That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?
That this may be a sign among you. The erection of cairns, or huge piles of stones, as monuments of remarkable incidents, has been common among all people, especially in the early and rude periods of their history; and it is practiced by the Arabs still ('Researches and Missionary Labours,' by Joseph Wolff p. 492). They are the established means of perpetuating the memory of important transactions especially amount the nomadic people of the East; and although there be no inscription engraven on them, the history and object of such simple monuments are traditionally preserved from age to age. Similar was the purpose contemplated by the conveyance of the twelve stones to Gilgal: it was that these might be a standing record to posterity of the miraculous passage of the Jordan.