The following excerpt is taken from Nancy’s commentary on the book of Joshua for the CSB Bible Project. If you grab your Bible and read alongside Nancy’s notes, you’ll find that the bold font emphasizes actual Scripture text from the CSB translation.
3:6–17 At any other time, fording the Jordan wouldn’t have sounded so impossible; it was typically no more than 100 feet wide. But at the spring harvest season, heavy rains and snowmelt caused the river to overflow its banks (v. 15). Flood conditions turned what would have been a far easier passage at a different time of year into a dreaded, deep-water crisis of faith.
But that’s how God intended to demonstrate to Israel that they could depend on Him for the impossible. By providing an unimaginable way for them to walk across on dry land, He wanted to show them the living God is among you, able to dispossess before you all the enemies He’d promised to conquer in Canaan (v. 10).
Nancy's laptop and open Bible as she edits notes in the summer sun.
They could remember this day when the priests, carrying the ark of the covenant (v. 8), stepped out into the river’s edge—the day when the water flowing downstream was completely cut off (v. 16)—and remain forever convinced their God was indeed the Lord of the whole earth (v. 11).
Make It Personal: What evidence exists in our lives that says the “living God” is among us? If we never step out in faith, if we never attempt the impossible—if we never believe Him for anything that cannot be explained by human effort and initiative—we will never truly see what our God can do. We’ve crossed the Red Sea; we’ve been delivered from our slavery to sin. Now it’s time to cross the Jordan, to enter by faith into our spiritual
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