Joshua 3:16

Ver. 16. The waters which came down from above, stood, &c.— Instead of continuing their course, being arrested by the divine hand, they accumulated, and formed as it were a mountain, which is the rendering of the Vulgate. Or else, as we may plainly conceive, being obliged to go back towards their source, they rose up in heaps for a vast way backward, very far, as the text expresses it, from the city of Adam, which is beside Zaretan. This city of Adam is not known; and the situation of Zaretan is in dispute.

Perhaps the most probable account that can be given, is, that Zaretan was placed to the west of the Jordan, a little below Bethsan, or Scythopolis, which stood opposite to Succoth; 1 Kings 4:12; 1 Kings 7:46. Now Succoth lay on the other side of the river, (see Genesis 33:17. Joshua 13:27.) not far from the lake of Gennezareth; consequently, Adam was on the east side, but more northerly than Succoth. Now, as the Israelites crossed the Jordan, as it is supposed, by the borders of Bethabara, where St. John afterwards baptized, (see on ver. 17.) the waters must have gone back the whole computed distance from Bethabara to Zaretan.

And those that came down toward the sea of the plain—failed— That is, the waters which were below the place where the Israelites passed, continued to flow, and lose themselves in the sea of the plain, otherwise called the Salt or Dead Sea; thus leaving dry a great part of the river's channel. From the place where the waters stopped, down to the Dead Sea, is reckoned sixteen or eighteen miles. Such, therefore, was the breadth of the passage which opened to the Israelites, opposite to, and in the face of the city of Jericho.

See commentary on Judges 3:14