The crossing of the Jordan is Israel's second miraculous passage through water — deliberately parallel to the Red Sea crossing forty years earlier. A generation had died in the wilderness. A new generation stood at the eastern bank of the Jordan, with Canaan before them. It was harvest time; the Jordan was in flood. God gave Joshua specific instructions: the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant would go first into the water. "As soon as the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, that the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off, the waters that come down from upstream, and they shall stand as a heap" (Joshua 3:13). The priests obeyed. As their feet touched the water, "the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap... and those that went down into the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho" (3:16). The priests stood in the middle of the riverbed with the Ark while the entire nation passed over on dry ground. Then God commanded twelve men — one from each tribe — to take twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan and set them up at Gilgal as a memorial. "When your children ask in time to come, saying, 'What are these stones?' then you shall let your children know, saying, 'Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land.'" (Joshua 4:21-22). The generations to come needed tangible witnesses of what God had done. The crossing vindicated Joshua as Moses' successor, demonstrated God's faithfulness across forty years of waiting, and introduced Israel to the promised land. Typologically, the Jordan often represents death or the boundary between this life and the next. To cross the Jordan with the Ark going before is to enter the promised land — and every Christian will one day do the same with Christ going before.