Catholic Commentary
Call to Sanctification and the Priests Take Up the Ark
5Joshua said to the people, “Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow Yahweh will do wonders among you.”6Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, “Take up the ark of the covenant, and cross over before the people.” They took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people.
Joshua 3:5–6 records Joshua's command for the people to sanctify themselves in preparation for Yahweh's miraculous intervention at the Jordan River, followed by his instruction to the priests to carry the Ark of the Covenant and lead the crossing. The passage establishes a sequence where ritual purification must precede divine action, and where the priestly bearing of God's presence takes precedence over human military leadership.
Before God acts in wonders, His people must first consecrate themselves — holiness precedes the holy act.
Joshua 3:5 — "Sanctify yourselves"
The Hebrew verb qiddeshû (from qādash, "to be holy, set apart") is a reflexive imperative: the people are commanded to actively participate in their own consecration. This is not passive reception but a demanded cooperation with divine grace. The same command appears in Exodus 19:10–11, where Israel is told to sanctify itself before Yahweh descends on Sinai — the parallel is deliberate and structurally important. Joshua is casting the Jordan crossing as a second Sinai-event, a new theophany. Concretely, such sanctification in the ancient Israelite context involved abstaining from sexual relations (cf. Ex 19:15), washing of garments, and ritual cleanliness — an outward ordering of the body to signal an inward reorientation toward God.
The phrase "for tomorrow Yahweh will do wonders (niplā'ôt) among you" is striking. The word niplā'ôt is the same vocabulary used of the Exodus plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex 3:20; 15:11). Joshua is not promising a military operation; he is promising a theophany — a direct, miraculous intervention of God. The "tomorrow" creates sacred anticipation: the people are not to enter the wonder unprepared. Holiness must precede the holy act. There is an irreducible sequence: sanctification, then divine wonder.
Joshua 3:6 — "Take up the ark of the covenant, and cross over before the people"
The Ark of the Covenant — containing the tablets of the Law, a jar of manna, and Aaron's rod (Heb 9:4) — is the locus of Yahweh's enthroned presence among Israel. For the Ark to go before the people is for God Himself to lead the advance. This reverses the human instinct: no general, no vanguard of warriors — only the priests bearing the divine presence lead the way into the swelling Jordan.
The priests' obedience is noteworthy: Joshua speaks and "they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people." There is no deliberation, no qualification. This immediate priestly obedience is itself an act of faith — they do not yet know that the waters will part. They move first, into the unknown, carrying God.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
In the fourfold sense of Scripture, this passage is rich at every level. Allegorically, the Ark crossing before the people prefigures Christ leading His Church through death into life — the priest-bearing of the divine presence anticipates the ordained priesthood bearing the Eucharistic Lord. Tropologically (morally), the command to sanctify oneself before encountering the wondrous God is a permanent moral law governing every approach to the sacred. Anagogically, the entry into the Promised Land prefigures the entry of the soul into Heaven, preceded always by Christ.
Catholic tradition reads these two verses as a compressed theology of the sacred. The sequence — sanctification, then the divine wonder — maps precisely onto the sacramental economy. The Catechism teaches that "the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the font from which all her power flows" (CCC 1074), but this summit demands preparation. The Church's requirement of a state of grace before receiving the Eucharist (CCC 1385) is the direct theological descendant of Joshua's qiddeshû: one does not approach the Real Presence of God unprepared.
Origen, in his Homilies on Joshua, interprets the entire Joshua narrative as a type of Christ (he notes that "Joshua" and "Jesus" are the same name in Greek: Iēsous), and specifically reads the priests bearing the Ark as the apostles and their successors carrying Christ in the sacraments into the midst of the world. The Ark as a type of Mary — the living tabernacle who bore the Incarnate God — is developed by St. Ambrose and later by St. John Damascene: just as the Ark carried the Word of the Law, so Mary carried the Word made Flesh.
The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§15) affirms that the Old Testament retains permanent value as foreshadowing the fullness of grace in Christ. These verses illustrate that principle perfectly: the structure of priestly mediation, of God going before His people, and of the call to holiness before divine encounter are not abolished but fulfilled in the New Covenant.
For the contemporary Catholic, Joshua 3:5–6 issues a challenge that cuts against the grain of a casual, consumer approach to faith. "Sanctify yourselves" is not a suggestion made to a spiritually comfortable people; it is a command given on the eve of a miracle. Before Mass, the Church provides the Penitential Rite and the option of Confession precisely because God is about to "do wonders" on the altar — the Eucharist is the Jordan crossing happening anew.
Practically: before Sunday Mass, resist the temptation to arrive distracted, hurried, or spiritually unprepared. The Church's tradition of arriving early for silent prayer, of fasting for one hour beforehand (CIC 919), and of examining one's conscience before receiving Communion are all disciplined forms of Joshua's command. If you are in grave sin, follow the priestly example of verse 6 — go first, immediately, to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The priests didn't deliberate; they moved. So should you. The wonders of God await those who consecrate themselves to meet them.
Commentary