_JORDAN DIVIDED._
JOSHUA iii.
At Joshua's command, the priests carrying the ark are again in motion.
Bearing the sacred vessel on their shoulders, they make straight for
the bank of the river. "The exact spot is unknown; it certainly cannot
be that which the Greek tradition has fixed, where the eastern banks
are sheer precipices of ten or fifteen feet high. Probably it was
either immediately above or below, where the cliffs break away; above
at the fords, or below where the river assumes a tamer character on
its way to the Dead Sea."[7] Following the priests, at the interval of
a full half-mile, was the host of Israel. "_There_ was the mailed
warrior with sword and shield, and the aged patriarch, trembling on
his staff. Anxious mothers and timid maidens were there, and helpless
infants of a day old; and there, too, were flocks and herds and all
the possessions of a great nation migrating westward in search of a
home. Before them lay their promised inheritance,
'While Jordan rolled between,'
full to the brim, and overflowing all its banks. Nevertheless, through
it lies their road, and God commands the march. The priests take up
the sacred ark and bear it boldly down to the brink; when lo! 'the
waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon a heap very
far from the city Adam, that is before Zaretan: and those that came
down toward the sea of the plain, even the Salt Sea, failed, and were
cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho.' And thus,
too, has all-conquering faith carried the thousand times ten thousand
of God's people in triumph through the Jordan of death to the Canaan
of eternal rest."[8]
[7] Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," p. 303.
[8] "Land and Book," vol. ii., pp. 460-61.
The description of the parting of the waters is clear enough in the
main, though somewhat obscure in detail. The obscurity arises from the
meaningless expression in the Authorized Version, "very far from the
city Adam, which is beside Zaretan." The Revised rendering gives a
much more natural meaning--"rose up in one heap, very far off, at
Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan." The names Adam and Zaretan
occur nowhere else in Scripture, nor are they mentioned by Josephus;
some think we have a relic of Adam in the first part of ed-Damieh, the
name of a ford, and others, following the rendering of the Septuagint,
which has ἕως μέρους Καριαθιαρίμ, consider the final "arim" to
be equivalent to "adim" or "adam," the Hebrew letter "r" being almost
the same as "d." What we are taught is, that the waters were cut off
from the descending river a long way up, while down below the whole
channel was laid bare as far as the Dead Sea. The miracle involved an
accumulation of water in the upper reaches of the river, and as it was
obviously undesirable that this should continue for a long time,
enough of the channel was laid bare to enable the great host to cross
rapidly in a broad belt, and without excitement or confusion. The
sceptical objection is completely obviated that it was physically
impossible for so vast a host to make the passage in a short time.
As soon as the waters began to retreat, after the feet of the priests
were planted in them, the priests passed on to the middle of the
channel, and stood there "firm, on dry ground," until all the people
were passed clean over. The vast host crossed at once, and drew up on
the opposite bank. That no attempt was made by the men of Jericho,
which was only about five miles on, to attack them and stop their
passage, can be explained only on the supposition that they were
stricken with panic. One inhabitant undoubtedly heard of the passage
without surprise. Rahab could feel no astonishment that the arm of God
should thus be made bare before the people whom He was pledged to
protect and guide. As little could she wonder at the paralysis which
had petrified her own people.
The priests passed on before the people, and stood firm in the midst
of the river until the whole host had passed. It was both a becoming
thing that they should go before, and that they should stand so firm.
It is not always that either priests or Christian ministers have set
the example of going before in any hazardous undertaking. They have
not always moved so steadily in the van of great movements, nor stood
so firmly in the midst of the river. What shall we say of those whose
idea, whether of Hebrew priesthood or of Christian ministry, has been
that of a mere office, that of men ordained to perform certain
mechanical functions, in whom personal character and personal example
signified little or nothing? Is it not infinitely nearer to the Bible
view that the ministers of religion are the leaders of the people, and
that they ought as such to be ever foremost in zeal, in holiness, in
self-denial, in victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil? And
of all men ought they not to stand firm? Where are Mr. Byends, and Mr.
Facing-Both-Ways, and Mr. Worldly-Wiseman more out of place than in
the ministry? Where does even the world look more for consistency and
devotion and fearless regard to the will of God? What should we think
of an army where the officers counted it enough to see to the drill
and discipline of the men, and in the hour of battle confined
themselves to mere mechanical duties, and were outstripped in
self-denial, in courage, in dash and daring by the commonest of their
soldiers? Happy the Church where the officers are officers indeed!
Feeling ever that their place is in the front rank of the battle and
in the vanguard of every perilous enterprise, and that it is their
part to set the men an example of unwavering firmness even when the
missiles of death are whistling or bursting on every side!
