Joshua 3:1

ISRAEL CROSSES THE JORDAN RIVER

Joshua 3 and Joshua 4 must certainly stand on a very high plateau of importance, due not merely to the astounding miracle that took place, but also to the typical nature of the historic movement of Israel across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The narrative here weaves together a number of very important elements:

(1) the elevation of Joshua in the estimation of the people;

(2) the function of the ark of the covenant and the priests who carried it;

(3) the beginning of the crossing, its continuation, and its conclusion;

(4) the erection of two memorials - one in the middle of Jordan, the other at Gilgal;

(5) the cessation of the manna; and

(6) the timing of the event with reference to the 10th of Abib and the approach of the First Passover in Canaan.

As recorded here, the narrative is very complex. As Blair pointed out, this complexity is the very thing overlooked by, "Those who have attempted to solve this narrative by appealing to `different accounts' woven together."[1] We might be able to forgive such explanations if there were any different accounts, but, of course, this is the only account that has come down through history. Those ephemeral, imaginary "accounts" prior to this one are known to be non-existent except in the imaginations of men who are already committed to a denial of the sacred record found in the Bible.

If one wonders why famous and honored "scholars" blunder so disastrously in the interpretation of miracles, Woudstra accurately explained it thus:

"In the Biblical view, MIRACULOUS events have one unambiguous and clear meaning. Those who do not accept them as such fly in the face of evidence which all can see. Only blindness of mind caused by sin makes people misinterpret miracles."[2]

The peculiarities of the narrative of these two chapters are marked by the piecemeal manner of its relation. There is a free use of provisional endings, which do not signal the final conclusion of a given factor at all, but the interruption of the record in order for the historian to insert a parenthesis, a prolepsis, or to take up another phase of the overall history. This episodic treatment of the grand event related here is nothing new to the histories of the times of Joshua and earlier. We shall meet with it again in Joshua 10. It is an undeniable earmark of the near mid-second millennium writings that have come down through history. Keil has favored us with a step-by-step analysis of these two chapters as follows:

The final preparations for the crossing (Joshua 3:1-6).

The commencement of the crossing (Joshua 3:7-17).

The further progress of the crossing (Joshua 4:1-14).

The crossing concluded (Joshua 4:15-24)[3]

Furthermore, in each of the final three sections outlined by Keil, the account is arranged according to the following plan:

In each of them, God's command to Joshua comes first (Joshua 3:7,8; 4:2,3; and Joshua 4:15,16).

Then there is the communication of this command to the people of Israel.

This is followed by the execution of God's command through Joshua (Joshua 3:9-17; 4:4-13; 4:17-20).[4]

The above are some of the considerations that lie behind the decision to treat these two chapters as a single unit in this commentary.

"And Joshua rose up early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to the Jordan; and they lodged there before they passed over."

Why was this preliminary approach made? Shittim was at most only five or six miles from the river, but here Joshua brought Israel to the very brink of the Jordan. Many have thought that God wanted the people to get a good look at that river in flood stage before they passed over it, and this is probably the correct explanation. Pink saw this three-day pause by the terrible Jordan as God's impressing upon the Israelites, "that they had no means of crossing it, that they were utterly helpless, and that they were thus completely shut unto God as their only hope."[5]

THE JORDAN RIVER

This terrible river, lying at the bottom of the most spectacular gash upon the surface of the planet earth, most of its course lying even below the level of the sea, is an astoundingly appropriate symbol of death.

The very name "Jordan" means "descender."[6] The Encyclopaedia Brittanica gives the meaning as "the down-comer."[7] Such names reflect the amazing steepness of the river throughout its course. From its source to its entry into the Dead Sea the distance is only about 65 miles, but the river meanders for a length of about 200 miles, with "an average loss of altitude of about 9 feet per mile."[8] The rank vegetation on each side of the river abounds with large quantities of castor oil plants, oleanders (poisonous), tamarisks, and acacias.[9]

The landscape on each side of the Jordan was in most places covered with the rank growth due to the annual flooding, and it was a cluttered mass of deposits of mud, gravel, dead weeds, driftwood, and exposed roots of trees. The swiftness of the river was rendered even more dangerous by its zig-zag current and muddy bed. It could easily sweep a man from the side into midstream. In the April flood, the Jordan just about doubled in size, from its usual 90 to 100 feet in width to almost twice that.[10]

In a very real sense, Jordan was the river of death. It terminated in the Dead Sea, where life is impossible. The salinity of the Dead Sea surpasses that of any other body of water on earth. Its waters have been called "a syrup of sodium chloride"!

But over and beyond these characteristics which certainly entitle the river to stand as a symbol of death, it is in the Grand Analogy of the Two Israels that its unique place in this function is sealed and certified. (See the details of the Grand Analogy in Vol. 7 of my N.T. series of commentaries, pp. 149,150.) Just as Joshua led Israel over Jordan into the Promised Land, just so our Lord Jesus Christ leads Christians (the New Israel) over the Jordan of death into "the eternal habitations!"