Commentary on Joshua - Keil & Delitzsch - David Cox

Keil and Delitzsch <strong>Commentary</strong> on the Old Testament
to our pluperfect, but always expresses the succession either of time or thought. This early Hebrew form
of thought and narrative is completely overlooked by Knobel , when he pronounces vv. 1b-3 an
interpolation from a second document, and finds the apodosis to v. 1a in v. 4. The supposed discrepancynamely,
that the setting up of the memorial is not described in vv. 5ff. as a divine command, as in vv. 8,
10-by which Knobel endeavours to establish his hypothesis, is merely a deduction from the fact that
Joshua did not expressly issue his command to the twelve men as a command of Jehovah, and therefore is
nothing more than an unmeaning argumentum e silentio. ) etc.
Verse 1-5. When all the people had crossed over Jordan,
(Note: The piska in the middle of v. 1 is an old pre-Masoretic mark, which the Masorites have left,
indicating a space in the midst of the verse, and showing that it was the commencement of a parashah. )
Joshua issued to the twelve men who had been appointed by the twelve tribes the
command given to him by God: "Go before the ark of Jehovah into the midst of
Jordan, and take every man a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of
the tribes of the Israelites," or, as it is expressed in the fuller explanation in the
divine command in v. 3, "from the standing-place of the priests, the setting up of
twelve stones ( haakiyn
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