Joshua 3:5

5 And Joshua said to the people, Sanctify yourselves against to-morrow, for to-morrow the Lord will do wonders among you.

Joshua 3:5 Meaning and Commentary

Joshua 3:5

And Joshua said unto the people
On the third day; and the thirtieth day of the mourning for Moses, Jarchi says, was the first of the three days, and that being the seventh day of the month, this must be the ninth, as it is most clear the morrow was the tenth:

sanctify yourselves;
in a ceremonial sense, by washing their bodies and their clothes, and abstaining from their wives; and in a moral sense, by acts of religion and devotion, by prayer and meditation, and the exercise of repentance and, good works: it may denote that sanctification is necessary to our passage over Jordan, or through death to the heavenly Canaan, for without holiness no man shall see the Lord:

for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you:
in their sight and presence, and for them, by dividing the waters of Jordan, that they might pass through it as on dry land; this, as Kimchi says, was the tenth of Nisan, as is plain from ( Joshua 4:19 ) .

Joshua 3:5 In-Context

3 and they charged the people, saying, When ye shall see the ark of the covenant of the Lord our God, and our priests and the Levites bearing it, ye shall depart from your places, and ye shall go after it.

4 But let there be a distance between you and it; ye shall stand as much as two thousand cubits . Do not draw nigh to it, that ye may know the way which ye are to go; for ye have not gone the way before.

5 And Joshua said to the people, Sanctify yourselves against to-morrow, for to-morrow the Lord will do wonders among you.

6 And Joshua said to the priests, Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and go before the people: and the priests took up the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and went before the people.

7 And the Lord said to Joshua, This day do I begin to exalt thee before all the children of Israel, that they may know that as I was with Moses, so will I also be with thee.