Who shall try to picture the feelings of the people during that
memorable crossing? The outstretched arm of God was even more visibly
shown than in the crossing of the Red Sea, for in that case a natural
cause, the strong east wind, contributed something to the effect,
while in this case no secondary cause was employed, the drying up of
the channel being due solely to miracle. Who among all that host could
fail to feel that God was with them? And how solemn yet cheering must
the thought have been alike to the men of war looking forward to
scenes of danger and death, and to the women and children, and the
aged and infirm, dreading otherwise lest they should be trampled down
amid the tumult! But of all whose hearts were moved by the marvellous
transaction, Joshua must have been pre-eminent. "As I was with Moses,
so I will be with thee." At the dividing of the sea the leadership of
Moses began, and they were all baptized unto him in the cloud and in
the sea. And now, in like manner, the leadership of Joshua begins at
the dividing of the river, and baptism unto Joshua takes the place of
baptism unto Moses. A new chapter of an illustrious history begins as
its predecessor had begun, but not to be marred and rendered abortive
by unbelief and disobedience like the last. How true God has been to
His word! What wonders He has done among the people! What honour He
has put upon Joshua! How worthy He is to be praised! Will disloyalty
to Him ever occur again, will this marvellous deed be forgotten, and
the miserable gods of the heathen be preferred to Jehovah? Will any
future prophet have cause to say, "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto
thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness is as a
morning cloud, and as the early dew, it goeth away"?
It is to be especially remarked that God took into His own hands the
prescription of the method by which this great event was to be
commemorated. It seems as if He could not trust the people to do it in
a way that would be free from objection and from evil tendency. It was
assumed that the event was worthy of special commemoration. True,
indeed, there had been no special commemoration of the passage of the
sea, but then the Passover was instituted so near to that event that
it might serve as a memorial of it as well as of the protection of the
Israelites when the firstborn of the Egyptians was slain. And
generally the people had been taught, what their own hearts in some
degree recognised, that great mercies should be specially
commemorated. The Divine method of commemorating the drying up of the
Jordan was a very simple one. In the first place, twelve men were
selected, one from every tribe, to do the prescribed work. The
democratic constitution of the nation was recognised--each tribe was
to take part in it; and as it was a matter in which all were
concerned, each person was to take part in the election of the
representative of his tribe. Then each of these twelve representatives
was to take from the bed of the river, from the place where the
priests had stood with the ark, a stone, probably as large as he could
carry. The twelve stones were to be carried to the place where the
host lodged that night, and to be erected as a standing memorial of
the miracle. It was a very simple memorial, but it was all that was
needed. It was not like the proud temples or glorious pyramids of
Egypt, reared as these were to give glory to man more than to God. It
was like Jacob's pillar before, or Samuel's Ebenezer afterwards; void
of every ornament or marking that could magnify man, and designed for
one single purpose--to recall the goodness of God.
It would appear, from chap. iv. 9, that two sets of stones were set
up, Joshua, following the spirit of the Divine direction, having
caused a second set to be erected in the middle of the river on the
spot where the priests had stood. Some have supposed that that verse
is an interpolation of later date; but, as it occurs in all the
manuscripts, and as it is expressly stated in the Septuagint and
Vulgate versions that this was a different transaction from the other,
we must accept it as such. The one memorial stood on the spot where
the ark had indicated the presence of God, the other where the first
encampment of the host had shown God's faithfulness to His word. Both
seemed to proclaim the great truth afterwards brought out in the
exquisite words of the psalm--"God is our refuge and our strength; a
very present help in time of trouble." They might not be needed so
much for the generation that experienced the deliverance; but in
future generations they would excite the curiosity of the children,
and thus afford an opportunity to the parents to rehearse the
transactions of that day, and thrill their hearts with the sense of
God's mercy.
Among devout Israelites, that day was never forgotten. The crossing of
the Jordan was coupled with the crossing of the sea, as the two
crowning tokens of God's mercy in the history of Israel, and the most
remarkable exhibitions of that Divine power which had been so often
shown among them. In that wailing song, the seventy-fourth psalm,
where God's wonderful works of old are contrasted in a very sad spirit
with the unmitigated desolations that met the writer's eye, almost in
the same breath in which he extols the miracle of the sea, "Thou didst
divide the sea by Thy strength," he gives thanks for the miracle of
the river, "Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: Thou driedst
up mighty rivers." And in a song, not of wailing, but of triumph, the
hundred and fourteenth psalm, we have the same combination:--
"When Israel went forth out of Egypt,
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
Judah became His sanctuary,
Israel His dominion.
