Joshua 4:22

20-24 It is the duty of parents to tell their children betimes of the words and works of God, that they may be trained up in the way they should go. In all the instruction parents give their children, they should teach them to fear God. Serious godliness is the best learning. Are we not called, as much as the Israelites, to praise the loving-kindness of our God? Shall we not raise a pillar to our God, who has brought us through dangers and distresses in so wonderful a way? For hitherto the Lord hath helped us, as much as he did his saints of old. How great the stupidity and ingratitude of men, who perceive not His hand, and will not acknowledge his goodness, in their frequent deliverances!...

Verse Joshua 4:22. _THEN YE SHALL LET YOUR CHILDREN KNOW_] The necessity of an early religious education is inculcated through the whole oracles of God. The parents who neglect it have an awful account to give to the Judge of quick and dead....

EXPOSITION THE MEMORIAL.— JOSHUA 4:2 TWELVE STONES. The commemoration of events by the setting up of huge stones was by no means peculiar to the Jews, though it was often used by them, as, for instance, Genesis 28:18; Genesis 35:14, 1 Samuel 7:12. Almost every nation has adopted it. The Egyptian obelisks, the stones at Hamath, supposed to be of Hittite origin, the dolmens and other megalithic monuments of the Celts, the Logan or rocking stones, are cases in point. The Scandinavians filled their country with them. Our own Stonehenge and the Avebury s

THEN YE SHALL LET YOUR CHILDREN KNOW,.... The meaning of the erection of these stones, acquaint them with the whole history, the meaning of which they are designed to perpetuate: SAYING, ISRAEL CAME OVER THIS JORDAN ON DRY LAND; and if they should ask how that could possibly be done, or if they did not, they were to inform them by what means it was brought about, as follows....

4. THE MEMORIAL STONES CHAPTER 4 _ 1. The first memorial (Joshua 4:1)_ 2. The second memorial (Joshua 4:9) 3. The return of the priests with the ark (Joshua 4:10) 4. The encampment at Gilgal (Joshua 4:19) Jehovah commanded that the great event should be remembered by a memorial. From the river-bed, where the priest's feet stood firm, twelve men, one from each tribe, were to carry twelve stones and leave them at the first lodging place in the land, that is, at Gilgal. These memorial stones were to tell subsequent generations the story of God's faithfulness and power in bringing His people through Jordan into t

JOSHUA 3:1 TO JOSHUA 5:1. THE CROSSING OF JORDAN. Here we begin to meet with more serious difficulties. The old tradition was that after the Israelites had crossed the Jordan, they commemorated the event by the erection of twelve stones. But this simple narrative existed in two recensions, which differed as to the destination of these memorial stones. According to one account, they were to be placed in the midst of the river; according to the other, they were to be set up on the W. side of the Jordan in the place where the army encamped for the night. Deuteronomic additions have been made to these narratives, _i.e._ additions of a religious colouring as in Joshua 3:7, And Yahweh said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify thee in t

Erection of the Monument at Gilgal 19. _the tenth day of the first month_ Notice the exactness of the narrative. The first month is elsewhere called Abib, i.e. "the month of green ears" (Exodus 13:4; Exodus 23:15; Deuteronomy 16:1), and subsequently "Nisan" (Nehemiah 2:1; Esther 3:7). _encamped_ The site was doubtless fortified by Joshua "as a frontier fortress, such as the Greeks under the name of _epitichisma_, and the Romans under the name of _colonia_, always planted as their advanced posts in a hostile country, such as at Ku

DISCOURSE: 245 THE PASSAGE OF JORDAN COMMEMORATED Joshua 4:20. _Those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over: that all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever._ TO remember God’s mercies to us, and to transmit the remembrance of them to future generations, is a solemn duty imposed upon us, especially where the mercies are of such a nature as

_The Purpose of the Memorial Joshua 4:19-24_ 19 And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho. 20 And those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. 21 And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? 22 Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land, 23 For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over: 24 That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever. _15._ On what day did the peo

THE DOUBLE MEMORIAL OF THE PASSAGE OF JORDAN The main subject of the chapter is the memorial cairn set up at Gilgal, which is described in two sections, Joshua 4:1 and Joshua 4:20, separated by the record in a single v. (Joshua 4:9) of another cairn set up in the midst of Jordan, and by a long parenthesis (Joshua 4:10) describing in an expanded form the crossing already narrated in Joshua 3:14. The repetitions are most satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis that the narrator has incorporated extracts from more ancient sources in his narrative....