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the commanding view it affords, not merely of the whole plain 
of the Jordan, four thousand feet below it, but of the whole of 
Palestine, from the heights of Naphtali, on the north, to the 
Negeb, beyond Hebron, on the south. 
20. Before the passage, the Israelites removed to the bank 
of the Jordan, opposite Jericho. Then we read : — “ And as the 
bearers of the ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the 
priests, the bearers of the ark, were dipped in the margin of 
the waters (for the Jordan is full up to all its banks all the 
days of harvest).” The explanatory clause here is very 
important. Had the Jordan not been in flood, the waters 
would have been confined within their own proper banks, 
which are perpendicular, so that the feet of the priests could 
not have been dipped in the water without their plunging over- 
head into the rapid current. The sacred writer consequently 
explains how the feet of the priests came to be dipped in the 
waters; it was because the river had risen over its proper 
banks and covered the flat bed of the ravine with a shallow 
flood. 
21. Then the miracle took place. The waters that came 
down from above, that is from the upper part of the river, 
“ stood — rose up one heap, a very great distance off, at Adam, 
a city which is beside Zaretan, and those which flowed down 
to the Sea of the Arabah, the sea of salt, were exhausted, were 
completely removed ; and the people passed over opposite 
Jericho.” I translate from the Hebrew, endeavouring to give 
as fully as possible the exact meaning of the passage. 
The name Adam is still retained, as I stated already, in the 
ford JDamieh, seventeen miles north of Jericho ; and the name 
Zaretan is also retained in the modern Surtabeh, a ruin on the 
top of a very conspicuous hill just over the ford. The great 
valley is at this point narrower than elsewhere, so that here, 
as in many other cases, the natural and the supernatural were 
combined in working out the will of God in reference to His 
Church. 
22. The exact scene of our Lord’s baptism is not known ; 
but there is reason to believe that it was at least not far 
distant from the place where the Israelites crossed. 
The Dead Sea. 
23. Not the least interesting part of the great valley is 
the section which constitutes the basin of the Dead Sea. 
The scenery is widely different from that farther north, 
though there is no break or interruption in the mountain- 
chains. Trees entirely disappear, the cliffs that hem in the 
valley are white limestone, naked and rugged, in some places 
