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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Joshua 7:1

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But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.

Ch. Jos 7:1-5. The Sin of Achan, and Assault on Ai

1. committed a trespass ] The word used here in the Septuagint Version is very striking. It is the same as that employed in Act 5:1-2 to describe the sin of Ananias and Sapphira. They took for themselves, appropriated to themselves, sequestered from God, a portion of what had been devoted to Him at Jericho. Wyclif renders it “mystoken of the halewid thing.”

for Achan ] Or, Achar, as he is called in 1Ch 2:7.

the son of Zabdi ] Or, Zimri, as his name is given in 1Ch 2:6.

took of the accursed thing ] What he took is more fully described in Jos 7:21. His sin was rendered more heinous by the fact that he knew full well the ban which had been pronounced upon the doomed city, a ban extending to all time, and including even the whole family of any who should dare to restore the fortifications of Jericho. Csar in his account of the devotion of conquered towns to the gods amongst the Gauls, alluded to above, Jos 6:17, goes on to say, “Multis in civitatibus harum rerum exstructos tumulos locis consecratis conspicari licet: neque spe accidit, ut neglecta quispiam religione, aut capta apud se occultare, aut posita tollere auderet; gravissimumque ei rei supplicium cum cruciatu constitutum est ” ( Bell. Gall. Jos 6:17).

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Committed a trespass – (compare Lev 5:15 note), acted treacherously and committed a breach of faith. This suitably describes the sin of Achan, who had purloined and hidden away that which had been dedicated to God by the ban Jos 6:19.

The trespass was the act of one man, yet is imputed to all Israel, who also share in the penalty of it Jos 7:5. This is not to be explained as though all the people participated in the covetousness which led to Achans sin Jos 7:21. The nation as a nation was in covenant with God, and is treated by Him not merely as a number of individuals living together for their own purposes under common institutions, but as a divinely-constituted organic whole. Hence, the sin of Achan defiled the other members of the community as well as himself. and robbed the people collectively of holiness before God and acceptableness with Him. Israel had in the person of Achan broken the covenant Jos 7:11; God therefore would no more drive out the Canaanites before them.

The accursed thing – Rather in that which had been devoted or dedicated. Achan in diverting any of these devoted things to his own purposes, committed the sin of sacrilege, that of Ananias and Sapphira. Act 5:2-3.

Achan or Achar – (the marginal reference) the n and r being interchanged, perhaps for the sake of accommodating the name to akar, trouble Jos 7:25. Zabdi is generally identified with the Zimri of 1Ch 2:6. Zerah was twin brother of Pharez and son of Judah Gen 38:30. In this genealogy, as in others, several generations are omitted, most likely those which intervened between Zerah and Zabdi, and which covered the space between the migration of Jacobs household to Egypt and the Exodus. (Num 26:5, see the note).

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Jos 7:1

But the children of Israel committed a trespass

Corporate responsibility

This is here attributed to the whole people, which was really the act of but one man or one family.

This is not because of any guilty participation in this trespass by others; there is no intimation that any others of the people were involved in a like crime. Nor is there any implication that others were privy to the crime of Achan, and by concealment of the fact became its abettors and sharers in its guilt. In all probability his act was not known or suspected beyond the limits of his own family. Nevertheless, Israel was one people, and it is here dealt with as one corporate body. There was criminality in the midst of them. And it was necessary that it should be disavowed and punished, in order that the people might be freed from all complicity and connection with it. (W. H. Green, D. D.)

Destruction a duty

Many a thing which is attractive in itself ought to be destroyed; and if it ought to be destroyed, it ought not to be preserved. The contents of a saloon, or of a gambling-house, books and pictures which are harmful in themselves, which are, by their owners or by the public authorities, devoted to destruction, ought to be destroyed. To preserve any portion of them, under such circumstances, would be a wrong on the part of him whose duty it was to destroy them. To preserve a private letter which is entrusted to one to destroy is not in itself an act of theft, but it is an inexcusable breach of trust; and if no one else in the world is ever harmed by it, the one who preserves the letter is the worse for so doing. The destroying of that which ought to be destroyed is as clearly ones duty in its place, as the preserving of that which ought to be preserved. (H. C. Trumbull.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

CHAPTER VII

The trespass of the Israelites, 1.

Joshua sends men to view the state of Ai, 2.

They return with a favourable report, 3.

Three thousand men are sent against it, who are defeated, and

thirty-six killed, 4, 5.

Joshua is greatly distressed, prostrates himself, and inquires

of the Lord the reason why he has abandoned Israel to their

enemies, 6-9.

The Lord raises him, and informs him that, contrary to the

command, some of the people had secreted some of the spoils of

Jericho, 10-12.

He is directed how to discover the delinquent, 13-15.

Joshua inquires in what TRIBE the guilt is found, and finds it

to be in the tribe of Judah; in what FAMILY, and finds it to

be among the Zarhites; in what HOUSEHOLD, and finds it to be

in that of Zabdi; in what INDIVIDUAL, and finds it to be Achan

son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, 16-18.

Joshua exhorts him to confess his sin, 19.

He does so, and gives a circumstantial account, 20, 21.

Joshua sends for the stolen articles, 22, 23.

And Achan and all that belonged to him are brought to the valley

of Achor, stoned and burnt, 22-26.

NOTES ON CHAP. VII

Verse 1. The children of Israel committed a trespass] It is certain that one only was guilty; and yet the trespass is imputed here to the whole congregation; and the whole congregation soon suffered shame and disgrace on the account, as their armies were defeated, thirty-six persons slain, and general terror spread through the whole camp. Being one body, God attributes the crime of the individual to the whole till the trespass was discovered, and by a public act of justice inflicted on the culprit the congregation had purged itself of the iniquity. This was done to render every man extremely cautious, and to make the people watchful over each other, that sin might be no where tolerated or connived at, as one transgression might bring down the wrath of God upon the whole camp. See on Jos 7:12.

The accursed thing] A portion of the spoils of the city of Jericho, the whole of which God had commanded to be destroyed.

For Achan, the son of Carmi, c.] Judah had two sons by Tamar: Pharez and Zarah. Zarah was father of Zabdi, and Zabdi of Carmi, the father of Achan. These five persons extend through a period of 265 years and hence Calmet concludes that they could not have had children before they were fifty or fifty-five years of age. This Achan, son of Zabdi, is called, in 1Ch 2:6, Achar, son of Zimrie; but this reading is corrected into Achan by some MSS. in the place above cited.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

The children of Israel, i.e. one of them, by a very usual synecdoche or enallage, as Gen 8:4; 19:29; Mat 26:8, where that is ascribed to the disciples, which belonged to Judas only, Joh 12:4. In the accursed thing, i.e. in taking some of the forbidden and accursed goods.

Zabdi; called also Zimri, 1Ch 2:6. Zerah, or, Zarah, who was Judahs immediate son, Gen 38:30, who went with Judah into Egypt; and so for the filling up the two hundred and fifty-six years that are supposed to come between that and this time, we must allow Achan to be now an old man, and his three ancestors to have begotten each his son at about sixty years of age, which at that time was not incredible nor unusual. Against the children of Israel. Why did God punish the whole society for this one mans sin?

Answ. All of them were punished for their own sins, whereof each had a sufficient proportion; but God took this occasion to inflict the punishment upon the society, partly, because divers of them might be guilty of this sin, either by coveting what he actually did, or by concealing of his fault, which it is probable could not be unknown to others, or by not sorrowing for it, and endeavouring to purge themselves from it; partly, to make sin the more hateful, as being the cause of such dreadful and public judgments; and partly, to oblige all the members of every society to be both more circumspect in the ordering of their own actions, and more diligent to watch over one another, and to prevent the miscarriages of their brethren, which is a great benefit and blessing to them, and to the whole society, and worthy to be purchased by a sharp affliction upon the society.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

1. the children of Israel committeda trespass in the accursed thingThere was one transgressoragainst the cherem, or ban, on Jericho, and his transgressionbrought the guilt and disgrace of sin upon the whole nation.

Achancalled afterwards”Achar” (“trouble”) (1Ch2:7).

Zabdior Zimri (1Ch2:6).

Zerahor Zarah, son ofJudah and Tamar (Ge 38:30). Hisgenealogy is given probably to show that from a parentage so infamousthe descendants would not be carefully trained in the fear of God.

Jos7:2-26. THE ISRAELITESSMITTEN AT AI.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing,…. Or concerning it, with respect to it, by taking part of what was devoted to another use, and forbidden theirs: this was done, not by the whole body of the people, only by one of them; but it not being discovered who it was, it was imputed to the whole, on whom it lay to find out the guilty person and punish him, or else the whole must suffer for it: this chapter begins with a “but”, and draws a vail over the fame and glory of Joshua, observed in Jos 6:27;

for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing; of what was devoted to the Lord and to sacred uses; this he had taken to himself out of the spoil of the city of Jericho, for his own use, contrary to the command of God: his descent is particularly described, that it might be known of what family and tribe he was; and it is traced up to Zerah, who was a son of Judah, Ge 38:30;

and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel; because of the sin of Achan.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

At Jericho the Lord had made known to the Canaanites His great and holy name; but before Ai the Israelites were to learn that He would also sanctify Himself on them if they transgressed His covenant, and that the congregation of the Lord could only conquer the power of the world so long as it was faithful to His covenant. But notwithstanding the command which Joshua had enforced upon the people (Jos 6:18), Achan, a member of the tribe of Judah, laid hands upon the property in Jericho which had been banned, and thus brought the ban upon the children of Israel, the whole nation. His breach of trust is described as unfaithfulness (a trespass) on the part of the children of Israel in the ban, in consequence of which the anger of the Lord was kindled against the whole nation. , to commit a breach of trust (see at Lev 5:15), generally against Jehovah, by purloining or withholding what was sanctified to Him, here in the matter of the ban, by appropriating what had been banned to the Lord. This crime was imputed to the whole people, not as imputatio moralis , i.e., as though the whole nation had shared in Achan’s disposition, and cherished in their hearts the same sinful desire which Achan had carried out in action in the theft he had committed; but as imputatio civilis , according to which Achan, a member of the nation, had robbed the whole nation of the purity and holiness which it ought to possess before God, through the sin that he had committed, just as the whole body is affected by the sin of a single member.

(Note: In support of this I cannot do better than quote the most important of the remarks which I made in my former commentary ( Keil on Joshua, pp. 177-8, Eng. trans.): “However truly the whole Scriptures speak of each man as individually an object of divine mercy and justice, they teach just as truly that a nation is one organic whole, in which the individuals are merely members of the same body, and are not atoms isolated from one another and the whole, since the state as a divine institution is founded upon family relationship, and intended to promote the love of all to one another and to the invisible Head of all. As all then are combined in a fellowship established by God, the good or evil deeds of an individual affect injuriously or beneficially the welfare of the whole society. And, therefore, when we regard the state as a divine organization and not merely as a civil institution, a compact into which men have entered by treaty, we fail to discover caprice and injustice in consequences which necessarily follow from the moral unity of the whole state; namely, that the good or evil deeds of one member are laid to the charge of the entire body. Caprice and injustice we shall always find if we leave out of sight this fundamental unity, and merely look at the fact that the many share the consequences of the sin of one.”)

Instead of Achan (the reading here and in Jos 22:20) we find Achar in 1Ch 2:7, the liquids n and r being interchanged to allow of a play upon the verb in Jos 7:25. Hence in Josephus the name is spelt Acharos, and in the Cod. Vat. of the lxx Achar, whereas the Cod. Al. has Achan. Instead of Zabdi, we find Zimri in 1Ch 2:6, evidently a copyist’s error. Zerah was the twin-brother of Pharez (Gen 38:29-30). Matteh , from , to spread out, is used to denote the tribe according to its genealogical ramifications; whilst shebet (from an Arabic root signifying “uniform, not curled, but drawn out straight and long with any curvature at all”) was applied to the sceptre or straight staff of a magistrate or ruler (never to the stick upon which a person rested), and different from matteh not only in its primary and literal meaning, but also in the derivative meaning tribe, in which it was used to designate the division of the nation referred to, not according to its genealogical ramifications and development, but as a corporate body possessing authority and power. This difference in the ideas expressed by the two words will explain the variations in their use: for example, matteh is used here (in Jos 7:1 and Jos 7:18), and in Jos 22:1-14, and in fact is the term usually employed in the geographical sections; whereas shebet is used in Jos 7:14, Jos 7:16, in Jos 3:12; Jos 4:2, and on many other occasions, in those portions of the historical narratives in which the tribes of Israel are introduced as military powers.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

The Sin of Achan.

B. C. 1451.

1 But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel. 2 And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Beth-el, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai. 3 And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither; for they are but few. 4 So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai. 5 And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water.

The story of this chapter begins with a but. The Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was noised through all that country, so the foregoing chapter ends, and it left no room to doubt but that he would go on as he had begun conquering and to conquer. He did right, and observed his orders in every thing. But the children of Israel committed a trespass, and so set God against them; and then even Joshua’s name and fame, his wisdom and courage, could do them no service. If we lose our God, we lose our friends, who cannot help us unless God be for us. Now here is,

I. Achan sinning, v. 1. Here is only a general mention made of the sin; we shall afterwards have a more particular account of it from his own mouth. The sin is here said to be taking of the accursed thing, in disobedience to the command and in defiance of the threatening, ch. vi. 18. In the sacking of Jericho orders were given that they should neither spare any lives nor take any treasure to themselves; we read not of the breach of the former prohibition (there were none to whom they showed any mercy), but of the latter: compassion was put off and yielded to the law, but covetousness was indulged. The love of the world is that root of bitterness which of all others is most hardly rooted up. Yet the history of Achan is a plain intimation that he of all the thousands of Israel was the only delinquent in this matter. Had there been more in like manner guilty, no doubt we should have heard of it: and it is strange there were no more. The temptation was strong. It was easy to suggest what a pity it was that so many things of value should be burnt; to what purpose is this waste? In plundering cities, every man reckons himself entitled to what he can lay his hands on. It was easy to promise themselves secrecy and impunity. Yet by the grace of God such impressions were made upon the minds of the Israelites by the ordinances of God, circumcision and the passover, which they had lately been partakers of, and by the providences of God which had been concerning them, that they stood in awe of the divine precept and judgment, and generously denied themselves in obedience to their God. And yet, though it was a single person that sinned, the children of Israel are said to commit the trespass, because one of their body did it, and he was not as yet separated from them, nor disowned by them. They did it, that is, by what Achan did guilt was brought upon the whole society of which he was a member. This should be a warning to us to take heed of sin ourselves, lest by it many be defiled or disquieted (Heb. xii. 15), and to take heed of having fellowship with sinners, and of being in league with them, lest we share in their guilt. Many a careful tradesman has been broken by a careless partner. And it concerns us to watch over one another for the preventing of sin, because others’ sins may redound to our damage.

