Joshua — Chapter 3

Lapide: \"Joshua arose before night\" — he who counsels great things must not sleep into broad day. From Homer: \"It does not befit a counsellor to sleep the whole night.\" Model for leaders of armies and affairs of state.

Lapide: The ark preceded the people by two thousand cubits — space of reverence, that all might see the miracle of the dividing waters; the column of cloud no longer preceded the camp, but the ark took its place: in Jesus Christ, no shadow but open truth (Mystice).

Lapide: \"Sanctify yourselves\" — bodily by washing garments and continence, spiritually by contrition and penance. The Apostle: \"That each man know how to possess his vessel in sanctification\" (1 Thess. 4:4). Continence is called sanctity because it purifies soul and body.

Lapide: \"The living God\" (El Chai) — God who is living, active, vigorous, vivifying all things by His divine industry and omnipotence, shall carry you across Jordan unharmed.

Lapide: The waters divided at the moment the priests' feet touched them — the power was given to the priests on account of the ark they carried; the ark was the footstool of God enthroned over the Cherubim and propitatory. Allegorically: the ark = humanity of Christ, the propitatory = His divinity; symbolically = the Blessed Virgin and the Saints.

Lapide: \"Jordan had overflowed its banks at harvest time\" — God chose this moment of flooding to magnify the miracle, that the greater the obstacle, the more manifest the divine power. Sirach notes the same of the Tigris and the Nile.

Lapide: The waters stood \"in one pile like a mountain\" from the crossing-place (Bethabara) all the way to Sarthan (a stretch of some twenty leagues). Tropologically: the faithful after baptism must grow in patience and virtue \"usque ad Adom\" — unto blood and martyrdom, as Christ and the Martyrs did.

Lapide: This place, called Bethabara (house of crossing), is where St. John the Baptist baptized and where Christ was baptized. S. Hieronymus (De Locis Hebr.): \"To this day many of the brethren, wishing to be born again, are baptized in this vital stream.\" Thus where baptism was first foreshadowed, there it was first enacted by John.