Crossing the Jordan

A river in flood, brown and fast, spilling over its banks. A line of priests walks straight toward it, carrying a golden chest on poles. The first bare foot touches the water. And upstream, the river begins to stop.

For forty years Israel has wandered in the wilderness. Moses has died. The spies have come back from Jericho with good news. And now the people stand on the eastern bank of the Jordan River, looking across at the land God promised to Abraham hundreds of years before. There is just one problem. It is harvest time, and in the harvest season the Jordan overflows all its banks. There is no bridge. No boats for a whole nation of families, children, old people, flocks and herds. For three days they camp by the water and stare at it. Then officers walk through the camp with instructions.

“When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, carried by the priests, then set out and follow it. But keep a distance between you and the ark, about two thousand cubits.” That is around half a mile, far enough that everyone could see it. “Then you will know the way to go, for you have not passed this way before.” Joshua adds, “Make yourselves ready for God. Tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” And God speaks to Joshua. “Today I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all Israel, so they will know that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.”

Morning. The people strike their tents. The priests lift the ark onto their shoulders and walk toward the river, and the whole nation follows at a distance, watching. The water is rushing past, wide and deep. The priests don’t stop at the edge. They keep walking. And the moment their feet dip into the water, the river stops flowing. Far upstream, at a town called Adam, the water stands up in a heap. The water flowing down toward the Dead Sea runs out, and the riverbed in front of Jericho lies open. The priests walk to the middle of the Jordan and stand there, on dry ground, holding the ark. And Israel crosses. Thousands upon thousands of people. Mothers carrying babies. Grandparents leaning on sticks. Children running across a riverbed that was a raging flood the day before. Sheep, goats, cattle. Past the priests standing firm in the middle, until every last person has crossed over.

Then God gives Joshua one more instruction. Choose twelve men, one from each tribe. Each man goes back out to the middle of the river, to the very spot where the priests are standing, and lifts a large stone onto his shoulder. Twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel, carried up out of the riverbed. “When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’” Joshua says, “tell them the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord.” The moment the priests step up onto the bank, the river comes rushing back and overflows its banks, just as before. That night Israel camps at Gilgal, on the edge of the land, and Joshua sets up the twelve stones there. It is the tenth day of the first month. Forty years earlier, in that same month, their parents had left Egypt through another sea.

The Bible’s detail about timing matters. The crossing happened in the first month of the year, in spring, during the harvest, when melting snow from Mount Hermon in the north and the winter rains swell the Jordan. That is exactly the season the book of Joshua says the river overflows all its banks, the hardest time of all to cross. The town of Adam, where the water piled up, is usually identified with a site called Tell ed-Damiyeh, many miles upstream near where the Jabbok river joins the Jordan.

The crossing of the Jordan is told in Joshua, chapters three and four. God kept his promise, and he gave his people stones to remember it by. So here is something to think about. What has God done in your life or your family that is worth remembering, and how could you mark it so you won’t forget?