The Meaning Of Life

https://biblehub.com/nkjv/joshua/3.htm

Once again, God parts the waters.

He parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross over and escape the Egyptian Army, and now He is stopping the flow of the Jordan River so the children of Israel can pass over into the promised land.

The Ark of the Covenant is just that, an ark that aside from defined as a boat, is “something that affords protection and safety”, in this case, the stone on which the Ten Commandments were written, the Covenant. In addition to the tablets was the Torah and a jar of manna, which God told them to save as a reminder to all that He fed the children of Israel in the wilderness.

The Ark is Holy, and only the Levites were allowed to touch it. So they are responsible for carrying it as the children of Israel travel.

As God promised, as soon as the first foot of the Levites touched water, the flow stopped, and they were able to cross over on dry ground, just like the Red Sea. And I’ve been told that, at that time of year, the Jordan was always flooded, so it wasn’t like God was stopping a small stream, it was definitely another one of God’s miracles.

In Chapter 4, Jordan selects one man from each tribe, and tells them each to gather a stone from the Jordan, and set the 12 stones up where they camp. And the Levites carrying the ark stood in the middle of the Jordan, keeping the waters at bay until everyone had crossed, and the stones were gathered. And as long as the Levites remained in the riverbed, God stopped the waters, the ark then providing protection and safety to those sacred things inside the ark.

And once everyone crossed, they carried the ark out of the riverbed and once again, the waters of the Jordan began to flow.

And Joshua told the people, that the stone monument was to remind the children forever of the day that God stopped up the Jordan so they could pass on dry ground.

As you can tell from the passages so far in the Book of Jericho, there is no mention of rebellion, or complaining, or of wanting to return to Egypt. That generation, the generation we hear so much about in the Torah have all passed, and it is their children now who are moving forward. And while they hear stories about those days in Egypt, and those years wandering in the wilderness, they are now more obedient and follow Joshua with less trouble. And it is all by the design of God.

There is no way the last generation would have been able to cross over the Jordan. Even with God on their side, they did not have the faith to do so.

So now the children of Israel have set up camp in the promised land, and are preparing to drive out the idol worshiping pagans in the land of Canaan.

Abraham and the children of Jacob (Israel) descended from Noah through his son Shem, but the Canaanites descended from Noah’s son Ham. So they are all cousins, but distant cousins at that, “shirt tail” cousins as we would call them today.

We know the Canaanites descended from Canaan, Noah’s grandson whom he cursed. All of the Hitties, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites all descended from Noah’s son, Ham, specifically Canaan, a grandson of Noah. If you remember, Canaan was cursed by Noah, the curse being passed down from generation to generation. The only tribe in which their ancestry is know are the Hittites, who descended from Heth, the second son of Canaan. Specifically how the other tribes are related to Canaan are unknown.

Anyone who has traced their genealogy knows that descendants can multiply quickly. As an example, I own some mineral rights inherited from my paternal great-great grandfather. He was apparently a successful oil man from the 1800’s, and initially gifted his four children each a farm with the stipulation that if anyone drilled for oil and were successful, they would share equally in the profits (he didn’t want one child complaining that he gave the others better and more fertile land than the others). And that was just four generations ago, and from my great-great-grandfather and grandmother, today those mineral rights are divided by almost 300 people.

So you can see how many people could have descended from Canaan, because we really don’t know how many generations have passed from the days of Canaan until the time the Israelites entered the promised land. We know that Jacob, himself, had over half a million children in the direct lineage, not counting their wives and children because, in the census’ Moses took in the Book of Numbers, just the men of fighting age numbered over 600,000.

And because the Bible focuses primarily on the descendants of Jacob, there isn’t much known about the other tribes from Ham and Japheth.

We are now getting into some good stories in the Bible, exciting stories in which we will see more of God’s marlous work and wonders.