What is the significance of the stones of remembrance in Joshua 4:9?

Before the Jordan was crossed, Jehovah had bidden Joshua select "twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man" (Joshua 3:12), in readiness for an action to be performed after traversing its empty bed. God purposed that a definite witness should be made by Israel to His wonders, and commanded that all the people, representatively, should be prepared in view of the action He had planned. When all the people were "clean passed over" Jordan, Joshua was bidden carry out this divine purpose; "Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones; and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night." Israel, by doing this, made acknowledgment through their representatives of what Jehovah had wrought for them. This action was performed, it must be borne in mind, when all of them were passed over into Canaan.

These stones proclaimed certain realities. Taken from the dry bed of the river, they declared God's power in cutting off the waters before the ark of His covenant; twelve in number, one stone for each tribe, they declared how that all Israel had entered into Canaan; set up together in Canaan, they witnessed to Israel's unity in that land. Moreover, they became a memorial to the nation of Jehovah's work for them.

First, these stones declared Jehovah's great work for His people; even Jordan emptied of its waters before the ark of His covenant, and His people brought thereby into the fulness of their blessing.

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 the land. Another memorial of twelve stones was set up by Joshua in the midst of the river, where the priests stood with the ark. This whole record has been much questioned by the critics; it has been charged that there are two different accounts. Professor George Adam Smith states: "For instance, in the story of the crossing of Jordan, as told in Joshua 3 and 4, there are two accounts of the monument set up to commemorate the passage. One of them builds it at Gilgal on the west bank with stones taken from the river-bed by the people; the other builds it in the bed of the river with twelve stones set there by Joshua. (The same view is held by Friedrich Bleek; no doubt Prof G.A. Smith has it from him.) Such criticism reveals the astonishing weakness of that entire school. Why should the ninth verse of the fourth chapter be looked upon as an interpolation, or as another account of one transaction? There is nothing in the text to warrant such a statement. The fact is there are two transactions. The one by the twelve men, who take the twelve stones and set them up at Gilgal. The other by Joshua, who puts twelve stones in the river-bed.

But if these critics but knew a little more of the spiritual and typical significance of all these events and transactions, they would soon learn better. What do these two memorials mean? They tell out the story what God has done for His people. In the midst of Jordan the children of Israel could see the pile of twelve stones Joshua had put there as a memorial. As they looked upon them and the waters rushing about them, they remembered that where these stones are, there the ark halted and the waters were cut off and His people passed over.

"And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood, and they are there to this day." When the record was written, the swellings of Jordan had not swept away the leader's own memorial of the passage of the river's bed. Israel's memorial set up in Canaan was for all in the land of promise to see — "a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever." Joshua's, reared in the bed of the river, was for no eye to behold when the waters were at their flood; but none the less a memorial for the leader himself. In the river we may justly say, his deepest feelings would centre; there, where the priests stood, the whole burden of Israel's security was borne, and there the secret power of all Israel's blessing in entering Canaan lay.

Joshua in Canaan being a type of Christ, we have in this action a significant teaching. Our Lord never forgets the deep waters through which He passed — those sufferings in and unto death, by which He vanquished him that had the power of death — the devil — and by which He opened to His people their heavenly inheritance. From the throne on high He remembers the travail of His soul, His cross, its shame and agony. Jesus, whose work has brought the people of God into heavenly places, ever remembers the swellings of Jordan, the flood of deep waters where He, blessed be His Name, stood firm for us to bring us to His God and Father.

We learn what the cross of the Lord Jesus has effected when we learn that it has eternally settled for God the question of sin and sins. It has settled these two things, and it is most important to see how they have both been settled. We have the forgiveness of our sins in the work of the cross; but the nature which committed them, sin, is never forgiven. It has been eternally placed by God under judgment. As to the forgiveness of our sins, the following passages declare it is effected: 1 John 2:12; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14, Col. 2:13; Acts 5:31, etc. As to the nature that committed them, it is not forgiven, but the judgment of death is permanently recorded against it. The following passages bring this before us: Joshua 4:9; John 12:31; Romans 6:6; Gal. 2:20; Gal. 6:14; Col. 3:3, etc. In Joshua 4:9, death, not forgiveness, is before us. As to the twelve: Stones placed in the bed of the river, they were a figure of the twelve tribes. Over them roll the waters of judgment continually - those waters through which Israel passed dry-shod. But as to their permanence in the bed of Jordan, the word adds, "And they are there unto this day."

Twelve stones were carried by twelve prepared men from the bed of the Jordan, from the place where the feet of the priests stood firm, and were raised as a memorial on the side of Jordan where the people lodged after the crossing. These stones were a witness for coming generations of what God did that day for His people. We too can look back to the day when Christ entered into death, and there is a fitting memorial for that, given by the Lord Himself on the night in which He was delivered up, and because of His death it is ours to be associated with Him as risen from the dead.

We also learn that "Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there unto this day" (Joshua 4:9). Surely these twelve stones in the bed of the river tell us that we have died with Christ, even as the twelve stones on the bank tell us that we are risen with Christ (Col. 2:20; 3:1).

The twelve stones "are there to this day." (v. 9) The monument remains, the cross remains, eternal witness of a love I have there learnt to know, testimony too of the only place where God could put all that belonged to my old man.

Such for us is the import of the Jordan. But God desires that the memorial of this victory should be continually under our eyes. Joshua commands the representatives of the twelve tribes to take twelve stones from the midst of the Jordan, from the place where the feet of the priests stood firm. They were to be for a memorial to the children of Israel, and were to be laid in the place where the people passed their first night in the land of Canaan. The place was Gilgal, but what was the signification of the stones? They represented the twelve tribes, the people, snatched from death by the ark which had stood in the very spot where deliverance was needed, and which had stayed the waters of Jordan so that Israel could pass over. They became a monument at the very entrance of Canaan, at Gilgal, a place to which (as we shall see later on) the people had always to return; they were henceforth to be a sign constantly under their eyes and those of their children.

The stones were set in the midst of Jordan, because still we go back, and see the people of God in Christ's death. Jordan overflowed all its banks then; the power of death and Satan was never seen as in the cross of Christ.

Joshua finally took twelve stones, and embedded them in the midst of Jordan, where the priests' feet had stood whilst the people passed over. Thus was typified the fact that all that we are in the flesh is gone in the death of Christ, so that finally in the ways of God only new creation, new life, will stand before Him.

The stones in the lodging place were as much for Joshua as for any other Israelite. We do not read that he was commanded to set up twelve stones in the Jordan. Moses was the only one of all Israel who "by faith kept* the passover." Did Joshua's faith go beyond the memorial in the lodging place, and he alone of all Israel worship God in the place of death, where the priests' feet had stood? Thus owning the power of death but worshipping Him Who conquered death? Then though not in so great light as the church of God, he was partaker of a like faith which is never limited to mere external obedience. It was Christ — the ark — Who overcame and stayed the power of death, and Joshua returned to bless the God of his salvation. It was an act of worship in the same spirit, though not in the same form as when we remember the Lord in His death.