The region about Jordan, Matthew 3:5.

"Saith Rabbah Bar Bar Channah, R. Jochanan saith Jordan is not, but inwards from Jericho, and beneath it." You would think me more skilful than a diver, to fetch this secret from the bottom. 'Jordan is not Jordan above Jericho,' is a paradox that vexes the Glossers themselves, much more therefore may it me. One understands the thing according to the bare letter; for "he that voweth (saith he) that he will not drink of Jordan, may drink above Jericho." Another understands it of Jericho, as being a bounds, yea, as the bounds named below Jericho only; Joshua 18:20. We make no tarrying upon the business. But if Jordan had such a limitation, that Jordan was not above Jericho, 'The region about Jordan,' is to be understood in the same limitation, namely, that it is only below Jericho. See the Seventy on Genesis 13:10,12.

The masters, sifting this business, out of one scruple move another; for they speak these words; "Jordan floweth out of the cave of Paneas, goes along by the Sibbechean sea, by the sea of Tiberias, by the sea of Sodom, and passeth on, and glides into the Great sea; but Jordan is not but inwards from Jericho, and below it." Let any shew me where Jordan flows out of the sea of Sodom into the Mediterranean. The river Shihor, carrying blackness in its name, may be taken for it, if it be any other; but neither does this appear concerning it.

While you see multitudes gathered together to John, and gladly baptized in Jordan, without fear, without danger, alas, how much was Jordan changed from that Jordan in that story of Saligniac! "Jordan (saith he), in which place Christ was baptized, is famous for a ruinous building. Here, therefore, all we pilgrims went into the holy river, and washed our bodies and our souls; those from filth, and these from sin; a matter of very great joy and health, had not an unhappy accident disturbed our joys. For a certain physician, a Frenchman, of our company, an honest man, going something further into the river, was caught with a crocodile (whether one should call it a dragon or a beast, it is uncertain), and swallowed him up, not without the common grief of our brethren."

The wilderness also, where our Saviour underwent his forty days' temptation, was on the same bank of Jordan where the baptism of John was; St. Luke witnessing it, that Jesus, being now baptized, "returned from Jordan," namely, from the same tract whereby he came thither.