[It] is explained (v. 18), in which our Interpreter has excellently rendered the matter and the sense. Yet [it] will not be beside the point to hear, almost word for word, what is in the Hebrew. “And it was,” says the text, “when—
(col. 454 — lower)
—when the priests, the bearers of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, came up from the middle of the Jordan, [and] the soles of the priests’ feet were transferred onto the dry [land], the waters of the Jordan returned to their place, and went, as yesterday and the day before, over all their banks.” In which words these [things] are to be noted. First: from this ascent of the priests, Rashi seeks to prove — in Lyranus and Abulensis (the cited quest. 20) — the argument for the “flight” [flying] of the ark and the priests, about which [in] the preceding question: as if [someone] who, from the deep of some river, [comes up]—
(col. 455)
—[as if one] who has stood a while [in the deep], comes from the channel to the bank, [and] does not “ascend” [fly up]. Secondly: otherwise the whole people too would have had to “fly,” because it also (in the following v. 19) is written to have “ascended.” Moreover, the word which marks the priests’ feet [as] “transferred” could also be rendered so as to call them “drawn out and plucked up” — not [as if] they had been fixed in any deeper mud (as could be understood from [ch.] 3 part 2 q. 11), but [that], on account of the long station in the same place, and the altogether unmoved step, they had, like trees, been seen fixed [rooted] there. Thirdly: [the] “dry” [land] is here called earth which was not merely dried up for some hours now, but was simply dry — covered, namely, by no river, wet with no waters, except perhaps rain- or spring-[water]. And therefore the 70 rendered those two [words]: ἔθηκαν τὰ πόδας ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς [ethēkan ta podas epi tēs gēs, “they set [their] feet upon the ground”]. Fourthly: the waters are said to have “returned” — not those which had already flowed off into the Dead Sea, but those which, like mountains, had stood heaped up and gathered together. And although they had never yet before descended into the lower channel, [they] are nevertheless said to have “returned,” because, according to the desire of their own nature and their wonted course, they had already in a manner [begun to] descend, and only a new and unwonted barrier had before held them back. Or rather [it is that] “the waters of the Jordan” is the Jordan itself, which is rightly said to have “returned,” because [it] had before been there. For the Angel removed that barrier which he had set against the river (about which [in] the preceding [ch.] 3 part 2 q. 8 & 12), and, in its former manner, it began to be poured back and to flow again through the whole channel. Yet [it] did not take away the whole at once. (Otherwise so great a heap of waves would, by its own force, have overwhelmed all the neighbouring [region].) But little by little, and wisely, as it saw [that] the emptied channel of the river could be filled again without any harm to any city, place, or man. And then “the waters went, as yesterday and the day before” — that is, as always before, as expounded elsewhere above. But because in these harvest days the Jordan overflowed (as also [was] handed down above), it, after being loosed by the Angel, flowed out even beyond its banks, as it flowed before the Angelic barriers were set against it. And therefore the Hebrew text says [that] those waters “went over all their banks.” And although the 70 render the Hebrew al [עַל] by [a preposition], they signify the same, when they say [that] those [waters] went out δι᾽ ὅλης τῆς κρηπίδος [di’ holēs tēs krēpidos, “through the whole brink [rim]”].