1. crossed over. The verb ʿavar, which means either to cross over or, as in verses 2 and 4, to pass through or over, is repeated eight times in this chapter, thus marking the episode as a portentous liminal moment when the people of Israel cross over from their long Wilderness wanderings into the land they have been promised.

2. at the end of three days. The recurrence of this formulaic interval suggests a certain symmetry with the experience of the spies, who hide out in the high country for three days.

3. the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark contains the stone tablets of the Law. It is imagined as both a sacred and a magical object, and as such is also a numinous vessel carried into battle, as one sees in the early chapters of Samuel.

4. But keep a distance. The Ark, saturated with divine aura, is also a dangerous object. In 2 Samuel 6, when Uzza puts his hand on the Ark to prevent it from slipping from the cart in which it is carried, he is struck dead.

about two thousand cubits. This would be a little over half a mile.

7. as I was with Moses, I shall be with you. The “wonder” that God is about to perform will in fact replicate a miracle done for Moses.

9–10. And Joshua said . . . And Joshua said. As a rule, when the formula for the introduction of dialogue is repeated without an intervening response from the second party, the repetition indicates some difficulty in response—puzzlement, amazement, embarrassment, and so forth. Here the repetition has a purely dramatic function. Joshua invites the people to draw close; they do so, scarcely having an opening to say anything to him; then, when his audience is gathered around him, Joshua goes on to give detailed instructions.

10. the Canaanite and the Hittite. In all, seven peoples are mentioned, filling out the formulaic number. The list itself is heterogeneous: Canaanite and Amorite are general designations for the inhabitants of this territory; the Hittites are immigrants from Asia Minor who were probably not a distinctive Canaanite people in any political sense; little is known about the Perizzites and the Girgashites, though the latter may have come from Asia Minor. In any case, the enumeration of seven peoples does reflect a historical memory of Canaan divided up among small city-states.

11. Master of all the earth. This is not an epithet that occurs in the Torah, and since designations of the deity are important indicators of sources, its use may point to a literary source distinct from those of the Pentateuch.

12. take for yourselves twelve men from the tribes of Israel. These men play no role in what immediately follows, though in the next chapter they are assigned the task of placing twelve stones in the riverbed. While this verse could be construed as a prolepsis, it is more likely that it was erroneously transposed in copying from the next section of the story, where it is duplicated in 4:2.

13. the waters of the Jordan coming down. This formulation harbors an etymological pun. The Jordan, Yarden, is called that because it “comes down” (verbal stem y-r-d) from mountain heights in the north to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the face of the earth.

14–16. And it happened. The syntax of these three verses, constituting one long run-on sentence, is quite untypical of biblical prose, and its use here builds a sense of climactic fulfillment as the miracle is enacted.

15. the Jordan being full to all its banks throughout the harvest days. This rather awkward parenthetical clause, still further complicating the syntax, appears to be an effort to explain a difficulty. As we learned in chapter 2, there are numerous fords across the Jordan, and the two spies obviously used one of those to cross back and forth. But the story needs an impassable Jordan to enable the miracle of immobilizing its waters, and so we are reminded that in this moment at the beginning of the spring (in the month of Nissan), the river would have been overflowing after the winter rains. The reference to harvest days is a little puzzling because early April is too soon for a harvest. Perhaps the phrase means to say that this high level of the Jordan continues until the end of the first harvest in late May-early June.

16. rose up in a single mound. These words are the clearest indication that this incident is a repetition of the drying up of the Sea of Reeds because the rare term ned, “mound,” is used, as it is in the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:8). History for the biblical writers moves forward but also repeats itself in significant patterns. This notion prepared the way for later typological conceptions of history.

very far off from the town of Adam which is by Zanethan. This odd and seemingly gratuitous specification of a place at some distance from the reported event is a strategy of “documenting” the miracle by locating it along geographical coordinates.

the Arabah Sea. The Arabah is the geological rift through which the Jordan runs.

17. dry ground. The Hebrew here, ḥaravah, is a different word from yabashah, “dry land,” the term used in Exodus 14–15 and also in Genesis.