World English Bible · Entering the land
Joshua 3
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got up early in the morning; and they moved from and came to , he and all the . They camped there before they crossed over. After three days, the officers went through the middle of the camp; and they commanded the people, saying, "When you see the your , and the priests bearing it, then leave your place and follow it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it of about two thousand by measure—don't come closer to it—that you may know by which you must go; for you have not passed this way before." said to the people, " yourselves; for tomorrow will do wonders among you." spoke to the priests, saying, "Take up the , and over before the people." They took up the , and went before the people. said to , "Today I will begin to magnify you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that as I was with , so I will be with you. You shall command the priests who bear the , saying, 'When you come to the brink of the waters of , you shall stand still in .'" said to the , "Come here, and hear the words of your ." said, "By this you shall know that the living is among you, and that he will without fail drive the , the , the , the , the , the , and the out from before you. Behold, the of of all the earth passes over before you into . Now therefore take twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, for every tribe a man. It shall be that when the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the , of all the earth, rest in the waters of , that the waters of will . The waters that come down from above shall stand in one heap." When the people moved from their tents to pass over , the priests who bore the being before the people, and when those who bore the ark had come to , and the feet of the priests who bore the ark had dipped in the edge of the water (for overflows all its banks all the time of harvest), the waters which came down from above stood, and rose up in one heap a great way off, at , the city that is beside ; and those that went down toward the sea of the , even , were wholly . Then the people passed over near . The priests who bore the stood firm on dry ground in the middle of ; and all Israel crossed over on dry ground, until all the nation had passed completely over .
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · Entering the land, 1250 BC to 1200 BC ›
Israel crossing into Canaan and contending with fortified city-states, each with its own king, in a land Egypt had recently dominated and was now losing its grip on.
- The collapse
- The whole eastern Mediterranean is coming apart. Within about fifty years the Hittite empire falls, its capital burns, the Mycenaean palaces are destroyed, Ugarit is wiped out mid-correspondence, and Egypt is fighting for its life against seaborne invaders. Nobody fully knows why. Drought, earthquake, migration, and the failure of interlocking trade are all in the explanation.
- Egypt
- Still strong enough to record a victory over a people called Israel on a stone monument around 1207 BC, the earliest mention of the name outside the Bible. But Egyptian control of Canaan is slipping, and within a generation it is gone.
- Canaan
- Not a country but dozens of walled towns, each with its own king, its own god, and its own quarrel with the next valley. This is why the book of Joshua reads as a list of kings rather than a war with a nation.
- Further afield
- Iron is beginning to replace bronze across the region, partly because the tin trade that made bronze possible has broken down. The Olmec are building San Lorenzo. The Zhou are about to overthrow the Shang in China.