Charles Ellicott Commentary Joshua 3:2-6

"And it came to pass after three days, that the officers went through the midst of the camp; and they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore. And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow Jehovah will do wonders among you. And Joshua spake unto the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the people. And they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people." — Joshua 3:2-6 (ASV)

The preliminary orders stipulated that the priests were to carry the ark. This was usually the duty of the Levites of the family of Kohath, but at both the passage of the Jordan and the capture of Jericho, the priests were employed as bearers. The people were to be sanctified, as they were in preparation for the giving of the law at Sinai (Exodus 19:0). And the ark itself, in a sense, took a new position. A space of 2,000 cubits was left between the head of the column of Israelites and the ark, so that they all might see it. Until this time, during the whole of the Exodus, they had been led by the pillar of cloud and fire. The ark had led the way ever since they left Sinai (Numbers 10:33–34).

But as the cloud had moved above the ark, where all the people could see it, the head of the column might follow the ark as closely as possible, without any inconvenience. Now the cloud was no longer with them. It was a visible token of God’s presence especially granted to Moses, and with him it disappeared. The ark was now to be the only leader, and therefore it had to be placed in a somewhat more conspicuous position. This difference of arrangement appears to be indicated by the words in Joshua 3:4, “Ye have not passed this way heretofore.” The words may mean, “You are marching over untrodden ground;” but if so, they are not more applicable to this march than to many previous marches. They may also mean, “You have not marched in this manner before,” and this interpretation seems more to the purpose.

It may be useful to consider here what the actual significance was of the position assigned to the ark in Joshua. What was the ark? It was a chest containing the Ten Commandments, written with the finger of God on two tablets of stone prepared by Moses (Deuteronomy 10:1–5; Exodus 34:1; Exodus 34:28). But the ark was made for the law, not the law for the ark. The mercy seat above was the covering of the law—the shield between that law and the people. Between the cherubim that formed the mercy seat was the throne of Jehovah.

But the central thing, the only thing not of human workmanship that remained in the ark, was “the law written with the finger of God.” To describe the position before us exactly, we must say that the Israelites marched into the Jordan led by the written law of God. The same written law, carried around the walls of Jericho, was the minister of vengeance to the Canaanites, as indeed it later became to Israel when incautiously handled or invoked, as at Ebenezer (1 Samuel 4:0), and as at Beth-shemesh (1 Samuel 6:0; compare 2 Samuel 6:0), and also to the Philistines (1 Samuel 5:0).

As soon as the army of Joshua reached the center of Canaan, this same law was written on great stones in the heart of the country and became the law of the land. It is consistent with what we have already noted (Joshua 1:1) regarding the difference between Moses and Joshua: that under Moses the people followed the cloudy pillar, and under Joshua, the written law of God.

But it is a striking picture, and one that may well evoke our reverent wonder, that the Israelites should pass over the Jordan and assail the Canaanites, with the Ten Commandments carried before them, and as it were, leading the way. Was this not the direct objective of the conquest of Canaan—that God’s law should not only have a people to obey it, but also a country in which its working might be displayed to the nations as the law of the land?