Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to header Skip to footer

Bible Insights

Since 2003, our Bible Forum column has provided readers with valuable Bible scholarship and historical context. Starting with this issue, the Journal is revamping the column to feature shorter insights and ideas from contributors’ individual Bible study. This approach will continue to shed new light on familiar (or not so familiar) Bible stories, history, and scholarship. But we also hope it will inspire more readers to further their own study of the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s writings—and to offer their insights and discoveries for publication.

Why the Jordan?

From the April 2011 issue of The Christian Science Journal


When I visited the Jordan River, I saw how much it represented life to Israel. It can be a dry and inhospitable land, but where the river runs there is a flourishing verdure. One of the possible meanings for the name Jordan is derived from the root “to descend,” meaning “the stream that descends rapidly.” In various accounts in Scripture, the Jordan River is a significant symbol. When looking beneath the surface of these experiences, I feel it could indicate a point at which individuals crossed over from the material sense of being to the spiritual, from belief in mortality to an apprehension and understanding of immortal being, leaving behind irrelevant materiality.

In Second Kings, Naaman, a highly regarded man and the commander of the Syrian army, was a leper who went to Elisha for healing (see chap. 5). He had expected Elisha to meet him in person; instead, Elisha sent a messenger out to Naaman, asking him to wash in the Jordan seven times. In response to Elisha’s request, Naaman “turned and went away in a rage,” refusing to follow Elisha’s instructions.

I wondered: Why did Elisha instruct Naaman to bathe in the Jordan River? Naaman also wondered, asking “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean?” I believe it took deep humility—and possibly some time—to come down from his human sense of greatness. An uplifting descent was required. But after talking with his servants, he was willing, and his innate understanding of the necessity of obedience overcame the reluctance to follow the simplest of orders. As a result, he returned to the Jordan River and dutifully immersed himself seven times, cleansing himself of impurity of thought—a “spiritual baptism” (see Science and Health, p. 242).

Sign up for unlimited access

You've accessed 1 piece of free Journal content

Subscribe

Subscription aid available

 Try free

No card required

More In This Issue / April 2011

concord-web-promo-graphic

Explore Concord—see where it takes you.

Search the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures