Joshua 1:11

11. Prepare you victuals Provision for a journey; natural produce; not manna, for this became putrid on the second day. The manna did not cease to fall till they had entered Canaan and eaten of the corn of the land. Joshua 5:12. But it was in harmony with the divine economy that the supernatural supply should diminish as the natural supply increased in the fertile trans-Jordanic region. God never works miracles as a premium to indolence.

Within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan If we follow the order of the narrative, and allow that the spies were sent out after this proclamation to the officers, we shall find that the Israelites did not cross the Jordan within three days. The spies were gone three days, and the people paused on the river’s bank three days more, so that the crossing could not have taken place till the seventh day. To meet this difficulty some suppose that the spies had been sent out previous to Joshua’s proclamation to the officers; see note on Joshua 2:1. [But it is not necessary to understand these words of Joshua as a positive prediction that all the people would actually cross over the Jordan and be in the Promised Land within these three days. The words are literally ye crossing, that is, ye will be on your march to cross. He proposed within three days to break up the camp at Shittim and be on his way over the Jordan, and this is all the words can necessarily be made to mean. Keil supposes that because the two spies were detained, and obliged to hide three days in the mountain, (Joshua 2:22,) Joshua was thereby hindered from carrying out his purpose as he at first designed. But why is it necessary to maintain that the spies returned to Joshua at the camp at Shittim? It is not so written, (see Joshua 2:23,) and we may possibly suppose that when they returned to Joshua they found him arrived at the Jordan. But even granting that they returned to the camp at Shittim, as the history most naturally implies, the three days they hid in the mountain may have been only parts of three days. See note on Joshua 2:22.] The inspired writers directed their attention more to facts than to chronological order. In this command Joshua displays a remarkable degree of that faith and courage to which he had just been exhorted. The rapid Jordan, at its flood, is before him, and he has no boats, no bridge, no pontoon train, but he assures that vast host that they and their wives and children and flocks shall, within a few days, safely cross that angry torrent.