II. The camp of Israel suffering for the same: The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel; he saw the offence, though they did not, and takes a course to make them see it; for one way or other, sooner or later, secret sins will be brought to light; and, if men enquire not after them, God will, and with his enquiries will awaken theirs. Many a community is under guilt and wrath and is not aware of it till the fire breaks out: here it broke out quickly. 1. Joshua sends a detachment to seize upon the next city that was in their way, and that was Ai. Only 3000 men were sent, advice being brought him by his spies that the place was inconsiderable, and needed no greater force for the reduction of it, Jos 7:2; Jos 7:3. Now perhaps it was a culpable assurance, or security rather that led them to send so small a party on this expedition; it might also be an indulgence of the people in the love of ease, for they will not have all the people to labour thither. Perhaps the people were the less forward to go upon this expedition because they were denied the plunder of Jericho; and these spies were willing they should be gratified. Whereas when the town was to be taken, though God by his own power would throw down the walls, yet they must all labour thither and labour there too, in walking round it. It did not bode well at all that God’s Israel began to think much of their labour, and contrived how to spare their pains. It is required that we work out our salvation, though it is God that works in us. It has likewise often proved of bad consequence to make too light of an enemy. They are but few (say the spies), but, as few as they were, they were too many for them. It will awaken our care and diligence in our Christian warfare to consider that we wrestle with principalities and powers. 2. The party he sent, in their first attack upon the town, were repulsed with some loss (Jos 7:4; Jos 7:5): They fled before the men of Ai, finding themselves unaccountably dispirited, and their enemies to sally out upon them with more vigour and resolution than they expected. In their retreat they had about thirty-six men cut off: no great loss indeed out of such a number, but a dreadful surprise to those who had no reason to expect any other in any attack than clear, cheap, and certain victory. And now, as it proves, it is well there were but 3000 that fell under this disgrace. Had the body of the army been there, they would have been no more able to keep their ground, now they were under guilt and wrath, than this small party, and to them the defeat would have been much more grievous and dishonourable. However, it was bad enough as it was, and served, (1.) To humble God’s Israel, and to teach them always to rejoice with trembling. Let not him that girdeth on the harness boast as he that putteth if off. (2.) To harden the Canaanites, and to make them the more secure notwithstanding the terrors they had been struck with, that their ruin, when it came, might be the more dreadful. (3.) To be an evidence of God’s displeasure against Israel, and a call to them to purge out the old leaven. And this was principally intended in their defeat. 3. The retreat of this party in disorder put the whole camp of Israel into a fright: The hearts of the people melted, not so much for the loss as for the disappointment. Joshua had assured them that the living God would without fail drive out the Canaanites from before them, ch. iii. 10. How can this event be reconciled to that promise? To every thinking man among them it appeared an indication of God’s displeasure, and an omen of something worse, and therefore no marvel it put them into such a consternation; if God turn to be their enemy and fight against them, what will become of them? True Israelites tremble when God is angry.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

Joshua – Chapter 7

Achan and Disaster, vs. 1-5

Back in Jos 6:17 Joshua had strictly warned the Israelite soldiers not to take any of the spoil of Jericho, for it was devoted to the Lord, and to take it was to take of the accursed and to bring a curse on the camp of Israel. Nevertheless, a man of the tribe of Judah, Achan, took of that which was forbidden and brought the Lord’s wrath on Israel. There seems always to be someone who is willing to try the Lord’s word in a negative manner, (Gal 6:7-8).

The next town in the path of conquest was Ai, in the central mountains north of Jerusalem, near to Bethaven and east of Bethel, well known from the times of the patriarchs. As he had done with Jericho, Joshua sent spies to Ai, who came back with the report of the insignificance of the place. It would not require the use of the entire army, they said, only two or three thousand being thought sufficient for the job. Joshua’s decision here was the first of three serious mistakes he would make in the conquest and division of Canaan. There is no intimation that the Lord was consulted. The Lord would surely have enlightened Joshua concerning Achan’s trespass had he sought His will in going against Ai. Consequently the advice of the spies was taken, and the men of Ai subjected the Israelites to a humiliating defeat. Thirty six Israelites were slain, and the remainder were chased all the way to Shebarim, thought to be stone quarries on the slope down to the Jordan valley. It is said that the hearts of the Israelites melted, meaning that they were terribly frightened and despairing, like their enemies had been previously.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

1. But the children of Israel committed, etc Reference is made to the crime, and indeed the secret crime, of one individual, whose guilt is transferred to the whole people; and not only so, but punishment is at the same time executed against several who were innocent. But it seems very unaccountable that a whole people should be condemned for a private and hidden crime of which they had no knowledge. I answer, that it is not new for the sin of one member to be visited on the whole body. Should we be unable to discover the reason, it ought to be more than enough for us that transgression is imputed to the children of Israel, while the guilt is confined to one individual. But as it very often happens that those who are not wicked foster the sins of their brethren by conniving at them, a part of the blame is justly laid upon all those who by disguising become implicated in it as partners. For this reason Paul, (1Co 5:4) upbraids all the Corinthians with the private enormity of one individual, and inveighs against their pride in presuming to glory while such a stigma attached to them. But here it is easy to object that all were ignorant of the theft, and that therefore there is no room for the maxim, that he who allows a crime to be committed when he can prevent it is its perpetrator. I certainly admit it not to be clear why a private crime is imputed to the whole people, unless it be that they had not previously been sufficiently careful to punish misdeeds, and that possibly owing to this, the person actually guilty in the present instance had sinned with greater boldness. It is well known that weeds creep in stealthily, grow apace and produce noxious fruits, if not speedily torn up. The reason, however, why God charges a whole people with a secret theft is deeper and more abstruse. He wished by an extraordinary manifestation to remind posterity that they might all be criminated by the act of an individual, and thus induce them to give more diligent heed to the prevention of crimes.

Nothing, therefore, is better than to keep our minds in suspense until the books are opened, when the divine judgments which are now obscured by our darkness will be made perfectly clear. Let it suffice us that the whole people were infected by a private stain; for so it has been declared by the Supreme Judge, before whom it becomes us to stand dumb, as having one day to appear at his tribunal. The stock from which Achan was descended is narrated for the sake of increasing, and, as it were, propagating the ignominy; just as if it were said, that he was the disgrace of his family and all his race. For the writer of the history goes up as far as the tribe of Judah. By this we are taught that when any one connected with us behaves himself basely and wickedly, a stigma is in a manner impressed upon us in his person that we may be humbled — not that it can be just to insult over all the kindred of a wicked man, but first, that all kindred may be more careful in applying mutual correction to each other, and secondly, that they may be led to recognize that either their connivance or their own faults are punished.

A greater occasion of scandal, fitted to produce general alarm, was offered by the fact of the crime having been detected in the tribe of Judah, which was the flower and glory of the whole nation. It was certainly owing to the admirable counsel of God, that a pre-eminence which fostered the hope of future dominion resided in that tribe. But when near the very outset this honor was foully stained by the act of an individual, the circumstance might have occasioned no small disturbance to weak minds. The severe punishment, however, wiped away the scandal which might otherwise have existed; and hence we gather that when occasion has been given to the wicked to blaspheme, the Church has no fitter means of removing the opprobrium than that of visiting offences with exemplary punishment.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

ISRAELS FAILURE AND RECOVERY

Joshua 7, 8.

THE story of Achan is dramatically told. Tragedies attract and the memory easily retains their rehearsal. Readers of the Bible, though they have passed over this but a single time, are fairly familiar with even its details. It leaves a profound impression.

In some ways it has the characteristics of fiction; but, taken as a whole, it appeals to us as a plain record of a great sin and a fearful judgment. The setting is such that its historicity can hardly be questioned. The site of this ancient town is well known, and the sin of Achan is referred to in many passages of Scripture. It has been employed thousands of times in illustration of the alarming fact, Be sure your sin will find you out.

In giving attention to the text we are impressed first with

THE SIN OF ACHAN

In fact, this phrase constitutes the chapter headline of most versions of the Bible.

A study of the text impresses some facts:

Achans sin was the result of great temptation. Joshua had plainly told them

Keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord (Jos 6:18-19).

But did Joshua not know that among the spoils was this perfectly beautiful Babylonish garment a garment rich in texture, large in value, and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, and that all these would fall before the eyes of one man?

There is a difference in the strength of temptation. All sin is born of temptation, and a natural desire for personal advantage is simply inflamed by the prospect of large profit? I know a man whose clothes go regularly to the cleaners. A number of times he has left a one or five dollar bill in the pocket and it has been promptly returned; but one day he was forgetful enough to leave a fifty dollar bill in an inside false pocket, and the temptation was too great. In other words, the temptation of a fifty dollar bill is ten times as great as the temptation of a five dollar bill. Men seek to excuse themselves from sin on the ground that the temptation was great. This instance does not seem to indicate that God accepts such excuse.

Achans sin was surreptitiously committed. He took them and hid them in the midst of his tent and the silver under it. All sin is surreptitiously committed, and the deeper its dye the greater the darkness required for the deed.

This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved (Joh 3:19-20).

Achans sin was finally and fully uncovered. God called first attention to it,

Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff (Jos 7:11).

In a sense, God is commonly the one who uncovers sin; and yet He may use human agencies in so doing. Here the people are called upon to sanctify themselves because of the accursed thing that existed in the midst of Israel. And Joshua, at the command of the Lord, rose early in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes and by their families and households, until Achan, the son of Carmi, was taken. Then Joshua said unto Achan,

My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto Him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.

And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:

When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran unto the tent; and, behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it.

And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and unto all the Children of Israel, and laid them out before the Lord.

And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and alt that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of Achor.

And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.

And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day (Jos 7:19-26).

The world is not astonished to see Achans sin brought abroad. It is never astonished by such an experience; in fact, the world has come to expect it. But the world is always offended at the judgment that falls upon sin; and there are thousands of men, some even among professed Christians, who believe that this judgment against Achan was extreme.

Such overlook two facts. First, that a sin, in the inception of a movement, is greater than one that characterizes its more mature history. A young movement can be absolutely killed by one mistake. Israel is new in the land; her sanctity is essential to her success. If that be violated with impunity, the future Holds no prospect of a holy people. That is why Ananias and Sapphira perished. The church was new, the movement was only starting, its entire future depended upon its original directors. If sin triumph then, and no judgment come, the church is doomed.

THE SUFFERING OF ISRAEL

Israel suffered both defeat and the death of many.

There went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai.

And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water (Jos 7:4-5).

It was this defeat that brought attention to the sin. The chapter opens with the sentence, The Children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the Children of Israel. But this record was made long after the event and only when the full truth was known.

There are often judgments that amaze us. They seem unaccountable. That may be because we have not known what lies back of them. If we could know the conduct of men, as God knows it, we might be seldom or never surprised at the afflictions that befall them, and the chastisement that seeks their correction.

God was instantly and grossly misjudged.

Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the Ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.

And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan!

O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies!

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great Name (Jos 7:6-9)?

How often God is misjudged because all the facts are not before the face of men. When San Francisco was destroyed, men held up their hands in horror and said, Why was such a disaster permitted? Some years before the event, righteous men, who had been conducted through its underworld life, had remarked, If there is a God in Heaven that thing cannot be indefinitely continued. When St. Pierre was wiped from the earth in one moment, men marvelled, but when the full truth of St. Pierres sins were known, they marvelled that it had been left above ground so long. There is a little Mexican village thirty miles out of San Diego that is famed the world around for its wildness and iniquity. It lies on the Mexican side, miles removed from the seashore, in an apparently peaceful, quiet valley. It looks as secure as the desert is stable. But who knows? Natures convulsions have a habit of occurring on spots where men have perpetrated sins grossest outrages. Observers should not be surprised if judgment fall there.

The whole truth known, God was fully justified. In answer to Joshuas dyspeptic complaint,

O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies!

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great Name?

The Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?

Therefore the Children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed; neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you.

Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against to morrow; for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you.

In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof; and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households; and the household which the Lord shall take shall come man by man.

And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath; because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel (Jos 7:8-15).

That answer completed, Joshua makes no further complaint. He sees the reason for judgment and justifies the Divine wrath, and sets himself immediately to correction. David doubtless referred to his own gross sin of murder and lust as he poured out his heart in penitent plea, but in the prayer justifies God, saying,

I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest (Psa 51:3-4).

THE REPENTANCE AND RECOVERY

Chapter 8

The repentance complete, courage was recovered.

And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed: take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land:

And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.

So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai: and Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valour, and sent them away by night (Jos 8:1-3).

It is a principle of personal experience. It makes little difference how deeply into sin a man has gone, when once he has fully repented and is conscious in his own soul that God has forgiven him and that he has turned from that iniquity, his courage will instantly arise. There are many reported instances of men condemned and doomed to die by rope or execution, who, when the time of their capital punishment comes, meet the same with placid countenance and courageous spirit. It will be found upon investigation that such men have commonly genuinely repented. Unrepentant men may exhibit a spirit of bravado and defiance and die with curses on their lips, but only the repentant man can meet his judgment with courage, or recover courage, when let to live when the judgment is past.

The promises of Divine favor do not oppose human strategy.

And He commanded them, saying, Behold, ye shall lie in wait against the city, even behind the city; go not very far from the city, but be ye all ready:

And I, and all the people that are with me, will approach unto the city: and it shall come to pass, when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them.

(For they will come out after us) till we have drawn them from the city; for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first: therefore we will flee before them.

Then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city: for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand.

And it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set the city on fire: according to the commandment of the Lord shall ye do. See, I have commanded you.

Joshua therefore sent them forth: and they went to lie in ambush, and abode between Beth-el and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Joshua lodged that night among the people.

And Joshua rose up early in the morning, and numbered the people, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai.

And all the people, even the people of war that were with him, went up, and drew nigh, and. came before the city, and pitched on the north side of Ai: now there was a valley between them and Ai.

And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Beth-el and Ai, on the west side of the city.

And when they had set the people, even all the host that was on the north of the city, and their liers in wait on the west of the city, Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley.

And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hasted, and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain: but he wist not that there were tiers in ambush against him behind the city.

And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness.

And all the people that were in Ai were called together to pursue after them: and they pursued after Joshua, and were drawn away from the city.

And there was not a man left in Ai or Beth-el that went not out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel.

And the Lord said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city.

And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand; and they entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire.

And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and, behold, the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that way: and the people that fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers.

And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.

And the other issued out of the city, against them: so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua,

And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.

And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai (Jos 8:4-25).

The story of this successful strategic movement involves certain natural questions.

Were the men of Ai fools not to have sent spies to reconnoiter before they came forth to battle and so locate the enemy, that they might wisely meet him?

There are two possible answers! The defeat of the day before was so easy that the men of Ai might have imagined that it was real fun to go out and put the second scare into this despicable crowd of immigrants. Or, as one has suggested (but in my judgment less likely), this might have been the first time that this strategy had been used, and proving so successful, it has been utilized ever since.

Again, some will ask the question, Why, when God had promised them victory, strategy needed to be resorted to at all?

