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ACROSS THE YARDEN AND a considerable distance upstream from Bet Yariq lay a small village where nothing extraordinary ever happened.
Until today.
It was the boys who sounded the alarm. "Look! Look!" they cried, pointing toward the river.
Had they described what was happening, fathers and mothers would have scoffed and shooed them away. Instead, their simple warning piqued adult curiosity. Some villagers walked to where houses didn't obscure their vision. Others could see it right where they were.
The river, which had been flowing at flood stage from the recent heavy rains, had come to a stop abreast of the village. In one direction was churning brown water, and in the other was dry riverbed. Where the two met, a towering wedge of water grew skyward.
The entire village stumbled, trance-like, toward the river, agape watching the awesome, gravity-defying display.
Some began to cry out in fear, and stopped moving forward for a closer look. Many shrank from the sight, and reversed direction, instinctively acting as if distance might protect them from the tremendous power piling the river up in a heap.
IN BET-YARIQ IT WAS also the boys who sounded the alarm. Anwar remained atop the wall, while Nadir ran down into the apartment to fetch the family. Not only did Rachav's family ascend to the top of the wall, but so did swarms of other wall-dwellers.
Neighbors opined that the Yacovites were committing the ultimate blunder trying to ford the river that time of year, and where their enemies could see them. They'd be easy prey for weeks, and Bet Yariq's garrison would make short work of them.
Such speculation died in peoples' throats as they got their first glimpse eastward over the parapets. The Yacovite camp was gone. Like a churning carpet of ants, hordes of the desert nomads were crossing a dry riverbed where the Yarden had once flowed. Women fainted and men cried out in stark terror.
"What happened to the water?" Papa asked, to nobody specific. His face was pale and his pupils dilated. "Where is the river?"
Anwar, standing at the edge of the parapet, pointed upriver into the distance. "Do you see that?"
Everyone close enough to hear Anwar over the murmur of the crowd turned their gaze in the direction indicated.
"What, by all the gods, is that?" asked one of their neighbors, observing the rising tower of muddy, churning liquid toward the horizon.
"That's the water of the river," replied another neighbor, scarcely believing his own statement.
The skies were unusually clear today. Several people pointed at the red planet, now hanging as large as a grapefruit in the sky.
"Nergal has dried up the river!" Someone cried.
That made no sense at all, Rachav thought. It is The God-of-Many-Names who stood the water up in a heap so that his people could cross over.
The noise level rose as files of Gibborite soldiers began rushing up onto the top of the wall. With expressions of rage, panic, and everything in between, they bellowed at the civilians to clear the walls and return to their homes. Orders passed down from leaders to their subordinates, and the giants took positions at the parapets brandishing spears, bows, and even boulders.
"I thought they were going to get bogged down if they were stupid enough to cross this time of year," complained one giant to his fellows. "We were going to attack and they would be helpless."
"Shut up and man your position!" barked his commanding officer.
"We're doomed!" another giant exclaimed, oblivious to military discipline, pointing at the tower of water climbing into the sky. "We can't fight against a god who can do that! We can't fight against his army!"
The commanding officer began to scream at the soldier, but Rachav didn't hear all of it, as by that time she was herded onto the staircase leading down from the wall, packed in between the other civilians.
ON THE BANK OF THE dry riverbed, Y'hoshua watched as the last tribe marched across.
He couldn't stop looking at the ground. It was bone-dry. One would expect it to be at least mud that sucked at the sandal with every step, as recently as it had been submerged under so much water. But it wasn't even moist.
He also couldn't help glancing upriver, expecting the towering mass of water to come crashing down at any moment and sweep his nation away. El Elyon had proven himself a faithful and trustworthy god beyond any doubt...and yet Y'hoshua couldn't help being nervous. Only part of his paranoia was due to the capricious nature of other gods. Mostly, it was because he knew his fellow Yacovim were not deserving of a trustworthy god. Y'hoshua doubted his own worthiness, in fact. Every day was a struggle to conduct himself in a manner that would not disappoint El Elyon
When the entire nation stood safely in formation on the west bank, Y'hoshua sent a squad of soldiers back to the middle of the riverbed. They were hand-picked men, representing all of the war-going tribes. Once near where the priests stood, they erected a pile of stones taken from the valley. Then each man found a large stone in the riverbed and hoisted it onto his shoulder. They hauled the stones back to the west bank and stood awaiting orders.
Y'hoshua signaled to the priests who stood in the riverbed.
Each priest held one end of a wooden pole, and the poles suspended the Arown, which was normally kept in an inner chamber of the Temple. The shrouded, golden chest was not to be worshiped; it was not purported to be a god, or a representation of a god. But it was a sacred object, instrumental for congress between Yacov's high priest and Hashem. Nobody was allowed to touch it, and the only time anyone besides the high priest even saw the shape of it under its tarpaulin was during transit between camps.
At Y'hoshua's signal, the priests bearing the shrouded chest left their spot and marched over. They climbed the bank and when the last one's feet left the riverbed, a loud crashing noise sounded in the distance.
The tribes lining the bank looked upriver and saw the towering mass of water falling into the dry bed. As if invisible walls stood on both sides, no water fell outside the banks on either side, but tumbled forward down the wadi. Within moments the churning brown water had reached the spot of the crossing, flowing at flood stage just like it had been before. A few moments more, and there was no evidence that the miracle had ever taken place, save in the memory of those who had witnessed it.
The priests bearing the Arown followed the Radiant Mist as it drifted westward, and at Y'hoshua's command, the enormous tribal formations marched inland, followed by hordes of women, children and livestock.
The Radiant Mist stopped to hover over a large flat, grassy plain, and the priests came to a halt directly under it. The rest of the L'vim swarmed around the priestly detail, setting up the Portable Temple and their own dwelling tents with methodical efficiency. The other tribes grouped together according to camps and began to form the four rectangles extending like arrow-straight spokes from the square hub of the L'vim camp.
Due east of the Temple's outer courtyard, the men from the fighting tribes stacked the stones gathered from the riverbed. The name of the the campsite would become "Stone Circle" because of this round stack.
While the practiced routine of setting up camp took place, Y'hoshua pointed to the pile of large rocks and proclaimed it to be a memorial of how they crossed the river that day. Years later, when new generations asked their parents about the simple monument, the parents should tell them the story of how El Elyon stood the waters up in a heap, and the nation crossed over on dry land.
INSIDE THEIR APARTMENT, Rachav and her family crowded around the window. By looking out at an angle, they saw the procession from the Yarden to the plain opposite Bet-Yariq. Mother was strangely silent, but her children speculated aloud about what all this meant.
THE GIBBORITES ABOVE Rachav's family's apartment, on the roof of the wall, watched the crossing with fascination, confusion, and horror. Some focused on the strange procedures their enemy followed. Some obsessed about their mean fate, faced with an enemy army which was demonstrably unstoppable. Others gave assurance (without much conviction) that no army could breach the massive walls of Bet-Yariq (especially not the puny little militia men on the plain below them, with their makeshift weapons and lack of chariots or horses).
