descent, and to trace it through as many generations as possible: think of the divine historian writing down for our perusal presently the ancestry of our individual conscience, and the genealogy of our personal faith. What a book it will be! What a holy satire on ecclesiastical polemics, and on the enthusiasm of our Christian (!) controversies!
3. Men select the duties of life. Some are ignored as inconvenient, while others are performed because they are not so particularly troublesome; and when the process is over, the performer lies down to sleep, softly murmuring to himself as a preliminary dream, “I am a Christian; I am a Christian too.”
4. Men carry this idea of selection even to the precepts of the Bible. As Dr. Bushnell has forcibly pointed out, we have “respectable sin” and sin unrespectable, where the Scriptures make no such distinction. Fancy any church gravely proposing to exclude a member for being covetous or a railer. Yet these are deliberately included by the apostle with the fornicators and idolaters, with whom, if called brethren, he told the Corinthians not even to eat. People are quite willing to think that some of the sins named in 1Co_6:9-10, are fatal to a Christian profession; judging by the love of money and the love of scandal current in many churches, they seem equally willing to forget that in these same verses it is said of extortioners, of the covetous, and of revilers, they “shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” With ever so much indignation against Darwin and Spencer, Tyndal and Huxley, the Church also has not only its theory but its practice of “Natural Selection,” and the “survival of the fittest.” The inconvenient commandments of God are pushed out of life, and left to weakness and death, while such as are thought bearable, and at the same time helpful to respectability, are selected as the essentials of piety, and made, according to the doctrine that prevails, the sign of a living faith or a direct passport to eternal life. O for more grace that shall lead Christians everywhere to say from the heart, “Lord, I will follow Thee withersoever Thou goest.”
II. He who follows God fully must be prepared for much walking by faith. He who “commits his way unto the Lord” will often be led to wonder at the strangeness of the path. There is no saying where the next steps will take him; they may lead into darkness quite beyond the power of human ken, and into depths where the only voice that reaches the ear will be simply one that says, “Take no thought for to-morrow.” This is not by any means the only instance where those who follow the Lord have had to walk through the place of mighty waters, and where the only thing seen interposing between themselves and destruction has been the covenant which told of help from an omnipotent Arm, and of love and sympathy and care from a Father’s heart.
III. He who follows God need have no fear; for when men really follow, God Himself goes before. God asks us to go nowhere and do nothing in which He is not willing to be with us. If God be with us, that is salvation; the very rocks will have water for our thirst, the skies manna for our hunger, the torrent a path for our feet, and even the walled cities will fail to lend to our adversaries any sufficient defence.
IV. He who follows God will constantly find himself walking in new paths. “Ye have not passed this way heretofore.” There will be new service, new experiences, new prayers, and new songs, till he shall enter into the heavenly inheritance, and take his part with celestial hosts in singing the song of the Lamb. The way down to death is ever the way to obscurity and contractedness, till it ends in the darkness and narrowness of the grave; the way after God is incessant development and increasing light, till it leads into the broad expanse of heaven, and into the effulgent brightness of the Divine presence and glory.
Jos_3:4, last clause. SERMON FOR A NEW YEAR
When the Israelites heard the evil report of the ten spies, and rebelled against Moses, God said of all of them under twenty, “Your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years.” During that long period the people must have become very familiar with the desert; its principal geographical features would be known by heart to men who frequently crossed old tracks and re-trod old paths. Crossing the Jordan, the way would be strange and altogether new; it would be new, moreover, not merely in a geographical sense, but altogether, to most of them, a totally fresh kind of experience. That they might know this way, which they had not passed heretofore, they were to follow the ark, and follow it in such a manner that each could see i for himself. Time has strange paths an new experiences as well as territory, and the teaching of God to keep the Ark of the Covenant in sight is important, not only in the one case, but equally so in the other. We who “know not what a day may bring forth” may well wonder into what strange and new paths we may be led by a whole year. Happy is he who can walk every step with his faith directed to a present God, and his eye looking into that covenant which is “A lamp unto the feet and a light unto the path.”
