Moses then being dead, Joshua takes the command of the armies of Israel, and marches them over Jordan to the possession of the land of Canaan. It was a day and a deed much to be remembered. “It came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people; and as they that bare the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks in the time of harvest,) that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho. And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan.” [Josh. 3:14–17.]

Such is the language of the Book of Joshua. Now in the midst of this miraculous narrative, an incident is mentioned, though very casually, which dates the season of the year when this passage of the Jordan was effected. The feet of the priests, it seems, were dipped in the brim of the water; and this is explained by the season being that of the periodical inundation of Jordan, that river overflowing his banks all the time of harvest. The barley-harvest is here meant, or the former harvest, as it is elsewhere called, in contradistinction to the wheat, or latter harvest; for in the fourth chapter (v. 19) we read, “the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month,” that is, four days before the Passover, which fell in with the barley-harvest; the wheat-harvest not being fully completed till Pentecost, or fifty days later in the year, when the wave-loaves of the first-fruits of the wheat were offered up [This question of the harvests is examined in greater detail in Part I. No. xvi.] . The Israelites passed the Jordan then, it appears, at the time of barley-harvest. But we are told in Exodus, that at the Plague of Hail, which was but a day or two before the Passover, “the flax and the barley were smitten, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was boiled, but the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up.” [Exod. 9:31.] It should seem, therefore, that the flax and the barley were crops which ripened about the same time in Egypt; and as the climate of Canaan did not differ materially from that of Egypt, this, no doubt, was the case in Canaan too; there also these two crops would come in at the same time. The Israelites, therefore, who crossed the Jordan, as we have seen in one passage, at the harvest, and that harvest, as we have seen in another passage, the barley-harvest, must, if so, have crossed it at the flax-harvest.

Now, in a former chapter, we are informed, that three days before Joshua ventured upon the invasion, he sent two men, spies, to view the land, even Jericho [Josh. 1:2; 2:1. 22; 3:2.] . It was a service of peril: they were received by Rahab, a woman of that city, and lodged in her house: but the entrance of these strangers at night-fall was observed: it was a moment, no doubt, of great suspicion and alarm: an enemy’s army encamped on the borders. The thing was reported to the King of Jericho, and search was made for the men. Rahab, however, fearing God—for by faith she felt that the miracles wrought by Him in favour of Israel were proofs that for Israel He fought,—by faith, which, living as she did in the midst of idolaters, might well be counted to her for righteousness, and the like to which, in a somewhat similar case, was declared by our Lord enough to lead those who professed it into the kingdom of God, even before the chief priests and elders themselves [Heb. 11:31; Matt. 21:31.] —she, I say, having this faith in God, and true to those laws of hospitality which are the glory of the eastern nations, and more especially of the females of the East, even to this day, at much present risk protected her guests from their pursuers. But how! “She brought them up to the roof of her house, and hid them with the stalks of flax” [Josh. 2:6.] —the stalks of flax, no doubt just cut down, which she had spread upon the roof of her house to steep and to season.

Here I see truth. Yet how very minute is this incident! how very casually does it present itself to our notice! how very unimportant a matter it seems in the first instance, under what the spies were hidden! enough that, whatever it was, it answered the purpose, and saved their lives. Could the historian have contemplated for one moment the effect which a trifle about a flax-stalk might have in corroboration of his account of the passage of the Jordan? Is it possible for the most jealous examiner of human testimony to imagine that these flax-stalks were fixed upon above all things in the world for the covering of the spies, because they were known to be ripe with the barley, and the barley was known to be ripe at the Passover, and the Passover was known to be the season when the Israelites set foot in Canaan? Or rather, would he not fairly and candidly confess, that in one particular, at least, of this adventure (the only one which we have an opportunity of checking), a religious attention to truth is manifested; and that when it is said, “the feet of the Priests were dipped in the brim of the water,” and when a reason is assigned for this gradual approach to the bed of a river, of which the banks were in general steep and precipitous, we are put in possession of one unquestionable fact at least, one particular upon which we may safely repose, whatever may be said of the remainder of the narrative, and that assuredly truth leads us by the hand to the very edge of the miracle, if not through the miracle itself?