Commentaria in Josue
In like manner Elias, striking the Jordan with his mantle, divided it, and crossed through it dry-foot: Eliseus did the same, 4 Kings ii and xiv. See here how much God makes of his faithful and holy ones, since for their sake he cuts the rivers and changes the other elements. In like manner at the end of the world an Angel will dry up the Euphrates, that the kings may pass over it, Apocalypse xvi, 12.
Allegorically, Origen, Rupert and Theodoret, and St. Gregory, homily 26 on the Gospels, aptly apply the crossing of the Jordan to the sacrament of Baptism and of Penance, and to the death of each of the faithful, of which more at the end of the chapter. Hence Rupert also asserts that the twelve stones placed in the Jordan represented the twelve Patriarchs, and the others placed at Galgal bore the figure of the twelve Apostles. So also St. Augustine, sermon 106 On the Season, who adds the reason: “For after the death of Moses, the Patriarchs being buried, the Apostles arose; so also in the Psalm we read: Instead of thy fathers sons are born to thee, thou shalt make them princes over all the earth; so, the Patriarchs being buried, the Apostles are born, as, the elder people being buried, the younger people under the leadership of Jesus is led into the land of promise.”
Nay, Tertullian also, book iv Against Marcion, chapter xii: “I find,” he says, “twelve stones chosen by Jesus from the Jordan, and stored in the ark of the testament. For as many Apostles were foreshown, as fountains and streams, to water the world of nations, dry and desert from the knowledge of God, as also through Isaias: I will make rivers in the dry land. Likewise as gems to illuminate the sacred vesture of the Church, which Christ the high priest of the Father put on. Likewise as stones solid in faith, which the true Jesus chose from the laver of the Jordan, and received into the sanctuary of his testament.” Where observe that Tertullian seems to have slipped in memory, when he says that these twelve stones were stored in the ark of the testament: for Josue has nothing of the kind here, indeed this was impossible; for the small ark could not hold so many and such great stones. Perhaps Tertullian understood “in the ark” as before the ark, or in the presence of the ark, although this does not sufficiently answer to his antitype of the Apostles, when explaining the type he adds that by the twelve stones in the ark are signified the twelve Apostles to be received by Christ into the sanctuary of the Church.
10. NOW THE PRIESTS THAT CARRIED THE ARK STOOD IN THE MIDST OF THE JORDAN, TILL ALL THINGS WERE ACCOMPLISHED WHICH JOSUE HAD COMMANDED THE PEOPLE TO BE SAID TO THEM, AND MOSES HAD SAID TO HIM. AND THE PEOPLE HASTED AND PASSED OVER.—“Which Josue had commanded the people to be said to them,” namely that they should take up the twelve stones and carry them with them to Galgal, as a perpetual monument of the crossing, and that they should cross the Jordan securely into the promised land, mindful that they had God present in the ark as their leader. Josue therefore seems, in imitation and by command of Moses, standing within the bed of the Jordan beside the ark and the priests, to have impressed upon the people passing and thronging about him the memory of that benefit, and to have repeated the sum of the law and the commandments of God, and to have commended their keeping by earnest exhortation. That Josue went before the people with the ark, as leader, is clear from Deuteronomy, next to last verse, where God commanded this to him through Moses, and soon in chapter iv, verse 1 ff., he impresses his commands on the people.
FORTY THOUSAND passed before the Lord (that is before the ark, or rather in the presence of the standing ark
AND THE PEOPLE HASTED AND PASSED OVER,—both because all had to cross the Jordan the same day in a few hours, and go on to Galgal and Chanaan itself: and the crowd of the people was copious and as it were innumerable; and because their faith was weak, and each feared for himself that he would not escape quickly enough that dreadful mountain of the waters of the Jordan standing on the right, and hanging as it were in the air. Each therefore hasted, and one tried to outstrip another.
11. AND WHEN ALL HAD PASSED OVER, THE ARK OF THE LORD ALSO PASSED OVER, AND THE PRIESTS WENT BEFORE THE PEOPLE.—This was the series and order of the event. The priests with the ark went before the people for twice a thousand cubits, and first entered the Jordan, then stood in the middle of it, and the people crossed beside the ark; meanwhile, Josue exhorting them to the worship and obedience of God, the ark stood until all the people with all their herds and baggage crossed, to give them confidence in crossing. And when all the people had crossed, the ark also crossed the rest of the Jordan, and again went before the whole host for twice a thousand cubits as far as Galgal, where the camp was to be pitched, to be the guide of the journey, the defender of the people, and the terror of enemies. So Abulensis, Serarius and Salianus. The tribes of Ruben, Gad, and half Manasses followed the ark, then the other nine tribes. The ark, therefore, which had first begun the crossing of the Jordan, and by dividing it had opened a dry road, finished last, and again going before the people showed itself leader to them, borne before them like the throne of the King God, and carried on the shoulders of the priests, whose office it is to go before others by their example. Hear the Emperor Leo in the Tactics prescribing to the leader of war the manner on journeys: “If places be slippery and difficult, thou thyself must first cross there, then stand and stay there until all have crossed without offence.” And number 13: “For we know that our father King Basil did this, when he had led his forces against Germanicia, a city of Syria, and had gone ahead to the river Paradise, and with lamps set in the midst, he himself by his own presence and help led the whole army across easily and without offence, who had often stretched out a hand to the afflicted and rescued some from dangers.”
13. Of the Rubenites, Gadites and Manassites forty thousand went before the camp of the Hebrews into Chanaan. Hence the Hebrew and Chaldee lack “and”; for thus they have: About forty thousand in the midst of the Jordan; Chaldee, before the people of the Lord to war toward the plains of Jericho.
15. AND HE SAID TO HIM,—namely God to Josue. From the Hebrew you may render more clearly with Masius: for he had said, or, but he had said to him. For here is a repetition, or clearer relation of verse eleven which went before, in order to recount aptly how the Jordan flowed back to its bed, namely when with the last of the ark, which had suspended and held suspended the Jordan until the people crossed, it crossed the Jordan, the waters at once, as having performed their office around the venerable ark, returned to their bed.
18. AND RAN AS THEY WERE WONT BEFORE.—The Hebrews add, over all its banks, that is, with full bed, indeed overflowing. See what was said in chapter iii, 15. The Jordan flowed as before, because God let that mass of water suspended on high down gradually, that it might flow down by its own bed in its own course into the Dead Sea, or the Asphaltite lake. For if God had loosed the whole mass of waters at once, it would have overwhelmed all things far and wide, nay would have drowned at least the last of the camp.
19. AND THE PEOPLE CAME UP OUT OF THE JORDAN, THE TENTH DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH.—Hence it is clear that the Hebrews wandered in the desert a full forty years, and at the end of the fortieth year crossed the Jordan and entered the promised land, five days being subtracted. For they left Egypt on the fifteenth day of the first month, on which the Pasch was celebrated; and they entered the promised land on the tenth day of the same month, because there they were to be circumcised to celebrate the Pasch on the fifteenth day. Moreover Tornielli is mistaken, who writes in his Annals that the Hebrews crossed the Jordan on the ninth day of the first month, and spent the night on the bank of the Jordan, and soon the next morning of the tenth day went on to Galgal. For to come up out of the Jordan here is the same as to cross the Jordan, and go on to Galgal. Both, therefore, were done on the same tenth day, not the ninth, of the first month. Moreover this was the year from the creation in which the Hebrews, the Jordan crossed, entered Chanaan, as I said at the end of the prologue, according to the chronotaxis which I prefixed to Genesis.