I. The year upon which we have entered may bring new perplexities; therefore we should seek afresh the Divine guidance. Financially, socially, spiritually, the days may form a very labyrinth and maze about us. How are we to walk where our own discernment is insufficient, and when the wisdom of men would be only as the blind leading the blind? It is said that when Philip of Maccdon was about to set out on his Persian expedition, he sent to consult the oracle of Delphi as to the issue of the war. The answer was given with the usual ambiguity, “The bull is crowned, everything is ready, and the sacrificer is at hand,” a reply which would do equally well to foreshadow the king’s victory or depict his death. Within a few days Philip was slain with the sword of the assassin Pausanias. These old oracular utterances form a grim satire on the advice of men, not a little of which is given more with a view of avoiding responsibility, than of affording genuine direction. Jonah was by no means the last of the race who think more of the prestige of the prophet than of the fate of the city. What with human selfishness and human blindness, we often need better guidance than that of our fellows. He is led well and wisely who makes the Scriptures the man of his counsel,—who prays, “Shew me Thy ways, O Lord, teach me Thy paths;” for “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will shew them His covenant.”
II. The year may bring new afflictions; therefore we should each cultivate a closer union with God. He who forms a lowly habit of depending on Divine help, gradually gets his life rooted and grounded into the life of God. “Growing up into Him” who is our strength in days which are calm, we are not likely to fail in the day of tempest and storm. How the ivy clings to the strong oak, just because when the last rough wind which had loosened it ceased to blow, it began afresh to knit fibre to fibre, and ivy-root to oak bark, so as to be prepared for the trial that should come next. Nature uses her calms in preparing for her storms. So should we use the peace and prosperity of the present to anticipate the possible strife and adversity of the future.
III. The year may bring new temptations, and therefore calls on us to “watch and pray.” As we get older we are apt to grow into a careless feeling of security. Men virtually say, “I have stood, I do stand; therefore I shall stand.” Christian history should rather teach us to put it, “I have stood, I do stand; therefore I may grow careless and fall.” It was just after the destruction of Sodom which threw Abraham’s fidelity into prominence, by disclosing the fall of Lot and the guilt of the cities of the plain, that the father of the faithful denied his wife. It was the long-tried Moses who sinned at Meribah. It was after David had so long behaved himself wisely before Saul; after he had danced before the ark, written many a sweet song for Israel, and volunteered to build the temple, that he turned adulterer and murderer. It was long after his noble confession, at the end of all the miracles, and when he had for years delighted in the teaching and love of the Saviour, that Peter said, “I know not the man.”
IV. The year will discover new duties, and thus requires our re-consecration to the service of Christ. There will be new demands for work, new opportunities, and new responsibilities. The ardour and zeal of the past will suffice but poorly for the labour of the future. It was on “the first day of the first month” that this Ark of the Covenant was set up; it was God’s new year’s gift to encourage His people to a year of fresh work and worship. When David was called from the sheepfold to be a king, Samuel anointed him with oil in the name of the Lord; the new sphere and the new duties were anticipated in this customary act of formal consecration. So we need stage by stage throughout our lives “an unction from the Holy One.”
V. The year may bring new privileges, which we should be prepared to embrace. The new way will have new scenery, new possessions, new joys, and should have new songs. As a traveller in classic Rome, or among the mountains of Switzerland, provides himself with a guide, that he may see as many things and points of interest as possible, so we should be careful to search out the mercies which are “new every morning,” and often place ourselves where broad views of Divine greatness and love shall gladden our spirits and renew our life.
VI. The year may reveal a new life and a fresh inheritance; therefore we should be prepared for death. Our cold river may also have to be crossed. Shall we find on the other side the New Jerusalem, and one of the many mansions ready for us? Shall we find again, waiting for us there, our loved ones, who have already departed to be with Christ; and with them, and the whole host of the redeemed, take our part in the New Song?
