Joshua 3:13

13. The Lord Hebrews, Jehovah.

The Lord of all the earth The efficient cause of the miracle.

Shall rest in the waters The Jordan had two, and in some places three, banks. See cut and note Matthew 3:6. At its flood it over-flowed the first and second banks, and covered the whole space between the terraces formed by the second and third banks. The waters on each side would be comparatively shallow. Here the priests were to stand or rest in the shoal water on the eastern bank until the waves receded, and the river’s channel was made bare; then they advanced into the midst of the channel of the Jordan, and there stood until all the people had crossed. Joshua 3:17.

The waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down Grammatically, waters that come down is in apposition with waters of Jordan, and the word from, supplied in our English version, is incorrect and misleading. It is better to omit from, and substitute namely, and render, The waters of Jordan shall be cut off, namely, the waters that come down from above.

And they shall stand upon a heap Or, stand up, one mass. The word for heap is best understood by referring to its use in the description of the division of the Red Sea in Exodus 15:8, and in Psalms 78:13. By comparing these passages with Exodus 14:22, where it is said, “The waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left,” we arrive at the conclusion that the phenomenon presented by the word heap was that of an upright mass of water held back by Omnipotence. We take the meaning to be that just above the crossing the waters were “congealed,” or solidified, as if dammed up by an invisible perpendicular wall across the channel, causing the waters above to overflow all the banks. Below the miraculous dam the channel ran dry to the Dead Sea. Compare note on Joshua 3:16. No natural agent was employed in the working of this miracle. In the division of the Red Sea the Lord caused a strong east wind to blow all night, when Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. Exodus 14:21. But in the passage of the Jordan “there was neither wind nor tide, to the agency of which the effect could be attributed; and if the river way actually passed, at a high stage of its waters, without boats or bridges, the evidence of the miracle was irresistible the current must have been suspended by supernatural power.” In the most degenerate periods of Jewish history this great miracle was never once questioned. So far as we know even the skeptical and materialistic Sadducees, who sifted the traditions of the elders with a destructiveness rivaling the German rationalists, never assailed this manifest token of supernatural power in their nation’s induction into the Land of Promise.