Jesus: From Genesis to Revelation

Day 3: Twelve Stones, Circumcision Renewed, and Jericho Falls

Reading

Historical Context

Three dense chapters carry Israel from the western bank of the Jordan to the rubble of Jericho – and the sequence is not military but liturgical. Before a single battle is fought, there are stones to be stacked, a covenant sign to be renewed, a Passover to be kept, and a mysterious commander to be met. God is in no hurry to conquer Canaan. He is preparing a people to receive what he is about to give.

The twelve memorial stones (‘avanim) are taken from the dry riverbed of the Jordan – one stone per tribe – and carried to Gilgal on the western bank (Joshua 4:1-9). The purpose is explicitly pedagogical: “When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD” (Joshua 4:6-7). The Hebrew mah ha’avanim ha’elleh lakhem – “What are these stones to you?” – is structured like the Passover question of Exodus 12:26: “What do you mean by this service?” God builds his memorials to provoke questions. The stones do not explain themselves. They require a storyteller. Faith is transmitted not by monuments alone but by the mouths of parents who can say, “Let me tell you what God did.”

At Gilgal, God commands Joshua to circumcise the new generation (Joshua 5:2-9). The generation born in the wilderness had not received the covenant sign. The Hebrew phrase cherevot tsurim – “flint knives” – is archaic, evoking a technology older than Israel itself, deliberately linking this circumcision to the ancient covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:9-14). After the circumcision, God declares: “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you” (Joshua 5:9). The Hebrew verb galoti (“I have rolled away”) provides the folk etymology for the place name Gilgal – “rolling.” The shame of slavery, the stigma of forty years of wilderness wandering, the identity as a nation that could not enter its own land – all of it is rolled away. They are no longer refugees. They are covenant people standing on covenant soil bearing the covenant sign.

The manna ceases the day after Passover (Joshua 5:11-12). For forty years, God fed them with bread from heaven. Now they eat the produce of the land – ‘avur ha’arets – and the manna stops. The provision changes because the situation has changed. God does not keep providing the wilderness ration when the land’s abundance is available. The end of manna is not loss; it is arrival.

The fall of Jericho (Joshua 6) is the most deliberately anti-military conquest narrative in ancient literature. Jericho was a fortified city with walls that archaeological evidence at Tell es-Sultan suggests were massive for the period – double walls with the outer wall roughly six feet thick and the inner wall twelve feet thick. God’s battle plan involves no siege engines, no scaling ladders, no battering rams. Seven priests carry seven shoferot – ram’s horn trumpets – before the ark. The army marches in silence. For six days, one circuit around the city. On the seventh day, seven circuits, then a long blast, then a shout. And the wall “fell down flat” – the Hebrew vattippol hachomah tachteha means the wall fell “beneath itself,” collapsing straight down. The method is worship. The result is total. The city is placed under cherem – the ban of total devotion to God. Everything in it belongs to the LORD. Only Rahab and her household, marked by the scarlet cord, are spared.

Christ in This Day

The mysterious figure Joshua encounters near Jericho – “the commander of the army of the LORD” (Joshua 5:13-15) – is one of the most provocative Christophanies in the Old Testament. Joshua asks, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” The answer is devastating in its refusal to be co-opted: “No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come” (Joshua 5:14). He is not on Israel’s side. He is on his own side, and he has come to lead. Joshua falls on his face and worships – and the commander does not stop him. He is told to remove his sandals, “for the place where you are standing is holy” (Joshua 5:15). The language is identical to Moses’ encounter at the burning bush (Exodus 3:5). This is no angel. Angels refuse worship (Revelation 22:8-9). This figure accepts it. The commander of the LORD’s army is the LORD himself – the pre-incarnate Son, the divine warrior who fights for his people not as their subordinate but as their sovereign.

The fall of Jericho by worship rather than warfare anticipates the way Christ conquers. Paul writes, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4). The walls of Jericho fell to trumpet blasts and a shout – methods the world would call foolish. The power of sin and death fell to a cross and an empty tomb – methods the world calls weakness. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). God’s method has always been the same: victory through what the world considers absurd. Israel marched and shouted and the walls collapsed. Christ was crucified in weakness and the gates of hell could not prevail. The author of Hebrews confirms the pattern: “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days” (Hebrews 11:30). Faith – not force – is the mechanism of divine conquest.