Jos_3:5-6.
I. The Lord’s wonderful works demanding His people’s special sanctification. This is by no means a solitary instance in which God requires His great works to be received by man with peculiar holiness. (Cf. Exo_19:10; Num_11:18; Joe_2:15-32.) If the more wonderful workings of God are not met on our part by increased holiness, they will assuredly do us harm. The Pentecost that blessed three thousand, probably left a multitude in Jerusalem harder in their hearts than ever.
II. The Lord’s wonderful works demanding His people’s devoutest reverence. The priests carried the ark only on very solemn occasions. They, and not the Kohathites, were the bearers here. It was the same in the march around Jericho, and in other important events where God was, or was supposed to be, specially present. The same feeling was taught to Moses; with God before him in the burning bush, he was to put his shoes from off his feet; with God passing by, he was to hide himself in the cleft of the rock; and when God met His servant on Sinai, we are told that it was amidst such manifestations of power and majesty, that Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake.” Faber’s beautiful hymn, beginning
“My God, how wonderful Thou art!”
is written throughout with exquisite feeling, beautifully expounding the awe that should go with love, and the rapture that may mingle with our lowliest adoration.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 I. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." We…
Jos 3:4
I. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." We are all continually entering upon new paths, which afterwards turn out to be old ones in a new form. Religious experience moves by crises. Israel had not many years before gone across this same desert, and been abruptly turned back to Sinai again, because of rebelliousness in their will. Now they were to go to Canaan, but by another route altogether. We are always beginning new experiences. But we should remember that in the year to come we shall find ourselves travelling over much the same road as last year. There will not be anything extraordinarily surprising. Differences will be in the details.
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II. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Then, in the fresh chance God is giving, He offers Himself to be our Helper and Friend. We failed last year. The chances of life are still open. Our parts may be played over again.
III. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Then surely the gifts of God’s love have not been appropriated by others nor exhausted by ourselves.
IV. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore;" but it is well to remember that the ark has not passed this way heretofore either. The Israelites were to accept God’s guidance implicitly. They were to bear the ark to the front and follow it without any question. It makes life a new thing to put the ark on before it.
V. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Now, with the ark in front, "the joy of the Lord is your strength."
C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 224.
I. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." Therefore do not go until you be assured of the Divine presence and protection.
II. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." It is quite right, consequently, to take new ways and untried paths in life.
III. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore." There are some particulars in which this must be true even of the least eventful life.
IV. "Ye have not passed this way heretofore," The suggestion is not human, but Divine. It is God Himself that proposes to guide and defend the lives of men.
Parker, The Ark of God, p. 26.
"Ye have not passed this way heretofore." The vista of the bygone years was never so long as it is to-day. Time never carried such a burden of events on his shoulders. Changes have taken place in society and in ourselves, and these changes are sure to go on during the coming year. Take these watchwords for the year, notes of the life we must aim to live as the days go by.
I. Vigilance. Have the senses well exercised and ready for quick and true discernment of men and things. Without something of this sleepless vigilance, without the "inevitable eye," we shall lose much of what is in the year, and in the year for us.
II. Promptitude. We should watch for occasions, that we may seize them; for opportunities, that we may improve them; for God in His manifold revealings and comings to us, that we may receive Him as our God.
III. Courage will often be needed to do what the hand finds to do. The possession and cultivation of moral courage therefore is another very necessary preparation for this way that we have not passed heretofore.
IV. Gentleness is a good word to put under the shelter of courage, and a good thing to put among the preparations for the unknown year.
V. We should be poorly furnished for the way without filial confidence, which will easily, when occasion comes, pass into resignation.
VI. Finally, whatever comes, there will always be, not only need and occasion, but ground and reason, for serene, invincible hopefulness. "Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world."
