NOTES for Jos 3:1

Again the Lord leads His people. Forty years later, the exodus from Egypt continues, and many events of the exodus are repeated. It is as if the past years had not been, and the people, having crossed the miraculously parted waters, immediately after Egypt found themselves beyond the Jordan on the shore of the Promised Land.

But these decades did not pass in vain, they were not a meaningless waste of time. In the wilderness, the law was proclaimed through Moses; in the wilderness, the people concluded a covenant with the Most High. During these years, yesterday's slaves became a people led by the Lord. And now the sign of the visible presence of the Most High is no longer in a pillar of fire, but in the Ark of the Covenant, carried by the priests called to service precisely during the years of these wanderings.