Jesus Leads Through the Jordan: Josue's Crossing and the Baptism of Christ
Old Testament: Josue 3:15-17
And as soon as they came into the Jordan, and their feet were dipped in part of the water, ... The waters that came down from above stood in one place, and swelling up like a mountain ... And the people marched over against Jericho: and the priests that carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, stood girded upon the dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all the people passed over through the channel that was dried up.
Old Testament, also: Josue 4:9, 14
And Josue put other twelve stones in the midst of the channel of the Jordan, where the priests stood that carried the ark of the covenant: and they are there until this present day. ... In that day the Lord magnified Josue in the sight of all Israel, that they should fear him, as they had feared Moses, while he lived.
New Testament: Matthew 3:13, 16-17
Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan, unto John, to be baptized by him. ... And Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened to him: and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him. And behold a voice from heaven, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
The connection
After forty years in the desert, Israel came to the Jordan. Moses was dead, and the man who led them over was Josue, whose name in the Septuagint is Iesous, Jesus. The people had never stood here before: "you have not gone this way before" (Josue 3:4). As soon as the priests' "feet were dipped in part of the water", the river "stood in one place", "and all the people passed over through the channel that was dried up" (Josue 3:15-17). Twelve stones were set in the riverbed and twelve more on the far bank, and "in that day the Lord magnified Josue in the sight of all Israel" (Josue 4:9, 14). At the same river the true Jesus comes "from Galilee to the Jordan, unto John, to be baptized by him". He goes down into the water, and "lo, the heavens were opened to him", the Spirit descends as a dove, and the Father speaks: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:13, 16-17). At the first crossing God magnified Josue before Israel. At the second the Father Himself declares who His Son is. St Gregory of Nyssa sees the one in the other. The people "did not enter the land of promise until it had first been brought, with Joshua for its guide and the pilot of its life, to the passage of the Jordan", and Josue, "who set up the twelve stones in the stream, was anticipating the coming of the twelve disciples, the ministers of Baptism." St Justin Martyr draws out the name: as Josue, "not Moses, led the people into the Holy Land", so Jesus the Christ "shall give us the eternal possession." The Catechism teaches the same type: Baptism is prefigured in the crossing of the Jordan, by which the people of God received the promised land, an image of eternal life (CCC 1222).
Moral sense
The Jordan is the threshold. On one side is the desert, where Israel wandered and was fed by manna; on the other, the land. Josue told the people beforehand, "Be ye sanctified: for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you" (Josue 3:5), and the waters did not part until the priests' feet were already wet. So it is with the soul. Baptism is the river by which God brings us out of the wilderness of sin and into His promise, and the life that follows it begins with a step taken in faith before the way is dry. And the stones were set up so that when children ask "What mean these stones?" their fathers could answer that "Israel passed over this Jordan through the dry channel" (Josue 4:21-22). Every baptised Christian is such a stone, a witness that God brought someone across.
Anagogical sense
Josue's land was not the last rest. "For if Jesus had given them rest, he would never have afterwards spoken of another day" (Hebrews 4:8). The land of Chanaan was a figure; the land beyond the last river is the heavenly Jerusalem, and the true Jesus leads His people there. St Gregory saw the twelve apostles in the twelve stones of the Jordan, and at the end St John sees them again, built into the city: "the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them, the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Apocalypse 21:14). The stones that marked the crossing become the foundations of the home.
The Fathers
St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ: "The people of the Hebrews, as we learn, after many sufferings, and after accomplishing their weary course in the desert, did not enter the land of promise until it had first been brought, with Joshua for its guide and the pilot of its life, to the passage of the Jordan. But it is clear that Joshua also, who set up the twelve stones in the stream, was anticipating the coming of the twelve disciples, the ministers of Baptism." St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 113: "as he, not Moses, led the people into the Holy Land, and as he distributed it by lot to those who entered along with him, so also Jesus the Christ will turn again the dispersion of the people, and will distribute the good land to each one, though not in the same manner. For the former gave them a temporary inheritance, seeing he was neither Christ who is God, nor the Son of God; but the latter, after the holy resurrection, shall give us the eternal possession."
Warrant
Patristic. St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ, reads the passage of the Jordan under Josue as the way into the land of promise and the twelve stones as the twelve disciples, the ministers of Baptism. St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 113, reads Josue leading the people into the Holy Land, where Moses did not, as Jesus the Christ giving the eternal possession. The Catechism names the crossing of the Jordan among the figures of Baptism (CCC 1222). Checked in the languages: in the Septuagint Josue is Iesous throughout, as at Josue 3:7 and 4:14, the same name St Matthew gives Christ at the Jordan, and Hebrews 4:8 calls Josue Iesous outright, which the Douay keeps as Jesus. The Septuagint says the Lord exalted, hypsosai, Josue before Israel at the Jordan (Josue 3:7) and magnified him there (Josue 4:14); the heavenly voice at Matthew 3:17 is the Father's own witness. The Red Sea, which St Paul calls a baptism (1 Corinthians 10:2), has its own entry with the Spirit over the waters; this entry is the second crossing, the river into the land. Two links are the site's own rather than the Fathers': the setting of Josue magnified at the Jordan beside the Father's voice over His Son, and the carrying of St Gregory's twelve stones forward to the twelve foundations of Apocalypse 21:14, where St Gregory himself goes only as far as the twelve disciples. Origen's homilies on Josue, the fullest patristic reading of the crossing, are not in the site's corpora. The lead was Dunk's, from the Rubicon as a threshold and the Jordan as the threshold of the Christian life.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1222.
The verses
Josue 3:15 · Josue 3:16 · Josue 3:17 · Josue 4:9 · Josue 4:14 · Matthew 3:13 · Matthew 3:16 · Matthew 3:17
