4/10/2023 0 Comments Jesus river bible![]() ![]() Like Joshua, Elijah will show mercy to an enemy (Rahab in Joshua 6, Naaman in 2 Kings 5), immediately after which they’ll bring God’s judgment on Israelites who steal in the aftermath of victory (Achan in Joshua 7, Gehazi in 2 Kings 5:27–28). Like Joshua, he follows the crossing by visiting Jericho - Joshua to destroy it (Joshua 6:26) and Elisha to purify it (2 Kings 2:18-22). Both Elisha and Joshua were commissioned on the far side of the Jordan, and when Elisha re-crosses the Jordan back into the promised land, he’s relaunching Joshua’s conquest (2 Kings 9:6–10, 10:20–28). (Even their names are similar: Elisha means ‘God is salvation’ Joshua means ‘the Lord saves’.) Elisha is following in both Elijah and Joshua’s footsteps. So as Elijah crosses the Jordan to ascend to heaven, it’s not that he’s leaving the promised land - he’s walking in the footsteps of Moses.Īll this means that just as Elijah is the new Moses, Elisha is the new Joshua. The two events occur near the Jordan, less than 10 miles apart, and both leave no marked grave behind (2 Kings 2:13, Deuteronomy 34:6). At the end of their lives, both go to be with their God within sight of the promised land. And just as Moses left Egypt after the death of Pharaoh’s son, Elijah left Israel after the death of Ahab’s son (Ahaziah, 2 Kings 1:17). ![]() Both had encounters with God at Sinai while hiding in a cleft or cave and fasting for 40 days (Exodus 34:28, 1 Kings 19:8). Both opposed a wicked King (Pharaoh and Ahab). And in many ways, Elijah has been a new Moses. When the Israelites first crossed the Jordan, there was one person who conspicuously stayed behind - Moses (Deuteronomy 31:2). Elijah isn’t entering the promised land - he’s leaving it. But this time the crossing is in the opposite direction. The water parts and they both cross over on dry ground before Elijah ascends to heaven. Several hundred years later, Elijah and Elisha stood before the same river at almost the same point (near to Jericho, 2 Kings 2:4–6). The barrier crossedīecause Jordan was a barrier, many of its stories concern its crossing.Īfter forty years in the wilderness, Joshua leads Israel across the Jordan, with God miraculously stopping the flooded river, just as he had done with the Red Sea (Joshua 3–4). So when he returns to Syria, he takes several bags of Israelite dirt with him (v17), wanting to ensure that wherever he was, he had something of Israel with him. ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel’, he says (2 Kings 5:15). This teaches Naaman that - whatever we may think - he cannot divorce geography from theology. After some grumbling that there’s nothing special about the river, Naaman eventually consents, and his flesh is restored as if he’d been given a new life (2 Kings 5:14). This Syrian general came to Elisha to be cleansed of leprosy, and Elisha sends him to bathe in the Jordan. The life-giving properties of the Jordan are seen symbolically in the story of Naaman. The river formed the border of the promised land, and even today, the Jordan is a formidable barrier - you have to cross a minefield to use the only bridge across it! A life returned In biblical times there were no bridges over the Jordan (in fact, not a single bridge is mentioned anywhere in the Bible). Like most great rivers, it served as a boundary. It’s for that reason that for millennia people have chosen to live on its banks.īut the Jordan is also a great barrier. It rarely rains in the Jordan Valley - but thanks to the river, plants grow in abundance. It’s a source of life in a similar way to the Nile, though on a much smaller scale. In biblical times, the river Jordan was both a source of life and a great barrier. For example, Jesus couldn’t have been baptised in the Jabbok river - it had to be the Jordan. I began to realise that the places weren’t incidental to the story - they were a vital part of it. That changed for me when I visited Israel and Jordan a few years ago. So apart from a few familiar places like Jerusalem and Bethlehem, most of us know very little about the places in our Bible. We want to know what happened precisely where it happened doesn’t seem that important. But we tend to skip over the places as if they’re incidental to the Bible’s story. ![]() There are more than 1,000 different places mentioned in the Bible, from Abana (2 Kings 5:12) to Zuph (1 Samuel 9:5). ![]()
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