Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 114:3

Jordan was driven back. It was probably at the point near the present southern fords, crossed at the time of the Christian era by a bridge. The river was at its usual state of flood at the spring of the year, so as to fill the whole of the bed, up to the margin of the jungle with which the river banks are lined. On the broken edge of the swollen stream, the band of priests stood with the ark on their shoulders. At the distance of nearly a mile in the rear was the mass of the army. Suddenly the full bed of the Jordan was dried before them. High up the river, "far, far away, ""in Adam, the city which is beside Zaretan, ""as far as the parts of Kirjathjearim" (Jos 3:16), that is, at a distance of thirty miles from the place of the Israelite encampment, the waters there stood which "descended" "from the heights above, " —stood and rose up, as if gathered into a water skin; as if in a barrier or heap, as if congealed; and those that "descended" towards the sea of "the desert, "the Salt Sea, "failed and were cut off." Thus the scene presented is of the "descending stream" (the words employed seem to have a special reference to that peculiar and most significant name of the "Jordan"), not parted asunder, as we generally fancy, but, as the Psalm expresses it, "turned backwards"; the whole bed of the river left dry from north to south, through its long windings; the huge stones lying bare here and there, imbedded in the soft bottom; or the shingly pebbles drifted along the course of the channel. —Arthur Penrhyn Stanly, in "The History of the Jewish Church, "1870.