Joshua 4:8-18

Good News Translation

⁸ The men followed Joshua's orders. As the Lord had commanded Joshua, they took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, one for each of the tribes of Israel, carried them to the camping place, and put them down there. ⁹ Joshua also set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, where the priests carrying the Covenant Box had stood. (Those stones are still there.) ¹⁰ The priests stood in the middle of the Jordan until everything had been done that the Lord ordered Joshua to tell the people to do. This is what Moses had commanded.

The people hurried across the river. ¹¹ When they were all on the other side, the priests with the Lord's Covenant Box went on ahead of the people. ¹² The men of the tribes of Reuben and Gad and of half the tribe of Manasseh, ready for battle, crossed ahead of the rest of the people, as Moses had told them to do. ¹³ In the presence of the Lord about forty thousand men ready for war crossed over to the plain near Jericho. ¹⁴ What the Lord did that day made the people of Israel consider Joshua a great man. They honored him all his life, just as they had honored Moses.

¹⁵ Then the Lord told Joshua ¹⁶ to command the priests carrying the Covenant Box to come up out of the Jordan. ¹⁷ Joshua did so, ¹⁸ and when the priests reached the riverbank, the river began flowing once more and flooded its banks again.