Gods promises do not as a rule propose to dispense with mans endeavor, but to employ, approve and empower, rather. The man. therefore, who has a Divine call to preach and does not feel it necessary to prepare himself by education and consecration, will find that Gods approval upon his course is a prime essential. The man who plans to put his money on the altar and consequently claims the right to riches without endeavor, will shortly discover the meaning of Solomons proverb, Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise (Pro 6:6).

The victory of Israel was not partial, but complete.

And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.

For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the Word of the Lord which He commanded Joshua.

And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day (Jos 8:25-28).

Some of us are in doubt whether God ever does anything in any other way than perfectly. The issue may seem to have many defects, but we are inclined to think that those are the influence of men upon the same. People sometimes profess to have been partially saved. We doubt if there are any such. We believe that when God saves He saves entirely. We meet those who profess to have been partially healed. We also doubt if they have had the Divine touch. We are inclined to think that when God does the work He does it perfectly.

This doctrine is delightful when it takes the form of mercy, and frightful to contemplate when it takes the form of judgment. If one would know its full significance to fear the same, let him read Rev 20:11-15:

And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

Judgments evidently from God have a tendency to turn the true believer to Gods Word. That is why Joshua felt the necessity of giving almost a day to the simple reading of Moses Law.

Then Joshua built an altar unto the Lord God of Israel in mount Ebal,

As Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the Children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which no man hath lifted up any iron: and they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the Lord, and sacrificed peace offerings.

And he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the Law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the Children of Israel.

And all Israel, and their elders, and officers, and their judges, stood on this side the Ark and on that side before the priests the Levites, which bare the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, as well the stranger, as he that was born among them; half of them over against mount Gerizim, and half of them over against mount Ebal; as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded before, that they should bless the people of Israel.

And afterward he read all the words of the Law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law.

There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them (Jos 8:30-35).

When Gods people have gone wrong, the way back to Him is the way of His Word.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

TROUBLE IN THE LORDS CAMP

CRITICAL NOTES.

Jos. 7:1. Committed a trespass] Lit., deceived a deceit The meaning of the verb is to cover, as with a garment, thence to act deceitfully or treacherously. The sin of this single member of Israel is put as the transgression of the whole body. Achan] Called, in 1Ch. 2:7, Achar, the troubler of Israel. Josephus also calls him for the same reason; the Vat. Cod. of the LXX. reads , the Alex. (Keil). Son of Zabdi] Zabdi, in 1Ch. 2:6, is given as Zimri, which latter form is thought to be an error of transcription.

2. Ai] The same as Hai in Gen. 12:8; Gen. 13:3, usually mentioned with Bethel. A small population returned to Ai from the captivity (Ez. 2:28; Neh. 7:32). In Neh. 11:31, it is called Aija; and in Isa. 10:28. Aiath; while in Jos. 18:23 it is apparently the same place which is called Avim. Bethaven] The situation is uncertain. From this verse, it cannot, as some have thought, have been another name for Bethel. Kitto thinks that in Hos. 10:5, Bethaven, the house of emptiness, is put in derison for Bethel, the house of God.

3. They are but few] The number is given in chap. Jos. 8:25, as twelve thousand. Judging by the small force sent against the city, the spies seem to have been mistaken in their estimate of the inhabitants.

5. Unto Shebarim] Probably stone quarries; it is evidently a proper name, as the Vulgate, Arabic, and most commentators agree, belonging to some locality between Ai and Jericho (Keil). Or, by translation, to the broken places, i.e., to the steep broken sides of the Mutyah (Crosby).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Jos. 7:1-5

THE FIRST REPULSE

I. The separation which comes through sin. The anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. Jehovah, who till now had been in alliance with them, was turned to be their enemy. Their sins had separated between them and their God. The separating power of sin is one of its chief and most disastrous features. Sin is disintegrating; where holiness tends to join together in the blessedness of a beautiful unity, sin rends, and divides, and isolates, and thus desolates all through Gods fair world. Sin is that ingredient from the devils laboratory, which, thrown into the cup of creations happiness, precipitates all that which otherwise would hold men and things together in the solution of a perpetual joy. It disturbs at once the unity, the beauty, and the peace of a world.

1. Sin separates between men, irrespective of character. It rends society, and revolutionises kingdoms; it breaks up families, divides churches, brings to an end partnerships in business, discharges the servant from his master, and has no more regard for unity in a palace than in a cottage.

2. Sin separates between good men and bad. It is a kind of perpetual judgment, through which, already, the sheep are being set on the right hand and the goats on the left. The sinful man withdraws himself from the righteous by preference, and the righteous from the sinful for protection, lest, standing in the way of sinners, he should become as one of them. Each, being let go, joins his own company.

3. Much more mwst sin separate between God and the wicked. The polar regions cannot be reconciled to the tropics; the night cannot make the same hours a common home, and dwell together within them in amity with the day; spotless purity cannot be at one with defilement; much less can He who is the source of all warmth and light and love and goodness and truth have fellowship with the powers of darkness and evil.

II. The blindness which comes through sin. God was not with the spies to enlighten and guide them, and therefore they were deceived (Jos. 7:3). In the next battle the strength of the people and place is very differently estimated. Instead of sending three thousand, Joshua selects at least thirty thousand men, five thousand of whom are detached to form an ambush on the west side of the city, while he himself appears to lead the remainder into the midst of the valley. While the former defeat would induce extra precautions, God had evidently suffered the judgment of both Joshua and the spies to become obscured when about to make this first attack on Ai. No such mistake was made in the matter of Jericho, either by the spies whom Rahab sheltered, or by any of the leaders of Israel. This is but an incidental illustration of an ever-recurring fact: sin is ever leaving men in obscurity, or actually deadening their perceptive powers.

1. God still refuses to grant His light to such as choose to walk in the darkness of sin. Those only does He guide with His eye, who have learned to say, Our eyes are up unto Thee.

2. Sin, in itself, works blindness. They who do Gods will shall know of His doctrine, and also of His ways.

III. The weakness which comes through sin. The conflict at Jericho is an exposition of the words of Paul, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me; the conflict at Ai is an exposition of the utterance of the Lord Himself, Without Me ye can do nothing. We learn in one battle that nothing is too hard for the Lord; in the other, that little is sufficiently easy for men. When God departed from the Israelites, that clause entered most naturally into the history, They fled before the men of Ai.

IV. The wide-spread suffering which comes through sin. The men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men, and presently Achan and his family fall by the hands of their own brethren. The entire camp of Israel was made to suffer by reason of Achans transgression.

1. Sin brings loss and ruin. All its gains have presently to be returned.

2. Sin produces fear. This is not only so among those who know not God, but equally so among Gods people. They have but to transgress, and their hearts, also, melt and become as water.

3. Sin works shame. The Israelites are humbled before their enemies, Joshua is humbled before his brethren, Achans family have the shame of knowing that their deadliest foe is of their own household, and Achan himself is humbled in the deepest shame of all. This thief has to feel that he is bankrupt for his pains; this father, that he is childless by his own folly; this soldier, that he has brought defeat on his country; this Israelite, that his name must do worse than perish out from among his peoplethat he must henceforth be known as the troubler of his nation.

4. Sin, let it work what it may previously, has its ultimate issues in nothing less than death. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. It ends thus with Achan and his family, thus with the thirty-six men who were slain, thus with myriads more; and but for Him who redeems souls from the power of the grave, it would have this for its ultimate issue in every member of the human race.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Jos. 7:1.CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY.

Achan sinned, and it is said, The children of Israel committed a trespass; for some time, no man out of Achans household knew of his wickedness, yet it is written, The anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. The act of this one man brings penal consequences on all the host, and Jehovah is said to have regarded the sin of the one as the transgression of all. However difficult it may be to satisfactorily define and illustrate the principle on which accountability of this kind rests, there can be no doubt of its almost universal acceptance by men. It is easy to clamour against it theologically, and to demand a philosophical explanation of its basis and working; but no man should rail against religious people in general because some religious people fail to enlighten him, lest he lay himself open to the charge of blaming a whole community because of the offence of some, and thus shew that his own sociology has the same dogma as the theology which he so readily vilifies in others. The explanation of the difficulty must not be sought in any arbitrary dogma imposed on men from without, but in that inherent and essential oneness which every one practically believes to pertain to every form of organic unity. It is just because it is impossible for it to be otherwise, that it becomes foolish to inveigh against this principle. Let a body be made up of limbs or individuals, let it be held together by joints that are physical, by interests that are pecuniary, or by ties that are social, responsibility cannot be disbursed between its particular joints or ties so as to fall singly on the culpable member, but must be attached to the body as a whole. In practical life, men find absolutely no alternative from this law. It can hardly be other than weak to stigmatise as an arbitrary dogma that which all men find to be inherent and unavoidable. Because it so pertains to bodies, as such, it may be better to term it corporate than representative accountability. It will be sufficient, here, to indicate its wide-spread adoption by men for the purposes of daily life.

I. Corporate responsibility is adopted in the intercourse of nations. It is recognised between civilised nations. Let one of our ambassadors abroad offer an insult to the government to which he is accredited, and that government would interpret it as the insult of England, reparation for which would be counted due from our country. If violence were committed by the vessel of a foreign nation to a vessel, or to any person on board a vessel, sailing under the English flag, England would hold herself to have suffered that violence, and would look for apology and acknowledgment, not from the officers or crew of the offending vessel, but from the government from which they came. In the Alabama case, America held herself to have suffered loss by England, and did not concern herself with the firm which built the vessel; nor could this country, without some intervention, have suffered any harm to have been done to members of that firm, even though they had been found travelling in America prior to the settlement of the claims; for, just as offending children must be dealt with by strangers through their parents, so must offending subjects be dealt with through their governments. Nor are these principles in any measure the outcome of an overwrought civilization; they are of equal force among barbarians, and assert themselves with the same emphasis in the intercourse of savages. Every missionary and inoffensive European, who has been slain by natives in the South Sea Islands, and elsewhere, because of the wicked wrongs perpetrated by Europeans who have preceded them, furnishes an instance in point. Failing to reach those actually guilty, the savages have sought to avenge themselves by punishing men of the same community. Let a man in one tribe of North American Indians have offered in past years insult and injury to the member of another tribe, and the fierce war whoop would have proclaimed that in creeds savage as well as in creeds civilised there stood for an article of faith that ineradicable dogma of the universal conscienceThe sin of a member is the offence of the body. It is not the sin of the body, excepting indirectly, unless the body condone it in the member, or refuse to make reparation to those who are injured. Indirectly, the body may also have moral participation in the guilt; it may be a remote party to the sin, through not having done its duty in training the member, through not having exercised sufficient care in selecting that member for the service under which he was tempted to sin, or through not having restrained him in some stage prior to the commission of the sin. Yet, although there may be little moral participation by the body when a member of it sins, the body must be, and is universally held to be, responsible for the consequences of the wrong done. It is perfectly in harmony with the worlds own practice that, when Achan sins, God should be angry with Israel.

II. Corporate responsibility is admitted in family and social life. If the servant of a master, or firm, or company drive recklessly, and cause an accident, the employers of that servant are held by law to be responsible. Here the liability is pecuniary, though there might still be a measure of moral guilt, such as would arise from employing the servant without taking reasonable care to ascertain his efficiency, before employing him in a service which might prove dangerous or injurious to others. If however-a child grow up a thief, or is presently executed for murder, society holds all the family to be disgraced. The penalty exacted from the father and mother of the murderer is far more than pecuniary; nor does this arise merely from the supposed neglect of such parents in training the child who ultimately committed murder, for the very children of such a murderer would also be held by society to be disgraced, and they would feel that disgrace themselves, whether society were lenient to them or harsh. If a man were to join for a single hour a party of ten burglars, and one of the burglars during that hour were to commit murder, each man would be held in law liable to capital punishment, not excepting the man who became merely for the hour a member of the nefarious body.

III. Corporate responsibility is the foundation of many exhortations and reproofs which are addressed to the Church of Christ. Every appeal made to Christians not to disgrace the Church, or to bring shame on the name of Jesus, and every reproof to any who have thus sinned, is based on the universal conviction that the sin of a member is rightly held to disgrace the entire community. Even the sacred name of the Saviour is held not to be exempt from these inexorable and far-reaching penalties. Peter and Judas, in the days of the ministry, could bring dishonour upon Him; and we, who live now, are exhorted not to become of them who crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.

IV. Corporate responsibility is made the basis of deliverance in the case of every one who is spiritually saved. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Through the first head of the race, sin and death came upon all, and the former of these penalties is no less severe than the latter: through Him who became by His own grace and righteousness the second head of the race, holiness and eternal life are given for a heritage to every member of His body. Only those are lost who detach themselves from Him by sin and unbelief. Coming into the race as its second head, it is not merely those who accept Him that are saved, but all who do not reject Him, that is, little children. The first head carried its penalty of death to all belonging to the body; the second head carries, no less, to all who do not reject Him the gift of life. In each case, the body follows its head, and for those who choose to renounce Christ, after they have entered into this natural life under His headship, there remains nothing but the old head and the old doom.

THE ANGER OF GOD

Gods anger is not an ebullition of blind passion, but a holy displeasure against the unrighteousness of men. When this unrighteousness is removed, Gods anger ceases, as Jos. 7:26 shews. All which has been injuriously said concerning the blood-thirsty and wrathful God of the Old Testament rests on a failure to apprehend this holy displeasure of God against the unrighteousness of men. That brings upon them indeed judgment and penalty, but never goes so far as to shut up His compassion. Eternal justice, which belongs as a constitutive element to the nature of God, without which we cannot conceive of any government at all of the world, is constantly limited by His love. But, conversely, His love towards men is not a blind love, but rather a truly paternal affection which leaves no fault, no transgression of His commands, unreproved. Both justice and love co-exist in God, and are mutually blended in Him with an interpenetration of the most intimate, highest, absolute kind. Hence the jurists may say: Fiat justitia pereat mundus! God never has and never can. [Lange.]

There is a community amongst men that are of the same society, every one being a part of the body, so that what evil he does, he does not as one alone by himself, but as a part of the body whereof he is a member. [Augustine.]

God not only knows every transgressors name, but each transgressors history. The fathers, the tribe, the training, and all the surroundings of a sinner are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

Jos. 7:2-4.MANS UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF GODS ABSENCE.

I. Here are men working together for God, but not with God. God had withdrawn Himself from the Israelites. Even if still present in the camp, the Lord had ceased to work with any of the people. I. To be doing Gods work is not a sufficient guarantee of having Gods help. The people were as much engaged in doing the work of the Lord when they attacked Ai as when they destroyed Jericho; yet the Lord, who was with them in the one case, refused to accompany them in the other. We see (a) Joshua sending out spies, while he himself is not moved to do this by God; (b) the spies searching in Gods cause, but without Gods guidance; (c) the three thousand Israelites fighting Gods battle, but none of them having Gods assistance.