The sea saw it, and fled;
Jordan was driven back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
The little hills like lambs.
What aileth thee, O thou sea, that thou fleest?
Thou Jordan, that thou turnest back?
Ye mountains, that ye skip like rams;
Ye little hills like lambs?
Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob;
Which turned the rock into a pool of water,
The flint into a fountain of waters."
The point of this psalm lies in the first verse--in the reference to
the time "when Israel came out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a
people of strange language." Israel on that occasion gave a signal
proof of his trust in God. At God's bidding, and with none but God to
trust in, he turned his back on Egypt, and made for the wilderness. It
was a delight to God to receive this mark of trust and obedience, and
in recognition of it the mightiest masses and forces of nature were
moved or arrested. The mountains and hills skipped like living
creatures, and the sea saw it and fled. It seemed as if God could not
do too much for His people. It was the same spirit that was shown when
they followed Joshua to the river. They showed that they trusted God.
They renounced the visible and the tangible for the invisible and the
spiritual. They rose up at Joshua's command, or rather at the command
of God by Joshua; and, pleased with this mark of trust, God caused the
waters of the Jordan to part asunder. Surely there is something
pathetic in this; the Almighty is so pleased when His children trust
Him, that to serve them the strongest forces are moved about as if
they were but feathers.
In many ways the truth has been exemplified in later times. When a
young convert, at home or abroad, takes up decided ground for Christ,
coming out from the world and becoming separate, very blessed tokens
of God's nearness and of God's interest are usually given him. And
Churches that at the call of Christ surrender their worldly
advantages, receive tokens of spiritual blessing that infinitely
outweigh in sweetness and in spiritual value all that they lose. "Them
that honour Me, I will honour."
Occurrences of more recent times show clearly that God did well in
taking into His own hands the prescription of the way in which the
crossing of the Jordan was to be commemorated. Tradition has it that
it was at the same place where Joshua crossed that Jesus was baptized
by John. That may well be doubted, for the Bethabara where John was
baptizing was probably at a higher point of the river. But it is quite
possible that it was at this spot that Elijah's mantle smote the
river, and he and his servant passed over on dry ground. Holding that
all these events occurred at the same place, tradition has called in
the aid of superstition, and given a sacred character to the waters of
the river at this spot. Many have seen, and every one has read of the
pilgrimage to the Jordan, performed every spring, from which many hope
to reap such advantage. "In the mosaics of the earliest churches at
Rome and Ravenna," says Dean Stanley, "before Christian and pagan art
were yet divided, the Jordan appears as a river god pouring his
streams out of his urn. The first Christian emperor had always hoped
to receive his long-deferred baptism in the Jordan, up to the moment
when the hand of death struck him at Nicomedia.... Protestants, as
well as Greeks and Latins, have delighted to carry off its waters for
the same sacred purpose to the remotest regions of the West."
No doubt the expectation of spiritual benefit from the waters of the
Jordan is one cause of the annual pilgrimage thither, and of the
strange scene that presents itself when the pilgrims are bathing. It
seems impossible for man, except under the influence of the strongest
spiritual views, to avoid the belief that somehow mechanical means may
give rise to spiritual results. There is nothing from which he is
naturally more averse than spiritual activity. Any amount of
mechanical service he will often render to save him from spiritual
exercise. Symbols without number he will willingly provide, if he
thereby escape the necessity of going into the immediate presence of
God, and worshipping Him who is a Spirit in spirit and in truth. But
can mechanical service or material symbols be anything but an evil, if
the would-be worshipper is thereby prevented from recognising the
necessity of a heart-to-heart fellowship with the living God? Must we
not be in living touch with God if the stream of Divine influence is
to reach our hearts, and we are to be changed into His image? In the
Psalms, which express the very essence of Hebrew devotion, spiritual
contact with God is the only source of blessing. "O God, Thou art my
God; early will I seek Thee: my soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh
longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where there is no water.
To see Thy power and Thy glory, so as I have seen Thee in the
sanctuary."
Thus it was that by God's prescription the twelve plain stones taken
out of the Jordan were the only memorial of the great deliverance.
There was no likeness on them of the Divine Being by whom the miracle
had been performed. There was nothing to encourage acts of reverence
or worship directed toward the memorial. Twelve rough stones, with no
sculptured figures or symbols, not even dressed by hammer and chisel,
but simply as they were taken out of the river, were the memorial.
They were adapted for one purpose, and for one only: "When your
children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean
these stones? then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel
came over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your God dried up the
waters of the Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as
the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up from before
us, until we were gone over: that all the people of the earth might
know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the
Lord your God for ever."