Joshua 3:14-17
The priests stood firm on dry ground
The water stops only when the feet of the priests are dipped in the brim. They stand in the middle until everyone is over.
Places of the Bible
The Jordan
A river crossed three times in Scripture, and every crossing is a change of office.
It is not a large river and the text says why this crossing was hard: Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest. They cross at the worst season on purpose. The arrangement is exact. The priests carrying the ark go first and stop in the middle, the water stands and rises up upon an heap a great way off at the city Adam, and the whole nation passes over on dry ground while the priests stand still.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The Jordan
- 01
- 02
Joshua 4:4-7
What mean ye by these stones
Twelve men carry twelve stones out for a memorial, and the instruction is about what to say when a child asks, not about the stones.
- 03
Joshua 4:20-24
That all the people of the earth might know
They are pitched in Gilgal, and the stated audience is wider than Israel: all the people of the earth, and your own fear of the LORD forever.
- 04
2 Kings 2:7-14
Where is the LORD God of Elijah
The same water parts twice in one chapter, once for the man leaving and once for the man staying, with the same mantle.
- 05
Matthew 3:13-17
This is my beloved Son
John objects and is overruled, and the river that opened for an ark carrying a covenant opens a sky instead.
Why it matters
Twelve stones come out of the riverbed and twelve go into it, and the reason given is entirely about future conversations: when your children ask in time to come what mean ye by these stones, then ye shall answer them. Centuries later Elijah smites the same water with his mantle and crosses over, and Elisha crosses back with the mantle that fell. And the river that once stopped for an ark is where John stands baptizing when the heavens open over a man coming up out of it.
8 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
