Across the River

After Moses died, the Lord spoke to Joshua, who had been Moses’ helper ever since he was a young man. And the Lord said, “Moses my servant is dead. Now get up and cross this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land I am giving them. Every place where the soles of your feet tread, I will give it to you. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not let you go and I will not leave you. Be brave and strong. Do not lose heart and do not be afraid — for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” So Joshua sent his officers all through the camp, and they told the people, “Get your food ready. In three days you are crossing this Jordan, to go in and take the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

But first Joshua quietly sent out two young men. He said, “Go and look at the land — and at Jericho.” Jericho was a strong city with a great wall around it. The two men slipped inside and came to the house of a woman named Rahab, whose house was built against the city wall, and they stayed there. But somebody told the king of Jericho: ‘Men of Israel have come here tonight to spy out the land.’ And the king sent soldiers to Rahab’s door, saying, ‘Bring out the men who came into your house.’ Now Rahab had already hurried the two men up onto her flat roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax that were drying there. And she came to the door and said, “The men did come to me — but they went out again at dark, just as the gate was closing. I do not know where they went. Hurry after them, and you may catch them.” So the soldiers went pounding off down the road to the river, and the great gate of the city was shut behind them.

Then Rahab climbed up to the roof and said to the two men, “I know that the Lord has given you this land. All of us here are afraid of you. We heard how the Lord dried up the Red Sea in front of you when you came out of Egypt, and what he did to the kings on the other side of the Jordan. When we heard it, our hearts melted, and nobody had any courage left — for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. So promise me by the Lord: I have been kind to you — be kind to my family. Keep my father and my mother and my brothers and everyone belonging to them alive.” And the men said to her, “Our lives for yours. When the Lord gives us this city, we will be kind and true to you.” Then she let them down out of her window on a rope, right down the outside of the city wall, and told them to hide in the hills for three days until the soldiers gave up looking. And the men said to her, “Tie this scarlet cord in the window you let us down through, and bring your whole family into this house with you — and everyone inside will be safe.” And she said, “Let it be just as you have said.” And she tied the scarlet cord in her window. The two men hid in the hills for three days, and then they came back to Joshua and told him everything, and said, “The Lord has given the whole land into our hands. Everybody there is terrified of us.”

Early in the morning the whole camp moved down to the edge of the Jordan. And it was springtime, when the river runs high and fast and full, right up to the tops of its banks. And Joshua said to the people, “Make yourselves ready, because tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” And he told the priests to lift up the golden chest — the ark, with the two stone tablets inside — and carry it out in front of everybody. And he said, “By this you will know that the living God is among you. Look: the ark of the Lord of all the earth is going across the Jordan ahead of you.” So the priests walked down to the water carrying the ark, and all the people followed a long way behind, watching. And the moment the priests’ feet touched the edge of the water, the river stopped. The water coming down from upstream stood still and piled up in one great heap, far, far away, and the water below ran on down to the sea and left the riverbed bare. And the priests stood still with the ark in the middle of the Jordan, on dry ground, while the whole nation walked past them and crossed over — every family, every child, every lamb — until every last one of them was on the other side.

Then the Lord told Joshua to choose twelve men, one from each tribe, and each man carried a big stone up out of the middle of the riverbed on his shoulder. And when the priests came up out of the river at last, the water came rushing back and ran over its banks again, just as before. And Joshua stood the twelve stones up together in the place where they camped that night. And he said, “When your children ask you one day, ‘What are these stones?’ — tell them: Israel crossed this Jordan on dry ground, because the Lord our God dried up the water in front of us, just as he did at the Red Sea. Tell them, so that all the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is strong.”