Joshua 3:15 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The feet of the priests were dipped in the brim of the water The stream stopped immediately, as if a sluice had been let down to dam it up; so that the waters above swelled, stood on a heap, and ran back, and yet, it seems, did not spread themselves over the adjacent lands. When they passed through the Red sea, the waters were a wall on either hand; here only on the right hand. Thus the God of nature, when he pleaseth, can change the course of nature, and alter any of its properties; can “turn waters into rocks, and rocks into waters,” to serve his own purposes. What can he not do? What will he not do for the perfecting of the salvation of his people? Hear the psalmist celebrate this work of wonder, in most beautiful and striking language: “When Israel went out of Egypt Judah was his sanctuary. The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back. What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?” Well might he add, “Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of Jehovah, who turneth the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.” Jordan overfloweth all the time of harvest This is meant, not of wheat-harvest, but of the barley-harvest, as is manifest from their keeping the passover at their first entrance, (Joshua 5:10,) which was kept on the fourteenth day of the first month, when they were to bring a sheaf of their first-fruits, which were of barley. So that this harvest, in those hot countries, fell very early in the spring, when rivers used to swell most; partly because of the rains which had fallen all the winter, partly because of the snows which melted and came into the rivers. And this time God chose that the miracle might be more glorious, more amazing and terrible to the Canaanites; and that the Israelites might be entertained at their first entrance with plentiful and comfortable provisions.