s; after which
the entire multitude followed, according to their tribes, having their
children and their wives in the midst of them, as being afraid for them,
lest they should be borne away by the stream. But as soon as the priests
had entered the river first, it appeared fordable, the depth of the
water being restrained and the sand appearing at the bottom, because the
current was neither so strong nor so swift as to carry it away by its
force; so they all passed over the river without fear, finding it to be
in the very same state as God had foretold he would put it in; but the
priests stood still in the midst of the river till the multitude should
be passed over, and should get to the shore in safety; and when all were
gone over, the priests came out also, and permitted the current to run
freely as it used to do before. Accordingly the river, as soon as the
Hebrews were come out of it, arose again presently, and came to its own
proper magnitude as before.

4. So the Hebrews went on farther fifty furlongs, and pitched their camp
at the distance of ten furlongs from Jericho; but Joshua built an altar
of those stones which all the heads of the tribes, at the command of the
prophets, had taken out of the deep, to be afterwards a memorial of the
division of the stream of this river, and upon it offered sacrifice to
God; and in that place celebrated the passover, and had great plenty of
all the things which they wanted hitherto; for they reaped the corn of
the Canaanites, which was now ripe, and took other things as prey; for
then it was that their former food, which was manna, and of which they
had eaten forty years, failed them.

5. Now while the Israelites did this, and the Canaanites did not attack
them, but kept themselves quiet within their own walls, Joshua resolved
to besiege them; so on the first day of the feast [of the passover], the
priests carried the ark round about, with some part of the armed men to
be a guard to it. These priests went forward, blowing with their seven
trumpets; and exhorted the army to be of good courage, and went round
about the city, with the senate following them; and when the priests
had only blown with the trumpets, for they did nothing more at all, they
returned to the camp. And when they had done this for six days, on the
seventh Joshua gathered the armed men and all the people together, and
told them these good tidings, That the city should now be taken, since
God would on that day