2. Gods presence with us in the past is no sufficient guarantee of His continual presence. The marvellous passage of the Jordan, and the magnificent triumph at Jericho, were but things of yesterday, and indisputably God was with them there; yet neither the one nor the other, nor both, prevented Gods absence and Israels defeat at Ai. We need manifest grace for each day of our lives. Yesterdays mercies may have been large, and should be long and gladly borne in mind, but we need also the assurance of to-day that God is with us. Yet let no one think that these temporary withdrawings of God furnish an argument for the doctrine that He withdraws from His people perpetually. The truth or falsity of that must be settled elsewhere, not here. The history at Ai distinctly shews that God does but forsake Israel for a time, that He may again come to them in even more than the closeness of the former union. The very design of the absence is to provide for Jehovahs future presence.

3. The godliness of any part of a body of the Lords people is no sufficient guarantee of the Lords fellowship and co-operation with that body. Joshua, and the rest of the leaders, and the general multitude of the people probably loved God more than ever. Their hearts were warm with gratitude for the wonderful help of the past, and filled with hope in the Lord as to the future. We can think of no time in all their previous history when the people were likely to be so close in union and ardent fellowship with God as after the fall of Jericho. Yet because one man, and perhaps his family, had broken covenant with God, God had turned against all Israel. One offender in a church may prevent the Divine blessing from resting on that church. When a church altogether walks in holiness, it may confidently expect abundant blessing from on high; but the piety of any part of that church, although it be a large part, may be insufficient to secure Gods manifest presence. The sin of one member may still be held to corrupt the entire body.

II. Here are men working together for God, and utterly unconscious of Gods departure from their midst. One of the most solemn aspects of the narrative is its revelation of the complete ignorance of all the people that the Lord was no longer with them. Joshua was ignorant of this. Apparently he sent out the spies, and formed his plans for the overthrow of Ai, with as much confidence as when he proceeded to lay siege to the City of Palm Trees, albeit on that occasion he took his instructions from the Prince of the host of the Lord in person. The spies were ignorant of the Lords departure. Comparing their conduct with that of the spies who went to search out Jericho, they were as prompt to undertake the work, as ready in forming an opinion, and perhaps even more confident in the judgment to which they came. There is an assurance, a definiteness, and a precision about their recommendation to Joshua, given in the third verse, which has nothing to correspond with it in the recorded utterance of the spies who returned from a similar mission to Jericho (cf. chap. Jos. 2:23-24). The army, also, seems to have been ignorant of this terrible change that had come over the camp. The people who waited in their tents remained quietly, and the three thousand who went up to the battle seem to have gone confidently. No one seems to have had the least suspicion that Jehovah had withdrawn from Israel. It is, perhaps, even more possible for us to suffer the withdrawal of the Lords presence, and to remain for some time ignorant of our loss. Just as the Ark still remained in the camp of Israel, and Eleazar the high priest, with his assistants, still ministered in the service of the tabernacle, thus enabling the people to think that all things continued as before; so may we, as we retain our Bibles, and continue our religious worship and service, satisfy ourselves with the outward signs of religion, while God Himself is absent from us. There is no more solemn feature in the sad history of Samson than that brief chronicle of a similar ignorance, in which we read, He awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.

III. Here are men working together for God, and learning through defeat and shame and death that God is not with them. This ignorance is, and can be, only for a time. Samson was not long in discovering his loss. Saul, also, learned to cry, God is departed from me. The fathers of these very Israelites would not believe Moses when he said, Go not up, for the Lord is not among you, but they speedily learned how true it was, when the Amalekites and Canaanites came down from the hill, and smote them, and discomfited them even unto Hormah. So, in their very first battle after the Lords departure, the Israelites learned at Ai what they had failed to discover when encamped around the Ark. Yet some only learned this as they fell slain in the battle. Happy is he who so walks and talks with God as to promptly feel the loss of Divine fellowship when God is no longer present; on the other hand, terrible is the lot of him who only makes the discovery as he knows death to be drawing nigh, and then, like Saul, learns his loss too late.

Jos. 7:5.THE CHANGELESSNESS OF GOD AND THE MUTABILITY OF MEN.

I. The apparent vicissitudes of Gods changelessness. God here appears to have altered His mind, and to have turned completely round in His relation to the Israelites. From being Israels friend, He turned to be their enemy, and fought against them. What the swellings of Jordan could not do, the tides of wicked feeling in Achans single heart did but too effectually,they turned aside the power of Jehovah, and made it work in another direction. The majestic strength which the walls of Jericho were unable to resist for a moment, this single man both resisted and reapplied. The history reveals Achan as the morally weakest man of all the host, and yet as the man who reverses omnipotence, making it to work in the direction of seeming enmity instead of in the way of manifest love. So great is the power of a traitor friend beyond the might of an open foe, and so infinitely beyond the force of physical things is the strength of things which are moral.

Thus it is that we are abruptly brought face to face with what has been called the seeming vicissitudes of Gods changelessness. In plainer words, Gods changeless way with men is made up of apparent and well-regulated changes. But these changes are only apparent; they are not real and actual. In this instance, before Ai, although it may sound paradoxical, if God had not changed, He would have changed, and by changing He preserved His glorious immutability. If God had continued to fight for Israel, He would have been helping men who had gone over to the side of sin; He would have been found in alliance with men who had done an act of rebellion against holiness and against Himself. In a word, it was Israel who had turned, representatively, against God, hence the apparent turning of God against Israel. Life is full of these seeming changes on the part of God. They are all to be brought to this one explanation: God alters His outward relation to men, that He may sacredly preserve His own immutable way in the interests of truth and righteousness and mercy. When God seems to have turned against us, it is because we have changed our ground. If He followed us, He would change also. He keeps on in the way of mercy and truth, saying, as only He in all the universe can say, I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Take an illustration. The ship alters its course, and the compass changes at once; it traverses just as many points over the deck of the ship as the ship itself turns away from its previous bearings. And thus it is that the compass remains true to itself, and continues to be known as

That trembling vassal of the Pole,
The feeling Compass, Navigations soul.

It is exactly because the compass moves in its relation to the veering ship that it continues to be so abiding in its relation to the pole. Thus it is that when Israel alters its course, and actually turns back on its former path, it must needs come into collision with an undeviating God. Thus, too, in another and more pleasant instance, when Nineveh repents and turns to the way of the Lord, the Lord is said to repent of the evil that He had said He would do unto Nineveh. The outward relation is but altered that Gods eternal way of love and goodness may stand firm and abiding.

1. When God is against us, it is because we have got where we are against Him. If we find Him hedging up our way with thorns, it is because we are in the wilderness. As Bunyan puts it, if we are in the hands of Despair, it is because we are out of the Kings highway.

2. Where God is seemingly against us, He is really for us. It would have been a curse on Achan, indeed, if all things had continued prosperous; not less would it have cursed Achans family and all Israel. The people would have learned that they could sin with impunity, and yet conquer triumphantly as ever. It was Mercy that pleaded for defeat, and for judgment on Achan; and just because Gods love was so deep and true, the warning became so solemn and bitter.

II. The mutability of human life.

1. The entire prospects of a mans life may be suddenly altered by himself. While God remains thus true, the reversal of our prosperity will be as sudden as our departures from Him. This may not always be manifest. God does not always reveal His changed attitude in our altered temporal life. For other reasons than those appearing in this battle before Ai, He sometimes lets the wicked flourish. Yet just as abruptly as men turn aside into ways of sin, will God ever turn aside their real prosperity.

2. The position and prospects of a mans life may be as suddenly changed by others. Achan brings defeat on all Israel. So long as we participate in the profits of fellowship with men, we must also suffer the penalties. Every corporate body, with an identity of interest, is a kind of firm; the members associate and unite in view of certain advantages, and they cannot do this without a joint responsibility common to them all. Thus may an individual bring shame and loss on a host.

III. The unswerving influence of mans sin.

1. Sin ever tends towards defeat. It may not seem to do this, but it at once begins to work in that direction, and in that only.

2. Defeat which comes through sin invariably works fear. All defeat does not bring fear. Sometimes it stimulates. But when men have to trace failure to their transgressions against God, fear is the certain result. In such a case, it matters not whether they are Canaanites or Israelites, unbelievers or Christians, the same record serves for the history of all, Wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water.

At Jericho, Jehovah had shewn Himself to be merciful. At Ai, He magnified Himself as the just One, who will not allow His laws to be broken with impunity. [Hvernick.]

It is not good to contemn an impotent enemy. In the second battle the Israelites are beaten. It was not the fewness of their assailants that overthrew them, but the sin that lay lurking at home. If all the host of Israel had set upon this poor village of Ai, they had been equally discomfited: the wedge of Achan did more fight against them than all the swords of the Canaanites. The victories of God go not by strength, but by innocence. [Bp. Hall.]

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

The Israelites Beaten Jos. 7:1-5

But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel.
2 And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Bethaven, on the east side of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai.
3 And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labor thither; for they are but few.
4 So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai.
5 And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water.

Who was Achan? Jos. 7:1

Achan is described as the son of Carmi. The head of his family was Zabdi, who was an heir of Zerah, a leading man in the tribe of Judah, Achan is called Achar in 1Ch. 2:7, and Zabdi is called Zimri in 1Ch. 2:6. These names are very similar and are evidently forms of the same names. By this one sinful act, Achan fell into disgraceful infamy. His name became synonomous with covetousness and sin. It was especially shameful for the man to be of the tribe of Judah, the leading tribe among the people of Israel, and set this bad example. Judah led in the order of march. If Achan were a soldier and marching in the forefront of the host of Israel, he would have access to the spoils of war before many others would reach them. Hence, as a leader, he had greater temptation. Although the value of the materials which he took were not great, the fact that his sin was committed after God had granted wonderful victories to the people and promised them full use of the land of Canaan makes it especially despicable.

Where was Ai? Jos. 7:2

This town was situated east of Bethel. Bethel was originally called Luz (Gen. 28:19), a place on the border of Ephraim and Benjamin (Jos. 16:2; Jos. 18:13). It is frequently mentioned and was well known at a later time as the city in which Jeroboam established the worship of calves. The site was inhabited again after the captivity. Ai has been preserved in the very extensive mound called et-Tell, about one and one-half miles from Bethel, and on the east of the road which leads from Jerusalem to Sichem (Nablus).

We may say this of Ai:

It dominated the road to Jerusalem

It commanded the approaches to the country

It involved the fate of Bethel

Of the name we may say Ai means the heap. An everlasting toumbe, says Wycliffe; in Hebrew, Tel, always appears with the article, the Tel, or the Heap. For a long time modern archaeologists sought in vain for the site of Ai. A likely location was excavated in 1933 by Mme. Judith Marquet-Krause, and most recently Dr. Joseph Callaway of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. After two seasons of excavations at Khirbet et-Tell, a height near Deir Dibwan, Israel, Dr. Callaway reported it is now possible to dismiss speculation about locating Ai at a site other than this one (Evidence on the Conquest of Ai, Journal of Biblical Literahtre, Volume LXXXVII, Part III, September, 1968, p. 315).

Where was Bethel? Jos. 7:2 b

Bethel was ancient Luz (see Gen. 28:19; cf. Gen. 12:8; Gen. 13:3-4; Gen. 35:7). It was named by Jacob (see Gen. 28:19; Gen. 35:14-15). This was the name used after the conquest (Jos. 16:1-2; Jdg. 1:22-26). Bethel lay about one and one half miles west of Ai. The location was about twelve miles north of Jerusalem. Near here Abraham had camped (Gen. 12:8; Gen. 13:3). The name means house of God. Bethel belonged to the Benjamites as they settled in the land, but its history was dominated by the people of Ephraim. The area is dominated by ruins now called Beitin, excavated in 1934 by a joint expedition of the Pittsburgh Zenia Theological Seminary and the American Schools of Oriental Research under the direction of William Albright.

Why did the spies suggest sending only a few warriors? Jos. 7:3

Once again Joshua had used the usual military strategy in spying out the city to be attacked. These men had gone up and looked over the situation at Ai. When they came back, they suggested it would be unnecessary to send all six hundred thousand soldiers of Israel against the city, It was their recommendation that only two or three thousand soldiers would be a sufficient force to take Ai. The basis of their suggestion was the fact that there were only a few people in the city. They were also flushed with victory at Jericho and must have felt invincible.

What was the result of the attack? Jos. 7:5

Following the advice of the spies, Joshua sent about three thousand men to attack Ai. They fled from before the people, and the men of Ai smote about thirty-six of them. They chased them away from the city and attacked them all the way down from the heights to which they had ascended. The hearts of the people of Israel now melted and became as water even as before the hearts of the Canaanites had melted for fear of the approaching invaders.

Where was Shebarim? Jos. 7:5 b

Shebarim was the name of the place where the Israelites were beaten by the men of Ai. The name comes from the root which means to break to pieces or destroy. The area has not been definitely located in modern times, but it must have been somewhere near Ai on the slope which went down to the east from the height on which Ai was located.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

VII.

(1) Achan . . . of the tribe of Judah.The tribe of Judah is distinguished in sacred history both for great crimes and great achievements. (See Names on the Gates of Pearl.Judah.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

THE TRESPASS AND PUNISHMENT OF ACHAN, Jos 7:1-26.

[After the fall of Jericho the prestige of Israel was exceedingly great. The name of Jehovah was a terror to the idolatrous nations of the land, and the chosen people, glorying in his matchless power and their own wondrous triumphs, were in danger of forgetting that his wrath burns against every appearance of evil, and would fall as fiercely on an offender in the camp of Israel as on the armies of the aliens. Hence the severe and solemn lesson taught by the sin and punishment of Achan.]

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1. But the children of Israel committed a trespass Many have found great difficulty here. There was but one personal sinner. How can the whole nation, then, be charged with sin? Calvin, dissatisfied with the many different explanations, advises that “we suspend our decisions till when the books are opened, and the judgments, now holden in darkness, are clearly explained.” It is certain that the crime of one had robbed the nation of that innocence which is pleasing to God. Such are the relations of human society that a community is punished for the sins of a part of its constituents. National punishments are inflicted in this life because nations do not exist after death. It follows, therefore, that while a nation may suffer from the sin of an individual, that suffering is temporal, and not eternal, to those who are not personally involved in the guilt. [“The Scriptures teach that a nation is one organic whole, in which the individuals are merely members of the same body, and are not atoms isolated from one another and the whole. The State is there treated as a divine institution, founded upon family relationships, and intended to promote the love of all to one another, and to the invisible Head of all. As all, then, are combined in a fellowship established by God, the good or evil deeds of an individual affect beneficially or injuriously the whole society.” Keil. All this is simply an admonitory form in which Jehovah places the divine administration of justice. Each man who suffers is worthy of death for his own sin, and no wrong is done to any. See note on Mat 23:35.]

In the accursed thing In appropriating to private use that which had been solemnly consecrated to God, or devoted to destruction. See note, Jos 6:17-18.

Achan Called in 1Ch 2:7, Achar, the troubler of Israel.

Son of Carmi His genealogy is thus traced out in view of the method of his detection. Compare Jos 7:16-18. He seems to have been a descendant of Judah in the fifth generation.

