This week we are continuing our study in the third episode of Joshua, which is the crossing of the Jordan River. We learned last week that this third episode has three parts. The first part was the crossing of the Jordan itself, with the Ark of the Covenant going before the people. The second piece was God’s command to set up the memorial stones. Now this week we come to the third of the incidents that are connected with the crossing, and this concerns the consecration of the people once they had passed over into the land and had set up their memorial. The story is told in Joshua 5:1-12, and it entails two acts of consecration, which we would call sacraments.
The first is the sacrament of circumcision, the mark of the covenant between God and His people that was administered to all the males. And the second was the observance of the Passover. Apparently, these had been in abeyance during the years of the wandering in the wilderness; but now, as the land was about to be possessed, as this great promise that had been given to Abraham so many hundreds of years before was about to be fulfilled, these important sacraments of consecration were reenacted because it was important for the people as they began their conquest to begin it in a right relationship with God.
From a human point of view, of course, this matter of circumcising the army was a very strange thing. It was strange, first of all, because it meant delay, and from any human perspective, the obvious thing to do on an occasion like this was to attack at once. This is what is conveyed to us, I’m sure, in the opening verse that tells us that all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the sea coast heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until they had crossed over, and their hearts sank and they no longer had courage to face the Israelites. That was a situation in which the part of wisdom, human wisdom at least, caused for an immediate advance into the land, and yet God had the people tarry here at Gilgal for three days while the circumcision took place and the Passover was observed.
