“Adonai said to Y’hoshua, ‘Starting today, I will make you great in full view of all Israel; so that they will know that just as I was with Moshe, so I will be with you.'”-Joshua 3:7
So the people sanctified themselves by immersing both themselves and their garments in the Jordan River.
In other words, as God’s chosen people, they had already been spiritually consecrated but after this immersion they were now physically consecrated.
Afterwards, Joshua commands the priests to take the Ark of the Covenant and move out to the very front ahead of the people.
Then Hashem informs Joshua He is about to elevate Him to greatness in front of all of Israel.
What was the purpose of this?
Was this to give Joshua a huge ego boost so he would have confidence?
No, of course not.
The Lord’s objective was to demonstrate to everyone that just as He was with Moses, so will He now be with Joshua.
And what was to be the sign that this was so?
Well, God was going to do something according to the exact same pattern as He did with Moses to show that His favor had now rested upon Joshua.
Just as He parted the Red Sea for Moses, He was now going to part the Jordan River.
Obviously the specific mechanics of how this was going to be done would differ because the nature of these two bodies of water were different.
Because the Red Sea was an ocean, it didn’t have a source so to speak.
It was just a huge pool of water.
However, the Jordan being a river did have a source that descended from the north downwards towards the Dead Sea.
Hence, whereas the Lord literally split the Red Sea in half, what He did with the Jordan River was to dam up the flow of water for a time.
This began once the priests carried the Ark to the water’s edge and their feet touched the water.
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