A. Raleigh, The Way to the City, p. 350 (see also Congregationalist, vol. i., p. 7).
References: Jos 3:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1057; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 5; M. Nicholson, Redeeming the Time, p. 217; Outline Sermons for Children, p. 23; Old Testament Outlines, pp. 56, 59. Jos 3:5.—E. B. Pusey, Sermons from Advent to Whitsuntide, 1848, p. 35. 3:7-4:15.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 277. Jos 3:9.—Parker, vol. v., p. 274. Jos 3:11.—S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 144. Jos 3:17.—Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the Old Testament, p. 40. 3—Parker, vol. v., pp. 88, 97. Jos 4:6, Jos 4:7.—Newman Hall, Sunday Magazine, 1865, p. 389. Jos 4:9.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. viii., pp. 159, 315; H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf, p. 301. Jos 4:15, Jos 4:24.—Parker, vol. v., p. 116. Jos 4:23.—Ibid., p. 275. 4—Ibid., p. 107. Jos 5:11.—W. Harris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 384. Jos 5:12.—H. Macmillan, Two Worlds are Ours, p. 177 (see also Sunday Magazine, 1879, p. 125); Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 1; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 183; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 257; J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. i., p. 58.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv4–5
Joshua
THE UNTRODDEN PATH AND THE GUIDING ARK
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Jos 3:4.
It was eminently true of Israel that they had ‘not passed this way heretofore,’ inasmuch as the path which was opening before them, through the oozy bed of the river, had never been seen by human eye, nor trodden by man’s foot. Their old leader was dead. There were only two of the whole host that had ever been out of the desert in their lives. They had a hard task before them. Jericho lay there, gleaming across the plain, among the palm-trees, backed by the savage cliffs, up the passes in which they would have to fight their way. So that we need not wonder that, over and over again, in these early chapters of this book, the advice in reiterated, ‘Be of good courage. Be strong and fear not!’ They needed special guidance, and they received very special guidance, and my text tells us what they had to do, in order to realise the full blessing and guidance that was given them. ‘Let there be a space of 2000 cubits by measure between you and the ark’-three-quarters of a mile or thereabouts-’do not press close upon the heels of the bearers, for you will not be able to see where they are going if you crowd on them. Be patient. Let the course of the ark disclose itself before you try to follow it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go, for ye have not passed this way heretofore.’
I. Note the untrodden path.
I suppose that most of us have to travel a very well-worn road, and that our course, in the cases of all except those in early life, is liker that of a millhorse than an untrodden path. Most of us are continually treading again in the prints of our own footsteps. A long, weary stretch of monotonous duties, and the repetition of the same things to-day that we did yesterday is the destiny of most of us.
Some of us, perhaps, may be standing upon the verge of some new scenes in our lives. Some of you young people may have come up to a great city for the first time to carve out a position for yourselves, and are for the first time encompassed by the temptations of being unknown in a crowd. Some of you may be in new domestic circumstances, some with new sorrows, or tasks, or difficulties pressing upon you, calling for wisdom and patience. It is quite likely that there may be some who, in the most prosaic and literal sense of the words, are entering on a path altogether new and untrodden. But they will be in the minority, and for the most of us the days that were full of new possibilities are at an end, and we have to expect little more than the monotonous repetition of the habitual, humdrum duties of mature life. We have climbed the winding paths up the hill, and most of us are upon the long plateau that stretches unvaried, until it begins to dip at the further edge. And some of us are going down that other side of the hill.
But whatever may be the variety in regard to the mere externals of our lives, how true it is about us all that even the most familiar duties of to-day are not quite like the same duties when they had to be done yesterday; and that the path for each of us-though, as we go along, we find in it nothing new-is yet an untrodden path! For we are not quite the same as we were yesterday, though our work may be the same, and the difference in us makes it in some measure different.
