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The Miraculous Wall of Water
v. 9. And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither and hear the words of the Lord, your God, he addressed them in solemn assembly, as the congregation of Jehovah.
v. 10. And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail, most certainly, according to His promise, Deu_7:1, drive out from before you the Canaanites, occupying chiefly the valley of Jordan and the Plain of Sharon, and the Hittites, some tribes of which were living in the northern part of Canaan, northwest of the Sea of Chinnereth, and the Hivites, located almost in the center of the country, and the Perizzites, just east of them, and the Girgashites, west of the Sea of Chinnereth, and the Amorites, just west and southwest of the Dead Sea, and the Jebusites, in the neighborhood of what was later Jerusalem.
v. 11. Behold, the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of all the earth passeth over before you into Jordan. Note that God, where the conquest of the land is in question, is called the Lord of the whole earth, the one to whom the whole earth belongs and who may dispense it at His pleasure, the one in whose almighty power the Israelites should have implicit faith.
v. 12. Now, therefore, take you twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man. The work which these men were to perform is described Jos_4:3.
v. 13. And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, the mere touch of their feet being sufficient to bring about the miracle, that the waters of Jordan, of the flowing stream before them, shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they, the rushing waters above the place of crossing, shall stand upon an heap, being held hack by the invisible dam of God's almighty power.
v. 14. And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, struck camp at their departure, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant before the people, in the order prescribed by God,
v. 15. and as they that bare the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water (for Jordan, barely a hundred feet wide in the dry season, overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest, the melting snows of the northern mountains in the late spring, the season at which the passage took place, at the beginning of the barley harvest, causing the river to overflow its lower banks and to fill even the space which was ordinarily overgrown with reeds and bushes,)
v. 16. that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan, where the lower valley was considerably narrowed by a low range of hills, at some distance from the place of crossing; and those (waters) that came down toward the Sea of the Plain, even the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off, diminished and finally disappeared entirely; and the people passed over right against Jericho.
v. 17. And the priests that bare the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, for so completely had the waters disappeared that they had solid ground beneath their feet. And all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan, and beyond the reach of even the high water which afterward again overflowed the bed of the stream. Thus wonderfully the Lord led His people into the Land of Promise. And He is the same living, almighty God today, opening paths before His children where they are unable to find any, and assisting them in the midst of all dangers, until they reach the promised home above.