And the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel The entire community has become infected with the guilt of one of its members.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Chapter 7 The Sin of Achan and Failure at Ai.

Because of the sin of Achan, when they advanced on Ai, the children of Israel were smitten and put to flight by ‘the men of Ai’. This gave Joshua and the elders of the people great concern, both for Israel and for the name of YHWH. This was expressed by Joshua in prayer to God, and when YHWH informed him of the reason for it, He also gave him directions for discovering the guilty person, and for the man’s punishment. Joshua followed these directions, and the person was discovered, and confessed, upon which he and all he had, with the things he had taken, were burnt with fire.

Jos 7:1

‘But the children of Israel committed a trespass with regard to what was devoted, for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of what was devoted, and the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the children of Israel.’

Before the story of Israel’s first defeat in the land we are given the reason for it. God had been disobeyed in the most dreadful way. Achan had secretly stolen from YHWH something from Jericho, something in other words that had been ‘devoted’ to Him by the whole of Israel, and the result was that there was ‘a devoted thing’ in the camp of Israel for which the whole of Israel had to take blame. This was the principle of community responsibility whereby the many must share the guilt of the one (from our standpoint it would be on the grounds that his failure was due to their wider failure in failing to provide the right moral background). It was their responsibility to ensure that it did not happen and that YHWH received His due. Thus the trespass was committed by the whole of Israel.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Israel’s Defeat at Ai and the Judgment of Achan Jos 7:1-26 deals with Israel’s defeat at Ai and the judgment of Achan in his sin of covetousness. In Act 5:1-11 and 1Co 5:1-13 the church judges those members within its congregation just as Israel judged sin in this passage of Scripture.

Jos 7:1 But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.

Jos 7:1 “But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thingand the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel” Comments – God judged the entire camp because of the sin of one man.

Jos 7:1 “for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing” – Comments – Imagine wandering in the wilderness for forty years and not enjoying the luxuries of this life. When these items lay before Achan the temptation was just too much. Unfortunately, the very thing that he expected to bring a blessing turned into a curse, upon him, his family and the entire nation of Israel.

Jos 7:8 O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies!

Jos 7:8 Comments – With sin in our lives, we cannot draw near to God in order to be able to resist Satan.

Jos 7:11 Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff.

Jos 7:11 Comments – Note God’s command in Jos 6:19.

Jos 6:19, “But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD.”

Jos 7:15 And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.

Jos 7:15 Comments – Why use fire? Because fire purges. Fire represents God’s judgement throughout the Holy Bible.

Jos 7:19 And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.

Jos 7:19 “My son” Comments – Joshua and Caleb were the only two men who had departed from Egypt and lived through the entire wilderness journey. Their generation had died in the wilderness as a form of judgment because of the ten spies who gave a bad report to the Israelites at Kadeshbarnea. Achan was of a younger generation, and could be addressed as “Son.”

Jos 7:20 And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:

Jos 7:21 When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

Jos 7:20-21 Comments The Statute Concerning Foreign Gods – Moses had given commandment regarding this matter of covetousness in the book of Deuteronomy.

Deu 7:25-26, “The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an abomination to the LORD thy God. Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.”

Jos 7:26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the LORD turned from the fierceness of his anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day.

Jos 7:26 Word Study on “Achor” PTW says the name “Achor” means “trouble.”

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Israel’s defeat at Ai

v. 1. But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing, the sin of one man being regarded as compromising all and making the entire host of Israel guilty in the sight of God; for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi (or Zimri, 1Ch 2:6), the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing, appropriated some of the booty of the city, all of which had been declared devoted to the Lord, for his own use; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel, it was fanned to a blaze, like a flame which shoots up with destructive force. Achan’s sin had robbed the entire people of that purity and holiness which it was supposed to have in the sight of God, just as the impurity of a single member in the body infects all the members.

v. 2. And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Bethaven, on the east side of Bethel, northeast of Jericho and almost due north of Jerusalem, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. They were spies, entrusted with the task of obtaining the information necessary to send a successful expedition against the city. And the men went up and viewed Ai.

v. 3. And they returned to Joshua and said unto him, Let not all the people, the entire army, go up, but let about two or three thousand men, literally, “two thousand men or some three thousand men,” go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labor thither; for they are but few. The city having but 12,000 inhabitants, Jos 8:25, the number of able-bodied defenders probably did not exceed between two and three thousand, according to the estimate of the scouts.

v. 4. So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men; and they fled before the men of Ai. They not only were unable to accomplish their purpose, but they were even put to shameful flight.

v. 5. And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men; for they chased them from before the gate, where the attack had been delivered, even unto Shebarim, stone quarries at some distance toward the south, and smote them in the going down, as they fled toward the valley of the Jordan; wherefore the hearts of the people melted and became as water, in utter discouragement and despondency.

v. 6. And Joshua rent his clothes, as a sign of the deepest distress and mourning, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, in a silent and yet eloquent appeal to the Lord, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads, another custom betokening the deepest mourning, 1Sa 4:12; 2Sa 1:2; 2Sa 13:19.

v. 7. And Joshua said, in a mournful complaint, Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, the heathen nation in this part of Canaan, to destroy us? For the defeat of the small army was a sign that the Lord had withdrawn His assistance. Would to God we had been content and dwelt on the other side Jordan! literally, “Had we but made up our minds to remain on the east aide of Jordan!” It was the bold language of a faith battling with the Lord, unable to understand the ways of the Lord and including the most urgent appeal to the Lord to continue as the Ally of Israel. To this complaint is added an anxious question.

v. 8. O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies in shameful flight?

v. 9. For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, completely surrounding them, and cut off our name from the earth, destroy them so completely that even their memory would be forgotten; and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great name? Joshua implies that the Lord had not had the due consideration of His honor in mind in permitting this misfortune to strike Israel, that it would now be a difficult matter to secure His honor against misunderstanding and blasphemy. Note: If any Christian congregation suffers a transgressor to remain in its midst, then all the members are guilty before the Lord.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

THE DEFEAT BEFORE AI.

Jos 7:1

Committed a trespass in the accursed thing. The word , here used, signifies originally to cover, whence a garment. Hence it comes to mean to act deceitfully, or perhaps to steal (cf. the LXX. , a translation rendered remarkable by the fact that it is the very word used by St. Luke in regard to the transgression of Ananias and Sapphira. But the LXX. is hare rather a paraphrase than a translation). It is clearly used here of some secret act. But in Le Jos 5:15 it is used of an unwitting trespass, committed , in error of fact, but not of intention. Achan. Called Achar in 1Ch 2:7, no doubt from a reference to the results of his conduct. He had “troubled Israel” (), 1Ch 2:25, and the valley which witnessed his punishment obtained the name of Achor. The copies of the LXX. vary between the two forms, the Vatican Codex having Achar; the Alexandrian, Achan. Zabdi. Zimri in 1Ch 2:6. Such variations of reading are extremely common, and are increased in our version by the varieties of English spelling adopted among our translators (see Shemuel for Samuel in 1Ch 6:33). The LXX. has Zambri here. Took of the accursed thing. Commentators have largely discussed the question how the sin of Achan could be held to extend to the whole people. But it seems sufficient to reply by pointing out the organic unity of the Israelitish nation. They were then, as Christians are now, the Church of the living God. And if one single member of the community violated the laws which God imposed on them, the whole body was liable for his sin, until it had purged itself by a public act of restitution (see Deu 21:1-8). So St. Paul regards the Corinthian Church as polluted by the presence of one single offender, until he was publicly expelled from its communion (see 1Co 5:2, 1Co 5:6, 1Co 5:7). The very words “body politic” applied to a state imply the same ideathat of a connection so intimate between the members of a community that the act of one affects the whole. And if this be admitted to be the case in ordinary societies, how much more so in the people of God, who were under His special protection, and had been specially set apart to His service? In the history of Achan, moreover, we read the history of secret sin, which, though unseen by any earthly eye, does nevertheless pollute the offender, and through him the Church of God, by lowering his general standard of thought and action, enfeebling his moral sense, checking the growth of his inner and devotional life, until, by a resolute act of repentance and restitution towards God, the sin is finally acknowledged and put away. “A lewd man is a pernicious creature. That he damnes his own soule is the least part of his misehiefe; he commonly drawes vengeance upon a thousand, either by the desert of his sinne, or by the infection” (Bp. Hall).

Jos 7:2

Ai. or “the ruins” (cf. Iim and Ije-abarim, the ruins or heaps of Abarim, Num 33:44, Num 33:45; and Iim, Jos 15:29. Probably it is the same as which we find mentioned in conjunction with Bethel in Jos 18:22, Jos 18:23. It becomes in Neh 11:31, and the feminine form is found in Isa 10:28. The latter, from the mention of Michmash in the route of Sennacherib immediately afterwards, is probably the same as Ai. Robinson and Hellthe former very doubtfullyplace it at Turmus Aya, an eminence crowned with ruins above Deir Duwan. But Vandevelde contests this, and places it at Tell-el-Hajar, i.e; the Tell or heap of ruins; and G. Williams and Capt. Wilson have independently fixed on the same spot, though they call it et-Tel, or “the heap,” and suppose the “el-Hajar” to have been added in answer to the question, “what heap?” This situation seems best to suit the requirements of the narrative. For it is “on the southern brow of the Wady-el-Mutyah” (Vandevelde), near that “wild entanglement of hill and valley at the head of the Wady Harith,” which “climbs into the heart of the mountains of Benjamin till it meets the central ridge of the country at Bethel”. Its situation, unlike that of Turmus Aya, is calculated to give cover to an ambush of 5,000 men, and it also answers to the conditions in its nearness to Michmash, from which Turmus Aya is more than three hours’ journey distant. The Tell is “covered with heaps of ruins”. Conder, however, identifies Ai with Haiyan, two miles from Bethel, in the same Wady, but why, he gives no hint. A fortress so situated was one which Joshua could not leave in his rear, and so its capture was a matter of necessity. By its position, if not from the number of its inhabitants, it was necessarily a very strong one. Ai is mentioned as early as Gen 12:8, and we find that it was inhabited down to the Captivity, for the “men of Bethel and Ai” are mentioned in Ezr 2:28. See also Neh 11:31, above cited. The name Ai, or ruins, found so early, implies that the aboriginal inhabitants had built a city in that almost inaccessible situation. Lieut. Conder gives a very vivid description of the site et-Tel in ‘Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement,’ April, 1874. There are, he says, “huge mounds of broken stone and shingle ten feet high. The town,” he adds, “must have been pounded small, and the fury of its destruction is still evidenced by its completeness.” He continues: “The party for the ambush, following the ancient causeway from Bethel to Jordan (which we have recovered throughout its entire length) as far as Michmash, would then easily ascend the great wady west of Ai, and arrive within a quarter of a mile of the city without having ever come in sight of it. Here, hidden by the knoll of Burjums and the high ground near it, a force of almost any magnitude might wait unsuspected. The main body in the meanwhile, without diverging from the road, would ascend the gently sloping valley and appear before the town on the open battlefield which stretches away to its east and south. From the knoll the figure of Joshua would be plainly visible to either party, with his spear stretched against the sky” [see Jos 8:18). But the site still eludes investigation. Lieut. Kitchener, Mr. Birch, Mr. Guest, would place it at Kh-Haiy, or the rock Rimmon. When those who have visited the country are so divided in opinion, nothing but silence remains for those who have not. Beth-avern (cf. 1Sa 14:23). This place has not yet been identified. It was close by Ai, and not far from Bethel, as the transference of its name to Bethel by Hosea (Hos 4:15; Hos 5:8; Hos 10:5) shows. It could not have been a place of any importance, or the historian would not have found it necessary to explain where it was. Hosea has perhaps derived his knowledge of it from this passage. Some writers have identified it with Bethel. But this is obviously incorrect, since the literal rendering of the Hebrew here places Ai “in the immediate proximity of Beth-aven, eastward of Bethel.” The LXX. omits all reference to Beth-aven. But there are many various readings. Bethel Formerly Luz (Gen 28:19; Gen 35:7; Jdg 1:23). The last-cited passage seems to prove that Bethel was not among, the cities taken during Joshua’s campaign; though this is extraordinary in the face of the fact that the inhabitants of Luz gave their assistance to the men of Ai in the battle (see Jos 8:17, where, however, it is remarkable that the LXX. omits all reference to Bethel). We may observe that there is no mention of the capture of Bethel, or the destruction of the inhabitants, and that this exactly agrees with Jdg 1:22-26. This is an undesigned coincidence well worthy of note. We may also remark on the exact conformity between the situation of Bethel as described here and in Gen 12:8. The city to which the name Bethel was attached was not the place of Abraham’s altar, as we learn from the passage just cited, but was in its immediate neighbourhood. The ruins which now mark its site are of a later date than the events recorded in Scripture. Its modern name is Beitin. Go up and view the country. Rather, spy (or reconnoitre); literally, foot the country. Joshua does not refuse to avail himself of human expedients because he is under Divine guidance (see also Jos 2:1-24). The reasons for this reconnoitring expedition are made clear enough by the passage quoted from Lieut. Condor’s survey above.

Jos 7:3

Make not all the people to labour thither; or, weary not the people with the journey thither. “Good successe lifts up the heart with too much confidence” (Bp. Hall).

Jos 7:5

Unto Shebarim. LXX; , as though we had (or, as Masius suggests, ) from to break in pieces. So the Syriac and Chaldee versions. But this is quite out of the question. The Israelites were not annihilated, for they only lost about 36 men. Nor is Shebarim a proper name, as the Vulgate renders it. It has the article, and must be rendered either with Keil, the stone quarries (literally, the crushings or breakings), or with Gesenius, the ruins, which, however, is less probable, since Ai (see above)has a similar signification. Munsterus mentions a view that it was so called in consequence of the slaughter of the Israelites. But this is very improbable. In the going down. Ai stood in a strong position on the mountains. The margin “in Morad “is therefore not to be preferred. It means, as the Israelites and their antagonists descended from the gates. The hearts of the people melted and became as water. This was not cowardice, but awe. The people had relied upon the strong hand of the Lord, which had been so wonderfully stretched out for them. From Joshua downwards, every one felt that, for some unknown reason, that support had been withdrawn.

HOMILETICS

Jos 7:1-5

The sin.

One of the most valuable uses of the historical portions of the Old Testament is the valuable moral lessons they convey. “The Old Testament is not contrary to the New.” Both come from God, and the offences God denounces and punishes under the old dispensation will be equally denounced and punished by Him under the new. Let no sinner flatter himself that he will escape because his doctrine is sound, or because he belongs to an orthodox body of Christians, or because he feels assured of salvation. If he sins he will be punished. And he sins when he does what God has forbidden under the law as well as under the gospel. To be a moral man will not save the soul; but not to be a moral man will assuredly ruin it. We should therefore take good heed to the lessons of morality taught in the Old Testament.