But what mainly makes even the most well-beaten paths new at the thousandth time of traversing them is our ignorance of what may be waiting round the next turn of the road. The veil that hangs before and hides the future is a blessing, though we sometimes grumble at it, and sometimes petulantly try to make pinholes through it, and peep in to see a little of what is behind it. It brings freshness into our lives, and a possibility of anticipation, and even of wonder and expectation, that prevents us from stagnating. Even in the most habitual repetition of the same tasks ‘ye have not passed this way heretofore.’ And life for every one of us is still full of possibilities so great and so terrible that we may well feel that the mist that covers the future is a blessing and a source of strength for us all.
Our march through time is like that of men in a mist, in which things loom in strangely distorted shapes, unlike their real selves, until we get close up to them, and only then do we discover them.
So for us all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the sudden temptations that may start up at any moment in our course, by reason of the earthquakes that may shatter the most solid-seeming lives, by reason of the sudden calamities that may fall upon us. The sorrows that we anticipate seldom come, and those that do come are seldom anticipated. The most fatal bolts are generally from the blue. One flash, all unlooked for, is enough to blast the tree in all its leafy pride. Many of us, I have no doubt, can look back to times in our lives when, without anticipation on our parts, or warning from anything outside of us, a smiting hand fell upon some of our blessings. The morning dawned upon the gourd in full vigour of growth, and in the evening it was stretched yellow and wilted upon the turf. Dear brethren, anything may come out of that dark cloud through which our life’s course has to pass, and there are some things concerning which all that we know is that they must come.
These are very old threadbare thoughts; I dare say you think it was not worth your while to come to hear them, nor mine to speak them; but if we would lay them to heart, and realise how true it is about every step of our earthly course that ‘ye have not passed this way heretofore,’ we should complain less than we do of the weariness and prosaic character of our commonplace lives, and feel that all was mystical and great and awful; and yet most blessed in its possibilities and its uncertainties.
II. Note, again, the guiding ark.
It was a new thing that the ark should become the guide of the people. All through the wilderness, according to the history, it had been carried in the centre of the march, and had had no share in the direction of the course. That had been done by the pillar of cloud. But, just as the manna ceased when the tribes got across the Jordan and could eat the bread of the land, the miracle ending and they being left to trust to ordinary means of supply at the earliest possible moment, so there ensued an approximation to ordinary guidance, which is none the less real because it is granted without miracle. The pillar of cloud ceased to move before the people in the crossing of the Jordan, and its place was taken by the material symbol of the presence of God, which contained the tables of the law as the basis of the covenant. And that ark moved at the commandment of the leader Joshua, for he was the mouthpiece of the divine will in the matter. And so when the ark moved at the bidding of the leader, and became the guide of the people, there was a kind of a drop down from the pure supernatural of the guiding pillar.
For us a similar thing is true. Jesus Christ is the true Ark of God. For what was the ark? the symbol of the divine Presence; and Christ is the reality of the divine Presence with men. The whole content of that ark was the ‘law of the Lord,’ and Jesus Christ is the embodied law of the present God. The ark was the sign that God had entered into this covenant with these people, and that they had a right to say to Him, ‘Thou art our God, and we are Thy people,’ and the same double assurance of reciprocal possession and mutual delight in possession is granted to us in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So He becomes the guiding Ark, the Shepherd of Israel. His presence and will are our directors. The law, which is contained and incorporated in Him, is that by which we are to walk. The covenant which He has established in His own blood between God and man contains in itself not only the direction for conduct, but also the motives which will impel us to walk where and as He enjoins.
And so, every way we may say, by His providences which He appoints, by His example which He sets us, by His gracious word in which He sums up all human duties in the one sweet obligation, ‘Follow Me,’ and even more by His Spirit that dwells in us, and whispers in our ears, ‘This is the way; walk ye in it,’ and enlightens every perplexity, and strengthens all feebleness, and directs our footsteps into the way of peace; that living and personal Ark of the covenant of the Lord of the whole earth is still the guide of waiting and docile hearts. Jesus Christ’s one word to us is, ‘If any man serve Me, let him follow Me. And where I am’-of course, seeing he is a follower-’there shall also My servant be.’
