Joshua 3: The Israelites cross the river Jordan

In this chapter, the Israelites cross the river Jordan by means of a miracle: the waters of the river get held back to create dry ground to walk on. This miracle happens a number of times in the Old Testament beginning with the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus. And, as we will see, it means things for us too.

All the people of Israel move to the edge of the river Jordan and camp (see Arcana Caelestia 6537). Then a number of commands are given: to move only when they see the priests carrying the ark move first; to keep well away from the ark; to consecrate themselves; to choose twelve men, one from each tribe. The priests are told to carry the ark ahead of the people and to step into the waters of the river.

These detailed instructions are important for us, in the work of regeneration. At the end of verse Joshua 3:4 it says something very telling, that “you have not passed this way before.” In truth, we haven’t; the work of regeneration is new to us and takes us into things we haven’t yet experienced. Seeing the ark going ahead pictures our own need to keep the commands and truths of the Lord in our vision and goals.

Keeping well away from the ark is also important because we must not mix together our view of what we do, with the Lord’s view of what we must do – the ark contains the ten commandments and must always be seen (Arcana Caelestia 6724).

The text says, “Do not come near it, that you may know the way by which you must go.” (Joshua 3:4) The people are also told to consecrate themselves, to make themselves holy. This would have included washing, which stands for cleansing our mind and actions of anything which goes against God.

The last command the people are given is to choose twelve men, one from each tribe. This will become important in the next chapter when twelve memorial stones are taken out of the river Jordan.

The priests carrying the ark are told to step in and get wet. For us this means that our dedication to God and our highest intentions (the ‘priest’ in us) must come into touch with the flowing water of the river Jordan (the first spiritual truths, first because the Jordan is a boundary).

When the priests do this, the waters immediately stop far upstream, making dry ground for everybody to safely cross while the priests stand still (see Arcana Caelestia 1664[7]). When our dedication to God dovetails with God’s truths for our life and become united, we have the heavenly ideal and we will now go forward. (Doctrine of Life 55[3]).

In verses 9 to 13 Joshua reminds the people of what it is they are now doing. They are crossing into Canaan, “and the living God is among you and he will without fail drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites”, who, for us, stand for the wrongs, weaknesses, delusions, tricks and deceits of our human nature such as it is before we belong to God. “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing over before you into the Jordan.”

This chapter is our first action and resolve at the start of our regeneration or new birth. It will take us from here to there, never to go back. It is a transition from one side of our life to the other (Arcana Caelestia 7779[3]). And all Israel crossed over on dry ground. Each of us is ‘all Israel’ because there are many parts to us; we love, think, believe, value, act, do useful things, share, work and play, and all these and many others will be part of our spiritual life that lies ahead.

6724. 'And coated it with bitumen and pitch' means good mingled with evils and falsities. This is clear from the meaning of 'bitumen' as good mingled with evils; and from the meaning of 'pitch' as good mingled with falsities. 'Bitumen and 'pitch' have these meanings because they are inflammable, and in the Word that which is inflammable means good, or in the contrary sense evil. But because they have brimstone or sulphur in them and are also black they mean evil and falsity, as in Isaiah,

The day of Jehovah's vengeance - her streams will be turned into pitch, and her dust into brimstone, and her land will become burning pitch. Isaiah 34:8-9.

'Pitch' and 'brimstone' stand for falsities and evils. This then is why 'she coated it with bitumen and pitch' means good mingled with evils and falsities.

[2] As regards the actual matter under consideration here, which is that encircling God's truth there was good mingled with evils and falsities, no one can have any understanding unless he knows what goes on during the reformation of a person. While he is being reformed he is, so far as his internal is concerned, preserved by the Lord in a state of goodness and truth; but so far as his external is concerned he is let into his evils and falsities. He is as a consequence among spirits from hell who are governed by such evils and falsities. These spirits flit around him, trying in every way to destroy him. But the goodness and truth that flow into him through his internal give him such protection that the spirits from hell cannot harm him in the slightest, the reason for this being that what acts at a more internal level is immensely superior in strength to that which acts at a more external level. For being purer what is more internal acts on every individual detail of what is more external, and in so doing it adjusts the external to answer its beck and call. But there must in that case be goodness and truth in the external in which influx from the internal can be firmly established. Good can then be among evils and falsities and yet remain safe from harm. Everyone who is being reformed is brought into this state, so that the evil desires and false ideas that govern him are removed and good desires and true ideas are implanted instead.

[3] Without knowledge of this arcanum no one can begin to know why Divine Truth residing with a person has around it forms of good mingled with evils and falsities, meant by the bitumen and pitch with which the little ark in which the infant had been put was coated. It should in addition be recognized that good can be mingled with evils and falsities, but they are not on that account joined together, since one shies away from the other and in keeping with a law of order they separate themselves from one another. For good belongs to heaven and evil and falsity to hell, and therefore just as heaven and hell have been separated, so also does every single thing from them separate itself.