Saturday, October 17, 2026 · Week of Pentecost 20
Joshua 4:1–9
When the entire nation had finished crossing over the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Select twelve men from the people, one from each tribe, 3 and command them, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests’ feet stood, carry them over with you, and lay them down in the place where you camp tonight.’ ”
4 Then Joshua summoned the twelve men whom he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe. 5 Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 so that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ 7 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. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever.”
8 The Israelites did as Joshua commanded. They took up twelve stones out of the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the Lord had told Joshua, carried them over with them to the place where they camped, and laid them down there. 9 (Joshua set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood, and they are there to this day.)
Notes
These stones are built to start a conversation. "When your children ask in time to come." Joshua is borrowing a formula. Exodus 13:14 and Deuteronomy 6:20 open the same way, and Exodus 12:26 asks nearly Joshua's exact question about the Passover ritual, right down to the "to you" (lakhem) at the end. Each time, the answer is a story: "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand" (Deuteronomy 6:21). The Passover Haggadah builds its four children out of these verses, and the rabbis heard that lakhem in Exodus 12:26 as the wicked child holding the whole ritual at arm's length. Joshua's children ask with the same lakhem, and nobody scolds them for it.
The people hauling these stones were mostly the kids from the first story. The generation that left Egypt died in the wilderness (Numbers 14:29–31; Joshua 5:4–6), so most of the people crossing the Jordan had been children at the Red Sea or weren't born yet. Now they get a sea of their own. Deuteronomy had been preaching to them as if they'd been there all along: "Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today" (Deuteronomy 5:3). The Mishnah makes that the rule of the Passover table: "In every generation a person is obligated to see himself as if he went out of Egypt" (Pesachim 10:5). And at a Passover table, Jesus hands his friends bread and says, "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). I preached this passage in 2013, and I'd still say what I said then: worship with no history becomes small. It shrinks down to my own experience, and then to just me.
Verse 9 sneaks in a second set of stones, which is why the NRSVue puts it in parentheses. The Hebrew says Joshua set up "twelve stones," no article, in the middle of the Jordan where the priests stood, and the Greek Septuagint spells it out: "other twelve stones" (allous dodeka lithous). The first twelve go to camp at Gilgal (4:19–20). The second twelve stay in the riverbed, and once the priests step out, the Jordan comes back over its banks (4:18) and covers them. "They are there to this day," the narrator adds.
Then there's the line in "Come Thou Fount" that every church kid has had to ask about: "Here I raise my Ebenezer." It comes from 1 Samuel 7:12, where Samuel sets up a stone and names it even ha'ezer, "stone of help," because "thus far the Lord has helped us." But Ebenezer shows up three chapters earlier, as the camp where Israel hauled the ark into battle like a lucky charm and lost it to the Philistines (1 Samuel 4:1–11). Memorials can go bad. Gilgal, where Joshua's stones land, turns into a sanctuary the prophets can't stand: "Come to Bethel—and transgress; to Gilgal—and multiply transgression" (Amos 4:4). Hosea makes a pun of the name. In Gilgal, he says, "their altars shall be like stone heaps" (gallim, Hosea 12:11).
Questions for reflection
Gilgal's stones were set up so children would ask about the river, and later the prophets condemned the place. What turns a memorial into an idol?
What would your stones be, and what story would you tell a child who asked what they mean?
