Joshua 3 - Joshua continues with
instructions for crossing the river Jordan.
The Levitical priests carry the ark a minimum of two thousand cubits
ahead. “Joshua tells them, “Follow it,
so that you may know the way you should go, for you have not passed this way
before.” (3:3-4). When the priests go into the river, they are to stand still
in it and it will stop flowing.
“While
all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of
the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until
the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan” (3:17).
The
recapitulation of the redemptive motif first introduced in Exodus is again a
model of the kind of recapitulative narrative we are dealing with here, even
before we bring the New Testament thinks into the mix. But it is very clear
that the earliest Christians saw it all fulfilled in Christ. The Fathers saw both Moses and Joshua as
“types” of Christ and baptism as a spiritual recapitulation of the salvation
experienced by the Israelites in Exodus and here again. The Jerusalem Bible refers us to 1 Cor 10:1.
Joshua 4 - In commemoration of
this great miracle, twelve men (one from each tribe) are selected to take twelve stones from the place in the middle
of the Jordan where the priests’ feet were and set them in the place where they
camp the first night (at Gilgal
east of Jericho.
The
word Gilgal means ring of stones according to a Jerusalem Bible note. “When
your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you
shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark
of the covenant of the Lord” (4:6).
Another distinct tradition - the “priestly” according to the Jerusalem Bible note is given in verse 9
where the stones are set up in the middle of the river, so as to become
invisible once the river resumes its flow.
This tradition, note says, dates from the period of the prophets when
they were “attacking the heterodox worship at Gilgal” (279).
Gilgal was
the chief sanctuary of the Benjaminites and it was still important in the
days of Saul. See what the prophets
thought of it in Hosea 4:15, 9:15 and
12:12 and Amos 4:4 and 5:5.
Reflection: Again, we see that the success of the people
of Israel is not attributable in any way to them and to their talents, but only
to the “mighty power of the Lord” who smooths the rough paths and levels of the
hills to make a way for his people. Lord
help us let you make our way for us.
Help us merely to seek your presence and stay close to you and watch
for the way to open in which we should walk.
Origen (185-254 AD)
De Principiis (First
Principles)
Book II - On Christ
5 - He turns in this
section to supporting what he has said with the words of a philosopher with the
words of Scripture. He refers again to Paul’s words that “the only-begotten Son
is the ‘image of the invisible God,’ and ‘the first-born of every
creature.’”
And
from the Old Testament, he refers to the Book of Wisdom: “’For she is the
breath of the power of God, and the purest efflux [something that flows from]
of the glory of the Almighty.
6 - Origen seeks to
explore the idea of “invisible” image” – an inherently contradictory combination of
words. Sometimes we think of images as something painted, sculpted [or, we might add, photographed] so that it takes a
material form. And sometimes we say a son or daughter is “the image of his
father” or “her mother.”
We
can see that Jesus, the Son of God, is “the invisible image of the invisible
God” if we are referring to “the unity
of nature and substance belonging to Father and Son.” How Origen reconciles the words of Paul and the sense that
Jesus is “visible” yet an image of an “invisible God” is hard to follow in this
section. He is of two natures – one visible and one invisible.
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