Verse 17
17. The priests… stood firm on dry ground The priests stood above, near the wall of waters, and the people passed below. The ark, the symbol of the presence of Jehovah, was the instrument of the miracle, as the rod of Moses had been in the division of the Red Sea. Thus God honours his own ordinances.
Dry ground Not hard and dusty ground, but dry only in the sense of being drained of water. See note on Joshua 4:18.
All the Israelites passed… clean over Jordan The Jordan is now passed, and Canaan is attained! The forty years’ sojourn is closed, and for the first ecstatic moment the feet of the tribes are standing on the Promised Land! Their departure from Egypt and their arrival in Canaan are signalized by parallel miracles of sea and river. Both at their exit and at their entrance Jehovah leads them through a watery gate, by cleaving the waves asunder. Through all ages the Church has seen in the desert sojourn the symbol of our probationary life, and in the crossing the Jordan the symbol of death. Yet is there this memorable difference: the crossing the Jordan was to Israel the commencement of a new warfare; the transit of Christian death is into eternal repose.
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