Joshua 3:16

16. The city Adam, that is beside Zaretan It is impossible to locate these cities; no traces of them remain. The latter city is elsewhere more correctly spelled Zarthan. There is in the Hebrew a marginal reading which is generally preferred by the critics: “The waters stood and rose up upon one heap very far off by Adam, the city that is by the side of Zarthan.”

In accordance with this reading many commentators suppose that the entire channel of the Jordan was dry for many miles above the place of crossing, and that the waters were rolled back and piled up in a place many miles distant towards, or near, the Sea of Tiberias. The following is Stanley’s graphic description: “On the broken edge of the swollen stream the band of priests stood, with the ark on their shoulders. Suddenly the full bed of the Jordan was dried before them. High up the river, far, far away, in Adam, (that is, at a distance of thirty miles from the encampment,) the waters stood which ‘descended’ from the heights above; stood, and rose up as if gathered into a waterskin, as if in a barrier or heap, as if congealed, (LXX;) and those that descended toward the Sea of the Desert, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off. Thus the scene presented is of the ‘descending stream,’ (Jordan, etymologically, means the Descender,) not parted asunder, as we generally fancy, but, as the Psalm expresses it, ( Psalms 114:3,) ‘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.” To this theory of the miracle, which is also that of Dr. A. Clarke, we object. We see no reason for heaping up the waters in a far-distant place where there were no Hebrew witnesses.