Joshua 3:15

for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest In the deeply sunken, tropical valley of the Jordan, the harvest had already commenced, and the snow on Hermon having begun to melt, the "yellow" water of the river stood high and had overflowed its lower bank. "We were on the banks of the Jordan.… Muddy, swollen, and turbid, the stream was far too formidable and rapid for the most adventurous to attempt their intended bathe.… Had we arrived a few days sooner, we could not have approached the river at all; for it had been overflowing its banks and filling the lower level, to which we had descended from the plain, and which was still a deep slimy ooze. Under our tree, however, the drift had formed a sandbank, on which we could sit. By measurement we found that the river had lately been fourteen feet higher than its present margin, and yet it was still many feet above its ordinary level." Tristram's Land of Israel, p. 223.

Observe: (a) The feet of the priests were dipped in the brim of the water. This is explained by the season being that of a periodical inundation of the Jordan, which overflowed its banks all the time of harvest;

(b) The barleyharvest is here meant, for the wheat harvest was not fully completed till Pentecost, or fifty days later in the year, and the Israelites crossed the Jordan on the 10th day of Abib or Nisan, i.e. four days before the Passover;

(c) Now in Exodus we learn that at the Plague of Hail, which was but a day or two before the Passover, "the flaxand the barleywere smitten, for the barley was in the earand the flax was boiled. But the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up;"

(d) It would seem then that the flax and the barley were crops which ripened about the same time in Egypt, and as the climate of Canaan did not differ materially from that of Egypt, especially in the sunken Ghôrof the Jordan, this was, no doubt, the case in Canaan too; there also these two crops would come in at the same time, and this also must have been the season of the flaxharvest;

(e) Now Rahab hid the spies in the stalks of flax(Joshua 2:6) laid on the roof doubtless to steep and season. Here we have a strikingly undesigned coincidence in the passage of the Israelites at the time of harvest, and that the barley harvest, which coincides with the Passover, and the ripening of the flax harvest. Blunt's Undesigned Coincidences, pp. 105 107.