Israel’s base camp, whose name means “rolling away,” was intended to be the place of the new beginning. When the Jordan River resumed its flowing, it closed Israel off from their old way of life. They were no longer labor camp slaves, for what was rolled away was “the reproach of Egypt.” They had been called the children of Israel but now they were in Israel; they were home. Joseph’s bones, transported in the longest funeral entourage in history, could now be put to rest. So the new Christian must make a clean break with the old life, and “purge out the old leaven” (1 Cor. 5:7) or its influence will continue its corrupting work. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:17-18).
At Gilgal the males were circumcised. As Paul points out, in our day “circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God” (Rom. 2:29). It’s good to be done with the applause of the world and desire only to please the Lord who bought us out of Egypt’s slave market.
It was also here that the manna stopped and the people first ate the “old corn of the land,” meaning the crop that had been a full year in getting ready for harvest. And it is helpful for us to know that whether God provides for us supernaturally by the day, sending us bread directly from heaven, or provides for us naturally through daily toil, it is all from His generous hand.
At Gilgal they first kept the Passover in the land. The first Passover had been “the real thing,” the act of the Lord in passing or hovering over the blood-stained households the night the destroying angel passed through the land of Egypt. How far away that must have seemed at Gilgal—just like Calvary might seem to us when we gather to remember that “Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.” But they never would have been in Canaan without it, and apart from Calvary, we would still be slaves as well, Satan’s “goods,” in the clutches of the “strong man armed.” —ed.
Written by J. B. Nicholson Jr