I. THE EVIL OF OVER–CONFIDENCE. Even the good Joshua errs sometimes. We hear of no counsel being taken of God here, any more than when the Gibeonite embassy arrived. The report of the spies is acted upon at once. The siege of Ai seems to have been undertaken relying upon human means alone. But the Israelites were to learn how entirely dependent they were upon Divine aid. We need the lesson as much as they. In cases of difficulty we betake ourselves to God. In ordinary affairs we trust to ourselves. Yet we need His aid as much in the one as in the other. How many of our failures in the conflict with ourselves, or with the evil around us, are due to forgetting this truth? Or we take scant pains about what we think easy work. We need not” weary” ourselves, we think, with that. And our scanty preparation is inadequate to the task, since we are compassed with infirmity.

II. THE EXCEEDING SINFULNESS OF SIN. It was ruin to the Israelites’ campaign. It brought disgrace, not only to the sinner, but to the cause. So now,

(1) the sin of the individual falls on the community. Religion suffers severely for the shortcomings of its professors. Every religious community is cruelly injured by the faults of its members. Even the great conflict against evil itself has failed of complete success as yet, solely from the sins of those who have been carrying it on. The defeats of the army of the Lord in the great struggle against Satan are to be explained on the same principle as the defeat before Ai. There needs a humiliation, an awakening, a casting out of the offending member, before any new success can be achieved. And

(2) the conflict against sin within is subject to the same laws. We cannot subdue our evil passions, or tempers, or habits. It is because there is some hidden sin indulged secretly, which mars all our efforts. We have some Achan within, some master passion which hugs a secret unlawfu1 indulgence to itself, perhaps unperceived even by ourselves. Our defeats ought to teach us to institute the inquiry, bring the offender to light, and cast him out without mercy.

III. THE DANGER OF DISOBEDIENCE AND COVETOUSNESS. God had given no reasons for His command about Jericho and its spoils. It is true that they were obvious enough to an inquiring mind. But some minds will not inquire, except to find reasons for disobedience. Of such a disposition was Achan. Why should such a command be given? “To what purpose is this waste?” What is the good of it all? And the promptings of self interest are sufficient to outweigh the obvious reason that this solemn ban upon Jericho and all that was therein was to impress upon the minds of the Israelites the awfu1 and irrevocable nature of the sentence God had pronounced against the inhabitants of the land. Such abstract considerations had little weight besides the concrete fact of a wedge of gold and a Babylonish garment. The welfare of society, the necessity to its well being of God’s moral laws, are cobwebs easily brushed aside when interest or passion impel us to break those laws. We look at the temptation and look again. We let the idea gain possession of our minds. “Where is the harm?” we cry, and then we commit the sin, and involve ourselves in its terrible, and even upon repentance, to a certain extent, irremediable consequences. Though our Joshua has redeemed us from the extremest penalty of His outraged law, yet must He bring us to detection and shame, and consequent punishment. “The valley of Achor” may be given us “for a door of hope,” but the anguish must come before the peace, to which, by His mercy, it is destined to lead. One lesson from Achan’s sin is that no one can disobey God’s laws and come off seathless. Not for nought does He say, “Thou shalt not do this thing.” He who in wilful folly transgresses His commands must bear his burden, whosoever he be.

IV. THE DECEITFULNESS OF SIN. It seemed a light thing to Achan when he did it. “I did but taste a little honey”a little of the sweetness of forbidden pleasure”and lo, I must die.” So almost all sin seems light when committed. A little deceit or lying, a little indulgence in impure imaginations or actions, a little compliance with the customs of an evil world, a little yielding to the promptings of anger or avarice, seem slight matters when they occur. But they often bring serious consequences in their train. Repeated acts become habits, and habits are not easily broken off. We are their captives before we are aware, and then we wish, and wish in vain, that we had never made ourselves their slave.

“‘Twas but one little sin
We saw at morning enter in,
And lo! at eventide the world is drowned.”

Keble, ‘Christian Year,’ Septuagesima Sunday.

HOMILIES BY S.R. ALDRIDGE

Jos 7:1

Sin committed.

By the narrative before us we are reminded of several characteristics of sin.

I. IT DISOBEYS A COMMANDMENT. Only two precepts had been issued at the sacking of Jericho, one to spare Rahab and her family, another to “keep from the accursed thing,” and the latter precept was broken. The command was distinct, unmistakable; no difficulty in comprehending its import. Scripture defines sin as the “transgression of the law.” “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” A prohibition tests man’s obedience perhaps even more than an injunction to perform some positive act. The tempter easily lays hold of it, keeps it before the eye, irritates man’s self will, and insinuates doubts respecting the reason of the prohibition. Christ endorsed the moral law of the old dispensationnay, made it even more stringent; but He altered the principle of obedience, or, better still, increased the power of the motives to compliance. When we sin we still transgress a law, and sins of wilful commission are, in number, out of all proportion to sins of ignorance.

II. SIN IS OFTEN THE EFFECT OF COVETOUS DESIRES.Achan saw, coveted, and took (Jos 7:21). The seeing was innocent; the dwelling on the object of sight with desire was sinful. “Coveted” is the same word as used in Gen 3:6. “Saw a tree to be desired.” “When lust (desire) hath conceived it bringeth forth sin.” The outward object has no power to make us fall except as it corresponds to an inward affection. If the object be gazed upon long, the affection may be inordinately excited, and desire produce sinful action. Hence the counsel of the wise man regarding “the path of the wicked: Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.” It is not mixing in the world to perform our duties that is reprobated, nor even that amount of care which shall secure us an honourable position therein; but such an intent fixing of the eye upon riches, honour, pleasure, as denotes a love of the world and the things that are in it. Our affection must be set on things above as the best preservation against the influence of unholy passions; for where the heart is occupied, there evil finds it hard to effect a lodgment.

III. SIN ROBS GOD.All the metals were to be brought to the treasury, to be dedicated to the use of Jehovah (Jos 6:19). But Achan wished to appropriate a portion to his own ends, thus taking what belonged to God. He set up self in opposition to his God. Sin deprives God not only of gold, but of honour, love, obedience, and the use of those talents committed to men, that they may be faithful servants and stewards, not sordid proprietors. From the sinner’s heart ascends no sweet incense of faith and love; in the household of the worlding there is no family altar with its grateful offering of prayer and praise; the body of the unbeliever, instead of being a temple of God, is part of the kingdom of darkness.

IV. SIN IMPLIES A DELIGHT IN WHAT GOD ABOMINATES. The possessions of the Canaanites were placed under the ban; they were denominated “the accursed thing.” The Babylonish garment was to have been burnt, and the silver and gold could only be redeemed from the curse by being set apart for sacred uses. The very fact that the Almighty had condemned the property should have been sufficient to deter any one from seeking to seize it. And so with us; regard for our Father in heaven ought at once to make us shun what He has declared hateful, and look upon it with aversion; and belief in His unerring discernment should cause us readily to acquiesce in His judgment, even if at first sight the places and practices condemned do not appear hideous or sinful. The grievous nature of sin is evinced in its betrayal of a hankering after what the laws of God denounce, and consequently its revelation of a character differing from that of God, loving what is unlovely in His sight.

V. SIN IN GOD S PEOPLE IS A VIOLATION OF A COVENANT. Achan had transgressed the “covenant” (Gen 3:11 and Gen 3:15), or, as it is expressed in Gen 3:1, had “committed a trespass “i.e; a breach of trusthad acted faithlessly. Jericho, as the first city taken, was to be made an example of, and therefore none of the spoil was to accrue to the Israelites, but the plunder of other cities was to be allowed to enrich them. Yet Achan disregarded the understood agreement. Nor must it be forgotten that Israel stood in a peculiar relationship to the Almighty, who promised to bless them if they adhered to the terms of the covenant, which required them to be very obedient unto every commandment which the Lord should give by the mouth of His accredited messengers. A similar covenant is reaffirmed under the gospel dispensation, only it is pre-eminently a covenant of grace, not of works. Jesus died that they who lived should henceforth live unto Him who died for them. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added unto you,” was the stipulation of the great Teacher. To “sin wilfully” is to count the blood of the covenant wherewith we axe sanctified an unholy thing (Heb 10:29). Jesus is the Mediator of a “new covenant.” The same epistle concludes with a prayer that the God who, in virtue of the blood of the everlasting covenant, raised Christ from the dead, may perfect His people in every good work, that thus on both sides the “conditions” may be observed.

VI. SECRECY IS THE USUAL ACCOMPANIMENT OF SIN. Achan did not wear the “garment” or exhibit the “gold,” but hid his plunder “in the earth in the midst of his tent” (Gen 3:21). The attempt to cloak sin may arise either from a feeling of shame, or from the fear of detection and punishment. This last is a baser motive than the first. Shame is an evidence that the man is not wholly bad, that the voice of conscience has not been totally silenced. That after the Fall our first parents did not set their faces;like a flint was a testimony that evil had not acquired complete mastery over them. Oh that men visited with these compunctions of conscience would attend to the self attesting nature of sin! We may rejoice in the endeavour to conceal crimes, so far as it indicates that society is not yet so corrupt as unblushingly to acknowledge sin as such. Since God mentions the “dissembling” of Achan as aggravating his offence, it is probable that he was afraid of the vengeance which discovery would bring upon his head. Already sin was inflicting its punishment. There could not be open, unrestrained fruition of ill-gotten gains. Rejoicing naturally demands the presence of others to share our joy, and by participation to increase the common stock; but there can be no such gathering to greet the result of sins, for they

“The cloak of night being plucked from off their backs,
Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves.”

Conclusion. Thankfulness for a Saviour, born to “save his people from their sins,” the Light of the world revealing our natural dark, degraded condition, but bringing to us, if we will bask in His rays, knowledge, purity, and happiness. “God be merciful to me a sinner,” the prelude to “They shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.”A.

HOMILIES BY J. WAITE

Jos 7:1

The way of the transgressor.

In order to understand Achan’s sin, we must bear in mind the absolute nature of the decree that everything belonging to Jericho should be devoted to the Lordall living beings slain, and destructible materials consumed as a sacrifice to His offended Majesty; all indestructible materialssilver and gold, vessels of iron and brassconsecrated to the service of the sanctuary. The sin was, therefore, something more than an act of disobedience. It was a violation of the Divine covenant. It was sacrilege, a robbery of God, an impious seizure, for base, selfish purposes, of that which belonged to Him. And the secrecy with which the sin was committed was a defiance of the Divine Omniscience. Trifling as the offence may seem on a mere superficial view of it, it thus contained the essential elements of all transgression. The penalty was terrible; but the moral exigencies of the time demanded it. The sovereignty God was asserting so solemnly over the Canaanites could suffer no dishonour among His own people. “Judgment must begin at the house of God.” The point of interest in this passage is the view it gives of the connection between Achan and all Israel in this transgression; it speaks of his deed as the deed of the whole nation, and one that brought down on it the anger of the Lord. Consider

(1) the relation of Achan and his in to the people;

(2) the relation of the people to Achan’s sin.

I. NOTE THE INFLUENCE THE SIN OF ONE MAN MAY NAVE ON THE LIFE AND DESTINY OF MANY OTHERS. Nothing is said about the effect of Achan’s trespass on his family, except that it involved them with himself in the same miserable end. We are not told whether he had any associates in crime. Probably he had. Men are seldom able to keep dark secrets like tiffs locked up long in their own bosoms. But however this may be, we cannot well confine our thoughts to the mere participation in punishment. We are reminded of those bearings of human conduct which are at work long before the final issues stand revealedthe near, as well as remote, effects of wrong doing. Men cannot sin alone any more than “perish” alone (Jos 22:20). Consider that great law of moral action and reaction that underlies all the superficial forms of social life, and which is to it very much what the laws of chemical affinity or of attraction and gravitation are to nature. By this men are held together, linked one with another, cemented into one living anti organic whole. By virtue of this we are continually giving and receiving impulses. And it is as impossible that we should act without producing effects on others, as that the smooth surface of a lake should be broken and there be no undulations spreading to the banks. This influence will be for good or ill according to a man’s personal character. Our words and deeds, charged with the moral quality of our own inner life, tend thus inevitably to awaken something like them in others. Every good man diffuses a moral influence that assimilates all around him to his own goodness. Every bad man stands in the midst of human society the moral image of the deadly upas tree, blighting and withering crew fair thing that comes within its shadow. “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone!” Go not near him. For your own sake “let him alone!” So with every single act of transgression. We may not be able to trace its moral issues; only know that it adds to the ever-accumulating sum of the world’s evil. So far as its power reaches it is another contribution to the building up of Satan’s kingdom among men, another blow struck at the kingdom of truth and righteousness. Moreover, sin cannot always be hid, though men seek the darkness for the doing of their dark deedsthough the memorials of their guilt be carefully concealed, like the “costly garment,” etc; of Achan beneath the groundyet God’s eye “seeth in secret,” and He will sooner or later “reward it openly.” “For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest,” etc. (Luk 8:17). “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num 32:23). And as its influence spreads far beyond the place of its birth, so its penalty will fall on the innocent as well as the guilty. All this may seem out of harmony with the present dispensation of grace. But not so. Christianity does not alter the fundamental laws of moral government. These considerations clothe the sinner with guilt independently of the intrinsic quality of his deed. They deepen the shadow that rents on the path of the transgressor.

II. THE RELATION OF THE PEOPLE TO ACHAN‘S SIN. The crime of this one man is imputed to all Israel on the principle of the organic unity of the nation. As the body is said to be diseased or wounded, though the malady may lie only in one of its members, so his trespass destroyed the moral integrity of the whole nation. We are reminded of certain ways in which a community may be implicated in a wrong actually done by only one of its members.

(1) When the sin does but give definite expression to a spirit prevailing more or less through all. Distinct forms of practical evil often bring to light principles that are secretly leavening a whole society. It is vow possible that Achan’s solitary trespass was indicative of a spirit of insubordination, or of selfish greed among the people, that would have utterly subverted the Divine purpose if it had not been thus sternly rebuked at the beginning. Upon this principle of fellowship of spirit Christ said that “all the righteous blood shed on the earth” should come on that generation (Mat 23:35); and Peter charged the multitude on the day of Pentecost with having slain “the Holy One and the Just,” though many of them can have had no actual part in the transgression (Act 2:23; Act 3:14, Act 3:15).

(2) When the many connive at that sin, or share the profit of it. Men sin by proxy, and thus think to secure the end without involving themselves in the wrongful means that lead to it. But to consent to reap any part of the profit of an iniquitous transactionto place yourself willingly in any sort of connection with itis to share its guilt. Indeed, the moral sense of mankind declares that there is a special criminality, an added element of baseness and meanness, belonging to him who has such indirect interest in the wrong doing of others. The question of so-called “national sins” arises here. A national sin is one committed in the name of a nation by its representatives, or on which the State sets the stamp of its authority and license. If Achan’s sin had been connived at by Joshua and the elders it would have been a national sin.

