Today, I am reading and commenting on  Joshua 5-7.

Some things in this passage struck me as curious, and others as something to think about.  I will write about them in the order they appear in the passage until  I feel like this is getting too long (or I have covered all of them).  At the beginning of the passage we learn that none of the Israelite males born after they left Egypt had been circumcised up until this point.  So, God tells Joshua to have them all circumcised.  I wondered why none of the Israelites were circumcised in the wilderness, so I did an Internet search to see what others had to say on the subject.  The best explanation I found suggested that the Israelites did not circumcise their children in the wilderness because the covenant God had made with Abraham had been broken when they initially refused to go into the Promised Land.  Now that they were going into the Promised Land, it was time to renew their side of the bargain.  There are some other aspects of that which are less than clear, but I had not noticed them before I read this answer, so I will leave them in the back of my mind for now.

Next I want to write about how they are their first produce from the Promised Land the day after their first Passover in the Promised Land and they stopped receiving manna.  So, God did not stop supplying them with manna when they crossed the Jordan River.  He did not stop doing so until they began to eat food produced in the land which He had promised them.  I find this significant because I have heard manna explained as a naturally occurring substance in the Sinai Peninsula (the person I heard making that explanation even identified the substance which they thought it was, but I forget what they suggested).  Now, while there is some chance that manna was the substance so identified, the fact that the Israelites continued to receive it each day as they traveled around the Dead Sea, up to the eastern bank of the Jordan River, and even after they initially crossed the Jordan, indicates that they were being fed by something more than just a naturally occurring substance which they happened to find along their way.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.