Joshua rose up early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to the Jordan, he and all the children of Israel; and they lodged there before they passed over.
The landscape on each side of the Jordan was in most places covered with the rank growth due to the annual flooding, and it was a cluttered mass of deposits of mud, gravel, dead weeds, driftwood, and exposed roots of trees.  The swiftness of the river was rendered even more dangerous by its zig-zag current and muddy bed.  It could easily sweep a man from the side into midstream.  In the April flood, the Jordan just about doubled in size, from its usual 90 to 100 feet in width to almost twice that.[10]