Joshua 4:19-24
Those twelve stones did Joshua pitch in Gilgal
The memorial goes up in the first camp, and the explanation given is for children who will ask about it long afterwards.
Places of the Bible
Gilgal
The first camp inside the land, where the name means rolling and everything that happens there is about what is taken away.
They pitch on the tenth day of the first month, which is the day the Passover lamb was first chosen forty years earlier, and the twelve stones out of the river are set up here. The name is explained on the spot: this day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you, wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day. Three things end in this camp in quick succession.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Gilgal
- 01
- 02
Joshua 5:2-9
I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt
A generation is circumcised inside hostile country, which makes the army helpless while they heal. The name of the camp is coined here.
- 03
Joshua 5:10-12
The manna ceased on the morrow
They keep the Passover, eat the old corn of the land, and the food that had come for forty years stops without ceremony.
- 04
1 Samuel 11:14-15
Let us go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom
The place where the nation began in the land is chosen for the place where the monarchy begins.
- 05
1 Samuel 15:22-23
To obey is better than sacrifice
Saul meets Samuel here with the best of the sheep and the oxen, and is told that the animals are not the currency he thought.
Why it matters
A whole generation born in the wilderness is circumcised, which leaves an army unable to move for days inside enemy territory, and the account does not pretend that is safe. They keep the Passover on the fourteenth. They eat of the old corn of the land, and on the morrow the manna ceases, and it never comes again. Gilgal stays the base for the whole conquest, and centuries later it is where Saul is made king and where he is told that to obey is better than sacrifice.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