The circumcision at Gilgal, where God “rolled away the reproach of Egypt,” finds its fulfillment in Christ’s work at the cross. Paul writes to the Colossians: “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God” (Colossians 2:11-12). The physical circumcision at Gilgal was a sign of covenant identity; the spiritual circumcision in Christ is the reality to which the sign pointed. And just as Gilgal’s circumcision preceded the conquest of the land, so Christ’s circumcision of the heart – his removal of the “body of the flesh” at the cross – precedes the believer’s victory over sin. Paul continues: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15). The same chapter that describes spiritual circumcision describes cosmic conquest. The pattern of Joshua 4-6 – covenant renewal, then victory – is the pattern of the gospel: union with Christ, then triumph over every stronghold.

Key Themes

Connections

Old Testament Roots

The twelve memorial stones echo the twelve pillars Moses set up at Sinai (Exodus 24:4) and anticipate Elijah’s twelve-stone altar on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:31). The circumcision at Gilgal renews the Abrahamic covenant sign (Genesis 17:9-14) for a generation that missed it. The seven-day march around Jericho, climaxing on the seventh day, echoes the creation pattern – six days of work followed by a seventh of completion. The cherem – the ban that devotes Jericho entirely to God – recalls the principle of firstfruits: the first city conquered, like the first of the harvest, belongs wholly to the LORD.

New Testament Echoes

Hebrews 11:30 cites Jericho’s fall as an act of faith. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 describes spiritual warfare using the language of strongholds that anticipates Jericho’s walls. 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 argues that God’s method of conquest – the cross – looks foolish to the world but is the power of God. Colossians 2:11-15 connects circumcision, baptism, and Christ’s triumph over cosmic powers in a single argument. Revelation 8:2 describes seven angels with seven trumpets – an echo of Jericho’s seven priests with seven shoferot – announcing God’s final conquest.

Parallel Passages

Psalm 114 celebrates both the Red Sea and the Jordan as acts of the same God: “The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs” (Psalm 114:3-4). Exodus 3:5 – “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” – is echoed verbatim in Joshua 5:15, linking Moses’ commissioning to Joshua’s. Micah 6:5 instructs Israel to “remember what happened from Shittim to Gilgal” – the exact journey of Joshua 2-5 – as evidence of the LORD’s righteous acts.

Reflection Questions

  1. The memorial stones at Gilgal were designed to make children ask questions. What “memorial stones” exist in your life or your family – tangible reminders of God’s faithfulness that prompt the next generation to ask, “What does this mean?” If none exist, what could you create?

  2. Jericho’s walls fell to marching, trumpets, and a shout – a strategy that made no military sense. Where in your life are you resisting God’s methods because they do not conform to your expectations of how victory should work? What would it look like to obey the absurd instruction?

  3. God renewed the covenant sign of circumcision and commanded Passover before the first battle. Identity preceded conquest. How does this pattern apply to the Christian life – the insistence that who you are in Christ must be established before what you do for Christ can bear fruit?

Prayer

Sovereign God, you toppled the walls of Jericho not by the strength of armies but by the obedience of worshippers – seven days of marching, seven trumpets, and a shout that shook a city to its foundations. We confess that we prefer strategies that make sense to us, methods that rely on our competence rather than your power. Teach us the foolishness that is wiser than human wisdom, the weakness that is stronger than human strength. You rolled away the reproach of Egypt at Gilgal and renewed the covenant on the soil of the promise. Roll away our shame as well – the guilt we carry, the identities we cling to, the reproach we have not yet surrendered to your grace. Establish in us the identity that precedes every victory: that we are yours, circumcised in heart, marked by the blood of Christ, belonging to the God who brings down every wall. In the name of Jesus, the commander of the LORD’s army, who stands on holy ground and calls us to remove our sandals in his presence. Amen.