Joshua rose early and led Israel from Shittim to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing. After three days, officers told the people to follow when they saw Levitical priests carrying the ark of the covenant, the chest holding the tablets of God’s commands. Since they had not traveled this way before, they were to follow the ark while keeping about two thousand cubits away. A cubit was a unit of length.
Joshua told the people to prepare themselves as holy because the LORD would do wonders among them the next day. He told the priests to carry the ark ahead. God promised that Israel would know he was with Joshua as he had been with Moses. Joshua told the people that the water would stop when the priests carrying the ark stood in the Jordan.
The Jordan was overflowing its banks at harvest time. When the priests carrying the ark stepped into the water, the upstream water stopped and piled up far away near Adam by Zarethan. The water flowing toward the Salt Sea was cut off, and the people crossed opposite Jericho. The priests stood firmly on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan until all Israel had crossed.
God ordered one man from each tribe to take a stone from the place where the priests stood. The twelve men carried the stones on their shoulders to the night camp. They would be a sign: when children later asked what the stones meant, their parents were to tell them that the Jordan stopped before the ark and Israel crossed on dry ground.
Joshua also set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan. The people crossed quickly, with about forty thousand armed men from Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh crossing ahead to the plains of Jericho. God made Joshua great before Israel, and they feared him as they had feared Moses.
When the priests came up from the Jordan, the water returned and overflowed its banks as before. On the tenth day of the first month Israel camped at Gilgal east of Jericho. Joshua set up there the twelve stones taken from the Jordan.
Joshua told Israel that when children asked their fathers about those stones, they were to hear that Israel had crossed the Jordan on dry ground. God had dried the Jordan before them as he had dried the Red Sea. The event was to make all peoples know God’s power and to keep Israel in reverence for him.