The one Pattern for us, the one Example that we need to follow, the one Strength in our perplexities, the true Director of our feet, is that dear Lord, if we will only listen to Him. And that direction will be given to us in regard to the trifles, as in regard to the great things of our lives.
III. And so the last thought that is here is the watchful following.
‘Come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye ought to go.’ In a shipwreck, the chances are that the boats will be swamped by the people scrambling into them in too great a hurry. In the Christian life most of the mistakes that people make arise from their not letting the ark go far enough ahead of them before they gather up their belongings and follow it. An impatience of the half-declared divine will, a running before we are sent, an acting before we are quite sure that God wills us to do so-and-so, are at the root of most of the failures of Christian effort, and of a large number of the miseries of Christian men. If we would only have patience! Three-quarters of a mile the ark went ahead before a man lifted a foot to follow it, and there was no mistake possible then.
Now do not be in a hurry to act. ‘Raw haste’ is ‘half-sister to delay.’ We are all impatient of uncertainty, either in opinion or in conduct; but if you are not quite sure what God wants you to do, you may be quite sure that He does not at present want you to do anything. Wait till you see what He does wish you to do. Better, better far, to spend hours in silent-although people that know nothing about what we are doing may call it indolent-waiting for the clear declaration of God’s will, than to hurry on paths which, after we have gone on them far enough to make it a mortification and a weariness to turn back, we shall find out to have been not His at all, but only our own mistakes as to where the ark would have us go.
And that there may be this patience the one thing needful-as, indeed, it is the one thing needful for all strength of all kinds in the Christian life-is the rigid suppression of our own wills. That is the secret of goodness, and its opposite is the secret of evil. To live by my own will is to die. Nothing but blunders, nothing but miseries, nothing but failures, nothing but remorse, will be the fruit of such a life. And a great many of us who call ourselves Christians are not Christians in the sense of having Christ’s will for our absolute law, and keeping our own will entirely in subordination thereto. As is the will, so is the man, and whoever does not bow himself absolutely, and hush all the babble of his own inclinations and tastes and decisions, in order that that great Voice may speak, has small chance of ever walking in the paths of righteousness, or finding that his ways please the Lord.
Suppress your own wills, dwell near God, that you may hear His lightest whisper. ‘I will guide thee with Mine eye.’ What is the use of the glance of an eye if the man for whom it is meant is half a mile off, and staring about him at everything except the eye that would guide? And that is what some of us that call ourselves Christian people are. God might look guidance at us for a week, and we should never know that He was doing it; we have so many other things to look after. And we are so far away from Him that it would need a telescope for us to see His face. ‘I will guide thee with Mine eye.’ Keep near Him, and you will not lack direction.
And so, dear brethren, if we stay ourselves on, and wait patiently for, Him, and are content to do what He wishes, and never to run without a clear commission, nor to act without a full conviction of duty, then the old story of my text will repeat itself in our daily life, as well as in the noblest form in the last act of life, which is death. The Lord will move before us and open a safe, dry path for us between the heaped waters; and where the feet of our great High Priest, bearing the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, stood, amidst the slime and the mud, we may plant our firm feet on the stones that He has left there. And so the stream of life, like the river of death, will be parted for Christ’s followers, and they will pass over on dry ground, ‘until all the people are passed clean over Jordan.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Passage of Jordan
The Passage of Jordan
This is the initial miracle of Joshua's leadership. Its moral effect upon the Israelite host is suggested in Jos_3:7 and Jos_4:14 that wrought upon the Canaanites in Jos_5:1 (which properly belongs to this section of the book).
