The Jordan River stood as a barrier before Israel entering the Promised Land. It was an obstacle between promise and fulfilment. Reading Joshua 3 and Joshua 4, one relives the crossing of the river twenty-one times. Beck wants to consider the significance of this repeated crossing of the Jordan.

The primary themes that configure the book of Joshua are constituted by possession of the promised land, obedience to the commands of Moses, and the extermination of the peoples of the land. Even though there has been common agreement that these themes function to establish a sense of national identity, attempts to describe how they do so have been frustrated by the apparent contradictory perspectives they present.