Commentary - Joshua 4:1-7

Bird's-eye view

In this passage, the people of Israel have just completed their miraculous crossing of the Jordan River at flood stage. The waters were held back by the mighty hand of God, and the entire nation has now entered the Promised Land. But before they advance one step further to engage the enemy, God commands them to stop and do something peculiar. He instructs them to build a memorial. This is not a memorial to their courage, or to the leadership of Joshua, but rather a memorial to the mighty act of God Himself. The Lord is deeply concerned that His great deeds of salvation not be forgotten. He is establishing a principle for His people in all ages: our future faithfulness is directly tied to our remembrance of God's past faithfulness. This is a lesson in applied history, a divine command to set up a permanent, visible sermon in stone for the generations to come.

The structure of the event is crucial. Twelve men, representing the whole covenant people, are to go back into the riverbed, to the very place where death was held at bay, and retrieve twelve stones. These stones are to be carried out and set up as a sign. The purpose is explicitly catechetical, designed to provoke a question from their children. When the children ask, "What do these stones mean?" the fathers are equipped with a gospel answer. The stones are a tangible link to a past miracle, ensuring that the story of God's deliverance would not become a dusty legend, but would remain a living testimony at the heart of Israel's national life.

Outline

Context In Joshua

This chapter follows immediately upon the heels of the miraculous crossing of the Jordan in chapter 3. That event was Israel's national "baptism" into the land of Canaan. Just as their fathers passed through the Red Sea, this new generation has now passed through the waters of the Jordan. The Ark of the Covenant, representing the very presence of God, went before them and stood firm in the middle of the river, stopping the flow. Now that they are on the other side, encamped at Gilgal, this act of building a memorial is their first official act in the land. It sets the tone for the entire conquest. Their success will not depend on military strategy alone, but on their covenant fidelity to the God who brought them there. This memorial serves as a foundation stone, not just for their camp, but for their entire life as a nation before God.

Commentary

1 Now it happened when all the nation had completed crossing the Jordan, that Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying,

The timing here is significant. God waits until the miracle is complete. Every last Israelite is safely across. The danger has passed, the deliverance is total. It is in this moment of safety and arrival that God speaks. He does not shout instructions from the heavens while they are scrambling up the riverbank. The Lord gives us deliverances, and then, in the quiet aftermath, He instructs us on how to remember them. The first order of business upon entering the land of promise is not to scout the enemy or plan the first battle, but to worship and remember. Our activity for God must always flow from our remembrance of what God has first done for us.

2 "Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from each tribe,

This is a representative action. The memorial is not to be the work of one man, or one elite group. It is the work of all Israel. The number twelve signifies the governmental and covenantal wholeness of the people. Each tribe has a man, and each man will bear a stone. This ensures that when the memorial is built, every tribe can look at it and say, "We had a part in this. This is our story." This is a picture of the church. Our testimony to the world is not the testimony of a few gifted individuals, but the corporate witness of the entire body, with each member playing his part.

3 and command them, saying, 'Carry for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests' feet are standing firm, and carry them over with you and lay them down in the lodging place where you will lodge tonight.' "

Notice the origin of the stones. They are not to be gathered from the fields of Canaan, nor from the banks of the river. They must come from the very middle of the Jordan, from the place of the miracle. They are to be taken "from the place where the priests' feet are standing firm." The priests, bearing the Ark, were the instruments God used to hold back the waters of death. The foundation of this memorial is the very ground secured by the presence of God's covenant. These are not ordinary stones; they are salvation-stones, pulled from the heart of a conquered foe, which in this case was the river itself. They are a testimony that God's people are established on the ground of a great deliverance. We, as Christians, are founded upon the reality of an empty tomb, a place of death that was conquered by the presence of our Great High Priest.

4 So Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the sons of Israel, one man from each tribe;

Joshua's obedience is immediate and precise. There is no committee meeting to discuss the feasibility of the project. There is no debate about the aesthetics of a pile of rocks. God commands, and Joshua acts. This is the pattern of faithful leadership. A faithful leader is first and foremost a faithful follower.

5 and Joshua said to them, "Cross again before the ark of Yahweh your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you carry a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel,

They have to go back. They have already crossed over to safety, but to build the memorial, they must return to the place of danger, which is now a place of salvation. This is a profound spiritual principle. We cannot build a testimony to God's grace by staying as far away as possible from the memory of our sin and death. We must, in a sense, go back to the place where we were saved, look our former death in the face, and carry away a testimony to the power of God that rescued us. The stone is carried "on his shoulder," indicating a personal, weighty responsibility. Remembering what God has done is a burden we are called to gladly bear.

6 in order that this would be a sign among you, so that when your children ask later, saying, 'What do these stones mean to you?'

Here is the purpose clause. The entire enterprise is for the sake of the children. God is ordaining a permanent object lesson. He wants to provoke questions. A healthy, living faith is one that makes the next generation curious. Our lives, our worship, our sacraments ought to be like this pile of stones, making our children stop and ask, "What is this all about?" If our faith is so bland and beige that it never causes our children to ask a question, we are doing something wrong. God wants our faith to be tangible, visible, and even a little strange to the outside world, so that we have the opportunity to explain the reason for the hope that is in us.

7 then you shall say to them, 'Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of Yahweh; when it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.' So these stones shall become a memorial to the sons of Israel forever."

And here is the prescribed answer. This is the content of the catechesis. The answer is not, "This is what we did," but rather, "This is what God did." The focus is entirely on the mighty act of Yahweh. The waters were cut off "before the ark of the covenant of Yahweh." The power was located in the presence of the covenant-keeping God. The stones themselves have no power, but they point to the One who does. This is what our testimony must always be. Baptism does not save, but it points to the Savior. The bread and wine are not the body and blood, but they are a memorial to the One who gave His body and blood for us. These stones were to be a memorial "forever." God's mighty acts of redemption are of permanent significance, and they are to be remembered and retold until the Lord returns.

Application

We are a people who are prone to forget. Like Israel, we can experience a great deliverance on Sunday and be grumbling in the wilderness of our workplace by Tuesday. This passage is a direct command against such spiritual amnesia. God commands us to build memorials.

So how do we build memorial stones today? We do it, first and foremost, through the means God has already given us in the New Covenant. The Lord's Supper is our pile of stones. Each time we come to the Table, we are obeying the command, "Do this in remembrance of me." We are telling the story again, not just with words, but with tangible elements, that the body of our Lord was broken and His blood was shed. Baptism is another memorial stone, a visible sign of our passing through the waters of judgment with Christ and being raised to new life.

On a personal and familial level, we must establish rhythms of remembrance. This is the task of family worship. This is why we tell our children the great stories of the faith. We must be able to answer them when they ask why we live the way we do, why we worship the way we do. Our answer must be like the one prescribed here: "Because of what the Lord has done." We must point them back to the cross and the empty tomb. We must carry the weight of this testimony on our shoulders and build a culture in our homes that provokes the right questions, so that we can give the glorious answer of the gospel.