(3) When those who are aggrieved by the sin fail to bear faithful witness against it. The guilt of this “trespass” rested on all Israel until, by public condemnation, it was wiped out (2Co 7:11).W.

HOMILIES BY E. DE PRESSENSE

Jos 7:1

The accursed thing.

Immediately after the taking of Jericho, Israel found itself suddenly arrested in its career of conquest. Its advanced guard received a humiliating repulse from the inhabitants of the small town of Ai. Joshua was driven almost to despair by this defeat, because it seemed to doom the army of Israel to feebleness and failure, by the withdrawal of the presence and power of God. It seemed as if the heavens were closed against him, and he could no more reckon upon that invincible Divine aid which had been hitherto the strength of his arms. He rent his garments and called upon God, and the answer came, “Israel hath sinned for they have taken of the accursed thing.” This trangression of the covenant was the cause of their defeat, and this alone. And in our own day it is “the accursed thing” which is still the sole obstacle to the victories of the people of God, and to His blessing resting upon them. Let us look at flits sin in its cause, in its effects, and in its reparation.

I. THE CAUSE OF THIS SIN is covetousness born of the selfishness which leads to rebellion. The unhappy Achan could not resist the desire to secure for himself a share of the booty, he sought his own selfish ends in the cause of God. That cause requires to be served with complete self devotion, and with an eye to God alone. Achan thought first of satisfying his own avarice. A holy war must be waged holily. From the moment when the base passion of selfishness creeps in, it ceases to be a holy war. It is then even worse than any other war, for God will not suffer His name to be profaned. Whenever the so-called defenders of the Church have sought their own glory, when they have aimed at securing power or fortune for themselves, they have paved the way for defeat. This is equally true of individuals. To make use of the cause of God for one’s own ends is not only to dishonour, but fatally to compromise it; for it is then no longer the cause of God, but the cause of the devil.

II. THE EFFECT of intermeddling with the accursed thing IS TO LOSE THE HELP OF GOD, and to bring down His anger. The heavenly Father is no blind and unjust parent, who has favourites whose transgressions He winks at. He chastises those whom He loves, and because He loves them; He does not allow them to harden their hearts in rebellion against Him. Hence He makes them feel the Father’s chastening rod (Heb 12:16). It is not tolerable, moreover, that the cause of God should be confounded with that of ambition and self seeking, or that His name should be used as a cloak for covetousness. Therefore, as soon as Israel violates the covenant of God, it is visited with condign punishment. The victory of the rebel who makes use of the name of God would be, for that very reason, worse than his defeat. Defeat will show that the honor of God cannot be sullied by the sins of His people, for He repudiates them. We must not be suprised at finding that in every age God has made His people pass through the sharpest ordeal of chastisement. The heaviest of all chastisements is the interruption of communication with God. The heavens are pitiless iron and brass so long as the accursed thing is tampered with. The sin forms a wall between God and the soul, which there is no passing through.

III. THE REPARATION OF THIS EVIL IMPLIES TWO SUCCESSIVE ACTS.

1. Its confession. Achan must acknowledge his sin before all the people.

2. The utter putting away of the accursed thing. Under the stern discipline of the old covenant, the guilty man perished with his unlawful prey. Under the new covenant, the justice of God is satisfied with that inward death which is called mortification, and which ought to be a true sacrifice of self. It is equally true now, however, that mere confession is not enough; that the idol must be consumed in the sacrificial fire. Any one who keeps in his possession the accursed thing, places himself under condemnation from which there is no escape. It does not signify whether the forbidden thing be materially of much or little value. It might have been thought that the theft of a single garment and of two hundred shekels of silver was of small account amidst all the rich booty of Jericho. It is the act itself which God condemns. The smallest forbidden thing retained is enough to shut up the heavens, and to draw down upon our Church, our home, and ourselves the severe judgment of God till it has been confessed and put away.E.DE.P.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Ver. 1. But the children of Israel Though there was but one guilty, the historian attributes to the whole society, whereof Achan was a member, the criminal action which he had committed. This is the style of Scripture, and it is the language of reason. See Calmet. A people, properly speaking, is only one moral person. The common interest, which connects all the members of it together, warrants the imputing to the whole nation what is done by the individuals who compose it, unless it be expressly disavowed.

Committed a trespass in the accused thing They committed a trespass, by keeping back somewhat desecrated; or, as the LXX has it, by setting apart something of the curse; of the booty which was made in the sacking of Jericho; though this was forbidden under pain of incurring the most rigorous effects of the divine malediction.

For Achan, the son of Carmi, &c. He is called Achar, 1Ch 2:7. This latter name, which signifies trouble, was evidently given him in allusion to the reproof that Joshua gave him previous to his being stoned, of having troubled Israel, ver. 25. Zabdi is the same who, in 1Ch 2:6 is called Zimri. Zerah, the son of Judah, came into Egypt with his father very young. It is not said that he had any children there; and we cannot suppose him to be less than seventy years old when he became father of Zabdi. If, as Bonfrere thinks, Zabdi was as old when Carmi was born, and Carmi as old when he begat Achan, the latter must have been above fifty at the taking of Jericho; an age at which many men begin to be over-attached to the things of the world, and set too high a value upon them.

And the anger of the Lord was kindled, &c. The crime of one member of this body drew down marks of the divine indignation on all the Israelites, (who in other respects, doubtless, deserved it,) in order to stir them up to search out the guilty, and inflict upon him the just punishment of the danger to which he had exposed them. We may further observe, 1. That there were, perhaps, many Israelites guilty, in their desires, of the crime of Achan, and who would actually have committed it, had they dared; and others who knew it, but had given themselves no concern on that account, and had not even deigned to inform Joshua of it. 2. That by chastising the whole body for the faults of one, or of several individuals, God proposed to render all the Israelites more circumspect, more attentive to each other’s conduct, and more careful to remove from sinners every occasion of doing evil. 3. That by this severity he designed to render sin more odious to the whole nation.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

2. Achans Theft

Joshua 7

a. The Crime

1But the children [sons] of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing [in respect to what was devoted]: for [and] Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing [of what was devoted]: and the anger of the Lord [Jehovah] was kindled against the children [sons] of Israel.

b. Its evil Effects in the unfortunate Expedition against Ai

Jos 7:2-5

2And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Beth-el, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country [spy out the land]. And the men went up, and viewed [spied out] Ai. 3And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people go up; but [omit: but] let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai: and [omit: and] make 4not all the people to labour thither; for they are but [omit: but] few. So [And] there went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai. 5And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for [and] they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore [and] the hearts of the people melted, and became as [omit: as] water.

c. Joshuas humble Prayer and Gods Answer thereto

Jos 7:6-15

6And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord [Jehovah] until the even-tide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads. 7And Joshua said, Alas! O Lord God [Jehovah], wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over [the] Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God [O that] we had been content, and 8dwelt on the other side [of the] Jordan. O Lord [Fay: Pray, Lord; Bunsen: Forgive, Lord; De Wette: Pray, my Lord], what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs [has turned the back] before their [his] enemies? 9For the Canaanites [Canaanite], and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what will thou do unto thy great name?

10And the Lord [Jehovah] said unto Joshua: Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? 11Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them; for [and] they have even [also1] taken of the accursed [devoted] thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even [also put it] among their own stuff. 12Therefore the children [sons] of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed [have become a devoted thing]: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed [devoted] thing from among you. 13Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow: for thus saith the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, There is an accursed [a devoted] thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye have put away the accursed [devoted] thing from among you. 14In the morning therefore [And in the morning] ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which the Lord [Jehovah] taketh shall come according to the families thereof; and the family which the Lord [Jehovah] shall take [taketh] shall come by [the] households; and the household which the Lord [Jehovah] shall take [taketh] shall come man by Man 1:15 And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed [devoted] thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord [Jehovah], and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.

d. Discovery and Punishment of Achan the Transgressor

Jos 7:16-26

16So Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes; and the tribe of Judah was taken: 17And he brought the family [Fay: families2] of Judah; and he took the family of the Zarhites [of Zarhi]: and he brought the family of the Zarhites [of Zarhi] man by Man 1:3 and Zabdi was taken: 18And he brought his household man by man; and Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. 19And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, and make confession unto him [Gesen.; so De Wette and Bunsen; Fay: give him [the] praise]; and tell me now what thou hast done, hide it not from me. 20And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. 21When [And4] I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment [mantle of Shinar], and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge [tongue] of gold of fifty shekels weight, then [and] I coveted them, and took them, and behold they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it. 22So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran unto the tent, and behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it. 23And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and unto all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the Lord [Jehovah]. 24And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment [mantle], and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of Achor. 25And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us ? [or, What trouble hast thou brought upon us ?] The Lord [Jehovah] shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and they burned them with fire, after they had stoned [and pelted] them with stones. 26And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So [And] the Lord [Jehovah] turned from the fierceness of his anger: wherefore the name of that place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

a. Jos 7:1. The Crime of Achan. The very first words with which the account of Achans theft begins show that the sin of the individual is regarded as compromising all; for it is said: The children of Israel committed a trespass in that which was devoted. signifies properly to cover, from which a mantle; hence to act underhandedly, treacherously, Pro 16:10; 2Ch 26:18; 2Ch 29:6; 2Ch 29:19; Neh 1:8; specially frequent in the combination which we find here = to sin through falsehood, treachery, namely, , 1Ch 5:25; 1Ch 10:13; 2Ch 12:2, here therefore indirectly Jos 22:20; 1Ch 2:7.

Achan. In 1Ch 2:7 the man is called = the troubler, with which chaps, Jos 6:18; Jos 7:26, may be compared. Josephus also calls him, therefore, , the LXX. in Cod. Vat. , while Cod. Alex, has (Keil). Stier and Theiles polyglott reads with Vat. . Instead of Zabdi we read in 1 Jos 2:6 Zimri, arising perhaps, as Keil supposes, from confounding letters.

Then the anger of Jehovah was kindled against the children of Israel. Luther: was fierce; but blazed, was kindled to a blaze, is perhaps more adequately suggestive, since the anger itself is regarded as a flame which blazes up and turns its destructive force in this or that direction. It is said concerning men: Gen 4:5; 2Sa 12:5; Exo 32:19; Exo 32:22; 1Sa 18:8; 1Sa 20:7 and often; Act 17:16; but by preference concerning God; Num 11:1; Num 11:10; Num 22:22; Job 19:11; Job 42:7; Zec 10:3; Hab 3:8. In the N. T. also concerning Christ, Joh 11:33; Joh 11:38; God himself is a consuming fire; Exo 24:17; Deu 4:24; Deu 9:3; Heb 12:29. Fire goes before him: Deu 9:3; Joe 2:3; Psa 18:9; Psa 18:16. His anger is therefore a destructive anger when it is revealed from heaven against the unrighteousness of men, Rom 1:18. Here it blazes not against Achan only, but against the whole people, because Achan, a member of the people, has through his crime brought the whole people into a partnership of suffering. The consequences of his deed show themselves immediately in the unfortunate expedition against Ai.

b. Jos 7:2-5. Its evil Effects in the unfortunate Expedition against Ai, Joshua sends men from Jericho to Ai, to explore the land, pursuing the same course as before (Joshua 2). They bring back a favorable report, advise to let only two or three thousand men go forward, and persuade Joshua so to do. The ill success of the movement shows that they had underrated the strength of Ai.5 Although the loss of thirty-six men is comparatively small, the people are disheartened. Their heart melts and becomes water.

Jos 7:2. Ai, Beth-aven, Jos 18:23.Bethel,Jos 18:13.

Jos 7:3. They are few. According to Jos 8:25, Ai had 12,000 inhabitants. The scouts had not estimated rightly.

Jos 7:5. Shebarim. , probably stone quarries which lay in that vicinity but have not yet been found by travellers, while there are such near Anathoth, according to Robinson (ii. 110), and Tobler (Topography of Jerusalem, ii. p. 395, in Knobel). Noticeable is the translation of the LXX , which supposes instead of the Masoretic the reading . According to that the defeat should have been total, and the discouragement of the people more intelligible than when only the thirty-six were lost.

Wherefore the heart of the people melted and became water. Jos 2:11; Jos 5:1; Deu 1:28. A very striking addition: became water. Is it perhaps, that they wept?

c. Jos 7:6-16. Joshuas humble Prayer and Gods Answer thereto. The section falls into two divisions: (a.) Jos 7:6-9. Filled with deep distress, Joshua, with the elders of Israel, falls down before the ark of God, and continues with them in penitent prayer till evening. (b.) Jos 7:10-15. God answers that there is one devoted among the Israelites, who must be destroyed, after he has been discovered by casting lots.

a. Jos 7:6-9, Joshuas Prayer.

Jos 7:6. And Joshua rent his clothes. A sign of mourning and distress. The clothes were torn in front over the breast, yet not for more than a hand-breadth (Othon. Lex. Rabb. p. 360, apud Winer). The custom appears also among Greeks and Romans. Suet. Cs. 33 (veste a pectore discissa). In the O. T. many passages remind us of it, yet in Winer precisely the passage before us is wanting. It is remarkable that in 2Sa 3:31, the rending of the garments is commanded by the king, but it is no more strange, as Winer well observes, than if among us, on the death of the ruler of the land, the mode of personal mourning were prescribed by an edict. Tearing the clothes had gradually become among the Jews, as we can not but think, the fashion in mourning, precisely as among us the wearing of black garments and crape badges for a specified time. [See Bibl. Dict. art. Mourning.] Hence the prophet Joel admonishes the people: Rend your hearts and not your garments (Jos 2:13). But when the high-priest (Mat 26:65), or Paul and Barnabas tear their clothes (Act 14:14), it was in the deepest displeasure, when the feelings were excited, since such a state is related to mourning.

Dust. Likewise a sign of mourning. 1Sa 4:12; 2Sa 1:2; Lam 2:10, and often, Iliad xviii. 23 ff.; xxiv. 164.

Jos 7:7. Joshua first asks God why He has brought his People over the Jordan, if He would now destroy them; for it would have been better if they had been content to stay in the land east of that river.

Would that we had been content and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan. Luther: O that we had remained on the other side of the Jordan as we had commenced,the ut cpimus of the Vulgate, by which is translated. Unquestionably means to commence, and is eleven times rendered by the LXX., according to Gesenius, ; here, however, as Jdg 19:6; Jdg 17:11, it means, to let ones self be pleased, and with the accessory notion, of to be content. The translation of the Vulgate and of Luther is tame, while the LXX. hits the correct sense: .

Jos 7:8. Continuation of the complaint, with the additional element that Israel has fled before his enemies.

Jos 7:9. Portrays the great danger if the Canaanites hear of this, and finally, Jos 7:10 : What wilt thou do for thy great name? God himself is, as it were, concerned.

