Why There?

Then Joshua set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan at the place where the feet of the priests who carried the ark of the covenant were standing, and they are there to this day.  Joshua 4:9  NASB

In the middle – The story of Israel crossing the Jordan leaves us with a lot of head-scratching.  In this particular episode, Joshua instructs twelve men to take one stone each from the place where the priests are holding up the ark and carry them to the riverbank (so that they can later be used as a memorial and altar).  But as soon as they do so, the text tells us that Joshua goes into the river bed and “sets up” (qûm) twelve stones under the feet of the priests.  The verb isn’t exactly about replacing the stones that the others took.  It means “to rise, to arise, to erect, to stand.”  So, our text tells us that after the twelve men took one stone each from the middle of the river, Joshua went into the mud and put twelve stones in the place where the priests’ feet were standing.  No, not quite.  He stood up twelve stones.  He erected twelve stones in that place.  What?  How do you erect stones under the feet of the priests?  And why would he do this?  If he meant for the twelve stones to be a witness to the crossing, then how would anyone ever know once the waters flowed back?  If, as some rabbis suggest, he replaced the twelve stones so that the priests wouldn’t have to stand in the mud, then why instruct the twelve men to take the stones out from under their feet in the first place?  Rabbinic commentaries disagree over the motive, and even the placement, but we have a slightly bigger issue.  What is the point of all this?  “And they are there to this day” has the implication of “for all time,” but frankly, who would know?  The whole episode appears as if it were inserted into an otherwise almost comprehensible story.

Oddities like this seem to abound in the Joshua narrative.  And for this reason, I am inclined to agree with the opinion of Emanuel Tov about the Qumran texts, “For the Qumran sectarians, authority applied to the content of the book, and differences in details were disregarded,”[1] applied to the Tanakh as well.  The details often seem fanciful at best, or extraneous at worst.  The narrative is about the whole story.  The individual pieces, the exact words, often float around the theme, sometimes acting a bit disconnected.  That, of course, is only the surface of the text.  Those who accept the paradigm of textual inerrancy or textual integrity will find ways to reconcile all these tiny bits.  In fact, midrashic exegesis usually seems to begin when the text has a little hiccup.  What I conclude might seem quite irreligious—I am open to rebuttal, as always.  It seems to me that humanity wants anything but “faith.”  Why?  Because faith lives in the mire of uncertainty.  Reasonable doubt surrounds faith with loving arms—and is little comfort if what you truly desire is rock-solid proof.  Faith is the polar opposite of certain.  A faithful reading of the text doesn’t try to make everything fit into a nice, neat theological box.  Nor does a faithful life fit comfortably into a specific behavioral mold.  Wherever there is faith, there is room for growth—for change—for ambiguity.  I don’t believe because I can prove it.  I believe because it feels right.

Topical Index:  certainty, faith, qûm, stand, erect, Joshua 4:9

[1] Emanuel Tov, “Exegesis of the Bible Enriched by the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Scribal Practice, Text and Canon in the Dead Sea Scroll (Brill), p. 226.