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3. The ark of the covenant of the Lord your God] see Exo_25:10-22 and Exo_37:1-9. It was the authoritative symbol of the Divine Presence (cp. Exo_23:20.), and as such led the van in the desert marches (Num_10:33-36). The priests the Levites] cp. Deu_18:1. Not that all the Levites were originally priests, as some have interpreted that passage: see e.g. Num_3:5-10 for the relation of the Levites in general to the 'sons of Aaron.'
4. Two thousand cubits] 3,000 ft.; the ancient Hebrew cubit = 18 in.
15. Jordan overfloweth all his banks] The rank jungle, which fills the bed (150 ft. deep) that Jordan has hollowed out at the bottom of the rift, down which it flows, marks the extent of the April floods. The space is from 200 yards to 1 m. broad, and is what Jeremiah calls (Jer_12:5; Jer_49:19; Jer_50:44) the 'Pride' or 'Swelling' of Jordan. In Sir_24:26 we find a proverbial phrase, 'full as.. Jordan in the time of harvest' (RV).
16. We should probably render 'a great way off, at the city Adam, which is beside Zaretan.' The incident of the stoppage of Jordan's waters is not without parallel in history, if we may trust the Arabic historian Nowairi (see Sayce, 'Early Hist of Hebr.,' p. 249). According to his account the water was dammed up by a landslip from midnight on DeJoshua 8, 1267, 'till the 4th hour of the day.' The narrative is very artless, and whether it be true or simply an echo of the book of Joshua, enables us to conceive how the miracle of the crossing may have happened; for miracle it still remains, even if wrought out at the will of the author of nature by natural means: being a clear exhibition of personal providential purpose in connexion with the great plan of Israel's mission to the world. The position of Adam has been identified with Tel Damieh (a place mentioned, curiously, in Nowairi's narrative), near the mouth of the Jabbok. Zaretan may probably be the 'Zarthan' of 1Ki_7:46.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 The passage of Jordan, type of our death with…
Jordan
The passage of Jordan, type of our death with Christ Rom 6:6-11; Eph 2:5; Eph 2:6; Col 3:1-3.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 3. The Passage of Jordan
3. The Passage of Jordan
CHAPTER 3
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1. The Ark of Jehovah going before (Jos 3:1-6)
2. Jehovah’s words to Joshua (Jos 3:7-8)
3. Joshua’s words to the people (Jos 3:9-13)
4. The passage accomplished (Jos 3:14-17)
The River Jordan divided the people from the promised land. To be in the land Jordan had to be crossed. Jordan, overflowing all its banks at that time (verse 15), rolled its dark waters between them and their God-given possession. Only the power of God could bring them through those dark waters. It was a miracle which took place, when a way was opened and “the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap ... and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt-sea, failed and were cut off” (verse 16). Unbelief has always branded this miracle as a legend. The destructive criticism has done the same. This is the second time the Lord made a way for His people through the waters. He made first a way for them through the Red Sea, by which Israel was separated from Egypt and from their enemies. The passage of Jordan separated them from the wilderness and brought them into the land.
Both, the Red Sea and Jordan, are types of the death of Christ in its blessed results for His people. The Red Sea experience typifies the fact that the believer, through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, is dead to sin and dead to the law. The passage through Jordan is the type of the fact, that the death and resurrection of Christ brings us into the heavenly places; we are seated together in Christ in heavenly places.
And how was the passage accomplished? We read now nothing more of the movement of the pillar of cloud and of fire, so prominent at the Red Sea and during the wilderness journey. The ark of the covenant of the Lord appears in the foreground to lead the way and made a way through the overflowing waters. Taken up by the priests, carried towards the river, as soon as the priests touched the brim of it, the waters were stemmed back, till all the people had passed over on dry ground. The ark with the blood-sprinkled mercy seat is the type of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the type of our Lord going into the deep waters of death to make a way through them for His people. The distance between the ark and the people was to be two thousand cubits. It illustrates the fact that our Lord had to do this work alone. Peter declared that he would go with Him into death, but the Lord told him, “Thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me hereafter.” There was none with Him, when He made the way, but He takes all His people through death into resurrection life and glory.
