Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
(see at Lev 23:9ff.), and therefore really at the close of the rainy reason, and after the
snow has been long melted upon Hermon, as it is then that the lake of Tiberias
reaches its greatest height, in consequence of the rainy season and the melting of the
snow, so that it is only then that the Jordan flows with its full stream into the Dead
Sea ( Robinson , ii. p. 263). At this time of the year the river cannot of course be
waded through even at its shallowest fords, whereas this is possible in the summer
season, when the water is low. It is only by swimming that it can possibly be crossed,
and even that cannot be accomplished without great danger, as it is ten or twelve feet
deep in the neighbourhood of Jericho, and the current is very strong (vid., Seetzen , R.
ii. pp. 301, 320-1; Rob. ii. p. 256). Crossing at this season was regarded as a very
extraordinary feat in ancient times, so that it is mentioned in 1 Chron 12:15 as a
heroic act on the part of the brave Gadites. It may possibly have been in this way that
the spies crossed and recrossed the river a few days before. But that was altogether
impossible for the people of Israel with their wives and children.
It was necessary, therefore, that the Lord of the whole earth should make a road by a
miracle of His omnipotence, which arrested the descending waters in their course, so
that they stood still as a heap "very far," sc., from the place of crossing, "by the town
of Adam" ( bª'aadaam (OT:120) must not be altered into mee'daam (OT:6720), from
Adam, according to the Keri ), "which is by the side of Zarthan." The city of Adam ,
which is not mentioned anywhere else (and which Luther has erroneously understood
as an appellative, according to the Arabic, "people of the city"), is not to be
confounded with Adamah , in the tribe of Naphtali (Josh 19:36). The town of Zarthan
, by the side of which Adam is situated, has also vanished. Van de Velde and Knobel
imagine that the name Zarthan has been preserved in the modern Kurn (Horn)
Sartabeh , a long towering rocky ridge on the south-west of the ford of Damieh ,
upon which there are said to be the ruins of a castle.
This conjecture is not favoured by any similarity in the names so much as by its
situation. For, on the one hand, the mountain slopes off from the end of this rocky
ridge, or from the loftiest part of the horn, into a broad shoulder, from which a lower
rocky ridge reaches to the Jordan, and seems to join the mountains on the east, so that
http://207.44.232.113/~bible/comment/ot/k&d/josh/jos15.html (1 of 2) [13/08/2004 01:17:02 p.m.]