memorial stones jordan river bible pictures

Its course also was very rapid and impetuous. Its waters, laden with mud, were dark and drumly, and concealed their bed and whatever they flowed over completely.

It flowed down to the dreary, lifeless solitude of the Dead Sea. The Jordan was a boundary river, separating between the wilderness and the promised land. So that we see in this incident, as well as in the circumstance that the older generation which had left Egypt all perished in the wilderness, and only their children entered the Holy Land, what we may regard as the origin and illustration of our Lord's saying, 'Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.' Seeing, then, that all the incidents and circumstances of the passage of the Israelites across the Jordan form a very focus of symbolism, we are surely warranted in looking for a spiritual significance in the burying of the memorial stones in the bed of the river. Look further still at the significant fact that when the Israelites had erected their first sanctuary on the other side of Jordan, on the soil of the Holy Land, which by this solemn act became their own inheritance, they were immediately circumcised, and thus consecrated anew to the Lord, made new creatures, as it were, from their birth to Him. But God in His great mercy held back the waters of the Jordan, the waters of judgment and death, which would otherwise have overwhelmed them, whilst His holy ark stood in the midst of the stream, and Israel crossed in safety a token surely that though He was angry with them, His anger had passed away, and He was about to give them double for all their sins. It was therefore a time of judgment when the Israelites crossed the river their past sins, their numerous rebellions, and outbursts of unbelief, deserved condemnation and punishment their iniquities rose up against them, and demanded their exclusion from the land of promise as unworthy. We are told elsewhere in Scripture that the harvest is emblematical of the judgment. Do we not see in this circumstance a symbol of the deep repentance and self-abasement which a people so sensual, so ignorant, required before they could be fitted to occupy the heights of worship in God's holy heritage? Then look further at the fact that the time when the Israelites crossed the Jordan was the spring-time, which in Palestine is the commencement of the barley-harvest. It is the deepest chasm on the surface of the earth - at a great depth below the level of the sea. There is no other place like it in the world. The place where they entered the Holy Land is unique.

The sacred narrative tells us what were the purpose and meaning of the monument that stood on the dry land and was visible to every eye but we have to find out what were the purpose and meaning of the monument that was invisible beneath the waters of the river. Thus there were two monuments of the miraculous passage of the Jordan taken from the materials of its own bed one that gave rise to the sacred shrine of Gilgal, which was for a long time the appointed place of worship in the land and another that was buried out of sight for ever in the muddy ooze of the deep rushing river. In the place where the feet of the priests who bore the ark of the covenant stood, in the centre of the channel, twelve stones like those which had been carried across to the opposite bank were arranged probably in the same manner and when the river, which had been temporarily driven back wards to allow the Israelites to cross, returned to its forsaken bed, its dark, muddy waters flowed over the buried stones and hid them for ever from view. But besides this memorial which was set up on the western bank of the Jordan, there was another set up in the bed of the river itself. In this manner was formed the first sanctuary of the Holy Land, which was a circle of upright stones - like one of the so-called Druidical circles in which our pagan ancestors worshipped in our own country.

And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the LORD spoke to Joshua, saying,…Īs a memorial of this wonderful passage, twelve stones were selected from the rocky bed of the river, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel and these were borne across before them on the shoulders of twelve men, and planted on the upper terrace of the valley beyond the reach of the annual inundation.

Memorial stones jordan river bible pictures