In the midst of Jordan, the mighty waters standing as a heap above, the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan. It was a dry way, not a drop of the dark, muddy waters were left. It shows the truth, that the power of death (typified by the waters of Jordan) is completely gone; nothing is left of it. The work is accomplished for all His people. Not one is left behind; the weakest and the smallest pass over. What effect it must have had upon the enemies, and especially upon Jericho! Jericho was but five miles away. No doubt they watched the hosts of Israel before the passage. They felt secure on account of the mighty waters of Jordan, which seemed to bar the Israelitish invasion. How panic-stricken they must have become when they saw or heard of the great miracle and that God’s people had reached the other shore! But one person was calm in Jericho. One enjoyed peace and rest and did not fear. The one from whose window there streamed the scarlet line.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 The Instructions for Crossing
The Instructions for Crossing
v. 1. And Joshua rose early in the morning, on the fourth day after his great proclamation, Jos 1:11. And they removed from Shittim, where their headquarters had been situated, and came to Jordan, a matter of about two hours’ journey, during which they observed the usual order of march, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over, they rested for some time, probably during the noon-hour.
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v. 2. And it came to pass after three days, those named in the order of Joshua, Jos 1:11, that the officers, the officials in charge of the mustering, went through the host, during this pause in the day’s march;
v. 3. and they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, your God, Exo 25:10-22, and the priests, the Levites, the priests of the sons of Levi who were charged with this work, bearing it, at the head of the army, as it seems to have been done once before, Num 10:33, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it, in the orderly array commanded by God.
v. 4. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure (three thousand feet). Come not near unto it, they were to observe this respectful distance, lest their vanguard hide the Ark of the Covenant from the great number of the marchers, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore. It was not that the people were in danger of losing their way to the river, but that the Lord wanted them to note the miracle by which He opened the way to Canaan before their eyes.
v. 5. And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves; after establishing camp for the night they were to engage in spiritual purification, typified also by the washing of their clothes and of their bodies, thus turning their hearts to God, in faith and trust in His promise, and in willing obedience to His commands, that they might rightly take to heart the miracle of grace which the Lord would perform among them the next day; for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you. The passage of Jordan took place on the tenth of Nisan, Jos 4:19.
v. 6. And Joshua spake unto the priests, saying, Take up the Ark of the Covenant and pass over before the people. This was the special work of the sons of Kohath, Num 4:15, and the order referred to the actual time of marching. and they took up the Ark of the Covenant and went before the people, this statement either anticipating the actual event, or having reference to the fact that the priests took up their station at the head of the army, ready for the march of the next day.
v. 7. And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, for the miraculous crossing of Jordan was only the first of a series of wonders by which the Lord placed His people in possession of the Land of Promise and confirmed Joshua in his position as leader of the people, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. Cf Jos 1:2-9.
v. 8. And thou shalt command the priests that bear the Ark of the Covenant, saying, When ye are come to the brink of the water of Jordan, the eastern bank or slope of the river, as it descended to the bed of the stream, ye shall stand still in Jordan, thus forming, as it were, a dam to hold back the waters rushing down from the north. The Ark of the Covenant here appears as the emblem of God’s almighty presence. To this day God has bound His children to the use of certain means of grace, the Word and the Sacraments. Where these are administered, there the true, living God is present, there we find evidences of God’s power and mercy, of His protection and blessing.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 5, 7 got up
got up
The phrase, "got up," means to "awaken."
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Shittim
A place in the land of Moab, west of the Jordan River where the Israelites were camped before their entry into the promised land, Canaan.
translationWords
Joshua
Jordan River
Israel
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 3:1 Israel had camped at Acacia Grove since before…
3:1 Israel had camped at Acacia Grove since before Balaam’s oracles (Num 22–24).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.