. Jos 7:10-15. Gods Reply. The entire tone of this answer attests that Gods anger is indeed kindled against the children of Israel. Israel is himself to blame for the defeat (Jos 7:10-11) because he has sinned, nor will he hereafter be able to stand before his enemies on this account; and God will not be among the children of Israel unless they destroy that which is devoted from among them (Jos 7:12). Joshua must therefore rise up, sanctify the people against the following day, and discover the guilty man by casting lots (Jos 7:13-14). When he is discovered, he and all which he has must be burned up with fire (Jos 7:15). It is a mighty and deeply impressive word from God which is here imparted to Joshua.

Jos 7:10. Get thee up! Wherefore, etc. Divine displeasure. Joshua might well divine that they had merited Jehovahs ill-will. Hence Gods somewhat impatient question, why he lay there on his face. He should rather be up and trying to detect and put away the sin (Knobel).

Jos 7:11. The is scarcely more than and, Knobel remarks, but we would call attention to the rhetorical climaxsuited to express Gods vehement displeasurein the several designations of their sin as connected by : transgressedtakenstolendissembledput among their own stuff. For here was the culmination of the crime, that they had appropriated to themselves what belonged to God. [Cf. Jos 6:18.] Thus conceived, the language is more dramatic, laden with the most intense emotion.

Jos 7:12. They have become a devoted thing, Jos 6:18.

Jos 7:13 begins with a repeated admonition to Joshua to arise. God gives him this admonition, as indeed the entire answer, directly, not as Clericus supposes, through the high-priest, of whom the context has not a word.Sanctify yourselves against to-morrow, Jos 3:5.

Jos 7:14. The tribe which Jehovah shall take. That is through the lot () which is here used, as in 1Sa 14:42 (Jon 1:7), in a criminal investigation; elsewhere in divisions of land and people, of prisoners, in elections, warlike undertakings. Commonly dice were thrown, as is probable (to cast lots, Jos 18:8, to throw, Jos 18:6, the lot falls, Jon 1:7; Eze 24:6), or drawn out of a vessel (the lot came forth) Num 33:54, came up Lev 6:9. Winer. First the tribe, then the clan, then the household, (father-house), finally the particular man was to be discovered. The manner itself in which this was done is not known; it is natural to suppose that white and black stones were used, especially as from = to be rough, signifies properly a small stone, . Farther particulars may be found in Mauritius, De Sortitione apud Hebros, Basil, 1692. [Diet, of the Bible, art. Lot.]. Like the Hebrews, the Romans also resorted to the lot in divisions (sortes divisori), and elections (sors urbana and peregrina in the choice of a prtor) as also to explore the will of the divinity (staff oracle, rhabdomancy). The Homeric heroes cast lots ( ) whenever the accomplishment of any heroic deed was in question, as was done also Jdg 22:10. They too had rhabdomancy as well as the Romans (see Pierer s. v. Loos).

Jos 7:15. Shall be burnt with fire. Not alive, but according to Jos 7:25 he was first stoned to death, and then his corpse burned as an aggravation of the death penalty (Keil).

Folly, . The is not so much a fool in an intellectual respect as in a moral; hence is more the moral than the intellectual folly = to iniquity, comp. Gen 34:7; Deu 22:21; Jdg 19:23-24; 2Sa 13:12. For the idea of , Psa 14:1; Psa 53:2, are classical texts.

d. The Discovery and Punishment of Achan the Evil-doer. Jos 7:16-20. Conformably to Gods command, Joshua the next morning brings the tribes of Israel before Jehovah, when Achan is indicated by the lot as the transgressor (Jos 7:16-18). Being exhorted to confess his fault Achan owns all (Jos 7:19-21). The stolen property is found in his tent according to his statement (Jos 7:22-23); he himself with what belonged to him is stoned and burnt (Jos 7:24-26).

Jos 7:16-18. The difficulty which the text offers, Jos 7:17, has been already intimated above. In it requires only a different punctuation to bring it into harmony with Jos 7:14. We therefore read the plural without hesitation instead of the singular of the Masoretes. It is different with . Here we have a different word before us, and a more difficult one, which we can the less make up our minds to change, since, as Keil, following Vatablus, has happily remarked, not the father-houses or family groups, but only the men representing the clan, the heads of the several father-houses, came forward to the lot. So also Bunsen: Man, that is, house, Jos 7:14.

We may perhaps best represent the whole process thus:

the people of israel.

First lot

Tribe of Judah.

Second lot

Clan of Zerah.

Third lot

House of Zabdi.6

Fourth lot

Man Achan.

Jos 7:19-21. My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and give him (the) praise [or, make confession to him]; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me, Jos 7:19. The demand of Joshua upon Achan was certainly meant by him honestly and frankly, not craftily, as some of the Rabbins assume. Achan should confess his sin in order to receive inward forgiveness, although he has outwardly fallen under the irrevocable sentence of God. The form of the demand is the same as in Joh 9:24. Reverence for the Omniscient God should move to the confession of the truth. The circumstances, indeed, are here essentially different from those in John 9. Honest and frank Joshua stands before Achan, crafty and treacherous the Pharisees seek, under an appeal for honor to God, to extort from the man born blind a confession injurious to our Lord.

Jos 7:20. Achan humbly confesses his sin as a sin against Jehovah, God of Israel.

Jos 7:21. Babylonish garment, prop. mantle of Shinar=Babylon (Gen 11:2; Gen 11:8-9; Gen 10:10). What it was made of we know not, since particular statements are wanting. Starke suspects it was of gold and silken threads, and that it was wrought in many colors mixed, Jon 3:6; 2Ki 2:13. Concerning the elaborate and beautiful products of the Babylonian looms, see Heeren, Asiat. Nations, i. 2, p. 422 ff. [Bohns Eng. ed.]. Movers Phnicians, ii. 3, p. 258 ff. (Knobel). [See further particulars in Dict. of the Bibl., art. Babylonish Garment.]

Two hundred shekels of silver = 200 0.60 = 120. For details concerning the calculation, vid. in Winer, Realw. s. v. Sekel, or in Herzogs Realencyk. vol. iv. p. 764. [Gesen. s. v. , Dict. of the Bibl. art. Money, Shekel, and Weights and Measures.]

A wedge (prop. tongue) of gold. Vulg. regula aurea, a golden bar. Rather, a tongue-shaped article made of gold (Knobel). The weight is given at fifty shekels, equal in value to cir. thirty dollars.

I coveted them,Gen 3:6; Jam 4:13-15. , the article as Lev 27:33.

Under it. The mantle lay probably on the top, and the tongue of gold next below, and the silver lowest.

Jos 7:22-23. Discovery of the stolen Goods in Achans Tent. The messengers laid it down, after they had found it, before Jehovah. from , to pour out, is equivalent to , to set, to place, 2Sa 15:24.

Before Jehovah = before the ark of Jehovah, where He was enthroned, Jos 6:8.

Jos 7:24-26. Achan, son of Zerah; in a wide sense son of Zerah; strictly he was his great grandson. He is now, together with the articles appropriated by him, as well as his whole property, and also all his sons and daughters, given up to destruction. How does this sentence passed on Achan, under which his innocent sons and daughters also fell, agree with the decision of the law, Deu 24:16, according to which the fathers should not die for the children, nor the children for the fathers, but every one for his own sin? This difficulty has been met in various ways: (1) Some Rabbins, Schulz, Hess, and others suppose that Achans family were brought into the valley of Achor merely as spectators, to take a terrifying example, contrary to what is written, Jos 7:25. (2) C. a Lapide, Cler., Mich., Rosenmller, think they had had a share in their fathers crime. For this an analogous case might be cited in Act 5:1 ff., but while there it is made conspicuous that Sapphira was privy to the sin of Ananias; here every intimation of that kind is wanting. Hence (3) Calvin, Masius, Seb. Schmidt, leave the matter undecided, appealing to the unfathomableness of Gods counsels; while others again, like Knobel, and Starke also, at least by intimations, remark that we have here to do with a judgment executed by the immediate direction of God, and therefore a divine judgment, similar to the case, Num 16:32, whereas the ordinance in Deu 24:16, holds good only for the usual every-day administration of justice. Before God, the searcher of hearts, the sons and daughters of Achan were guilty of participation in their fathers sin, because in them the same corrupted nature and disposition, which Keil rightly notices, was present, which in the father produced the evil deed [?]. God visits the sins of the fathers on the children, Exo 20:5; Num 14:33. Accurately considered, the decision pertaining to private rights, in Deu 24:16, has no application to this higher public right of God.

Jos 7:24. Valley of Achor. Jos 15:7; Hos 2:15; Isa 65:10. The origin of the name is given, Jos 7:25. It lay north of Jericho on the northern border of the tribe of Judah. In Jeromes time the name was still in use.

Jos 7:25. And all Israel stoned him. Here is used, afterwards at the close of the verse, in an addition which the LXX omit, . Both words are used in the Bible of stoning, but has the more general signification, and is found only once, Lev 24:14, without . Achan is condemned to be stoned because he had by his robbery violated the honor of God, as did blasphemers, Sabbath breakers, idolaters, sorcerers, wizards, etc. The addition is superfluous, and may perhaps be intended, as Knobel conjectures, to obviate a misunderstanding of in the former half of the verse. Not only the LXX. but the Vulg. omits it. Luther has aimed to avoid the difficulty by attaching the words to the following verse, and translating: And when they had stoned them they raised, etc. [Nearly so the Eng. vers.]

Jos 7:26. Over Achan they raised a great heap of stones which served to commemorate his disgrace (Jos 8:29; 2Sa 18:17); and that even to the writers time. The casting of stones on certain graves was customary in other nations also, e.g. among the Arabs (Schultes Hist. Joctanidarum, pp. 118, 144), and the Romans (Propert. 4, 5, 74 ff. Serv. ed. Lion, i. p. 1), but had not always that dishonorable import. It had not, e.g. among the Bedouins who often heap up stones over one buried (Burkhardt, Beduinen, p. 81), Knobel.

And Jehovah turned from the fierceness of his anger,Exo 32:12.

THEOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL

1. Gods anger is not an ebullition of blind passion, but a holy displeasure against the unrighteousness of men. When this unrighteousness is removed Gods anger ceases, as the close of our chapter, Jos 7:26, shows. All which has been injuriously said concerning the blood-thirsty and wrathful God of the O. T. rests on a failure to apprehend this holy displeasure of God against the unrighteousness of men. That brings upon them indeed judgment and penalty, but never goes so far as to shut up his compassion, although men may think so and with Asaph sigh: Hath God for gotten to be gracious, hath He in anger shut up his tender mercies? (Psa 77:10.) Eternal justice which belongs as a constitutive element to the nature of God, without which we cannot conceive of any government at all of the world, is constantly limited by his love. But conversely his love towards men is not a blind love, but rather a truly paternal affection which leaves no fault, no transgression of his commands, unreproved. Both justice and love coexist in God, and are mutually blended in him with an interpenetration of the most intimate, highest, absolute kind. Hence the jurists may say: Fiat justitia pereat mundus! God never has and never can.

2. Properly Achan alone is the transgressor, but since he is a member of the body politic his act compromises all the children of Israel, and hence draws after it injurious consequences upon all, so that the anger of God is kindled against all. In the eyes of God the whole community appears infected by the sin of the one, so that they stand before him, not as a pure and holy congregation, as they should be according to their high vocation, (Exo 19:6; Deu 7:6; 1Pe 2:9). If we keep firmly to this point of view, we shall cease from complaining of God as being in any way unrighteous, as if He recklessly punished the innocent with the guilty. We shall rather, in this matter, agree with Keil when he says: As member of a community established by God, the good or evil action of the individual involves the whole congregation in blessing or destruction. As Paul writes: if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; and if one member be honored all the members rejoice with it (1Co 12:26). So may we also say, that if one member becomes guilty, all the members share the guilt, and if one of the members does well, all the members share the blessing of this good deed. It is important in these matters to look not only at the individual but also at the community, that we may comprehend at least in some measure the procedure of the divine justice over against the guilt of mankind. We emphasize in some measure, because we need yet to lay to heart the advice which Calvin here gives: Suspensas tenere nostras mentes, donec libri aperiuntur, ubi clare patebunt qu nunc nostra caligine obtenebrantur Dei judicia.

[As clearly as the whole Scripture makes the individual an object of the divine mercy and justice, so clearly does it teach us also to regard the totality of a people as an organic unity, in which the individuals are only members of the body, and not capable of being separated, as so many atoms, from the whole. The state as a divine institution is built on the family, to promote the mutual love of the members, and the common love of all to the one invisible head of all. But if the state is of divine appointment, not a mere civil establishment, not a human institution, conventionally agreed upon by men, the fact following as a necessary consequence from the moral unity of the organism, that the good or evil deed of the one member is reckoned to the whole body, loses the appearance of caprice and unrighteousness which it has while one, without perceiving their fundamental connection, has only a one sided regard to the infliction, of the consequences of the sin. KeilTr.]

3. The deep humility of Joshua before the Lord reminds us of Moses, Exo 32:32, of Ezra (Jos 9:3), of his own and Calebs course when the people murmured (Num 14:6). How mighty appear these O. T. saints in their grief because of the sins of their people, how independently they stand up against God, in behalf of Gods honor, and yet how humbly! Their sorrow is truly a (2Co 7:10), from which proceeds the . Hence God raises them up again, and gives them again fresh courage for his work, for He knows that their grief, in its deepest root, is a grief for him, for his names glory and honor. Themselves pure and clean, they mourn over the misdeeds of the people, while an Ahab (1Ki 21:27) if he does this has to exercise penitence for his own sin. Si duo faciunt idem, non est idem. Compare still Psalms 85; Psa 102:14-19; Psa 130:7-8.

4. It is to be observed that God (Jos 7:14 ff.) reserves to himself the discovery of the crime. Jehovah will strike, take (, properly, select,) the tribe, the clan, the house, the particular man, by the lot, the disposing of which is ascribed (Pro 16:33) to the Lord. Such an employment of the lot as is here presented, could only be brought in at the immediate direction of God, or with special appeal to him (1Sa 14:41), and belonged to the extraordinary measures which He prescribed for his people. The certainty with which the whole process goes forward, the quiet which accompanies it, makes a very solemn impression. The control of the divine justice is most directly brought to our thought when we read the narrative of the transaction, distinguished as it is by an unadorned simplicity; how much more powerful must have been the original impression which this judgment of God made on the assembled people at its actual occurrence! An analogous example is presented in the N. T., Act 5:1 ff.

5. That all wickedness is folly (, that every sinner is a fool (), not indeed so much in an intellectual but above all things in a moral respect, this cutting truth is proclaimed by the O. T. loudly and impressively. A very significant hint for hamartiology; the nature of sin is so difficult to explain because it is merely absolute irrationality, because it is foolishness!

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

How human iniquity provokes divine anger.The sin of an individual in its destructive effects on an entire people shown in the case of Achan.Of Gods anger. (1) What are we to understand thereby? (2) How can we guard against it so that it may not be kindled against us?The unfortunate expedition of Joshua against Ai.Human sagacity alone helps not if God be not with us.Despise no enemy; for you may in meeting him be greatly deceived concerning his strength.How soon, alas, is the heart of man discouraged!Against despondency of the heart helps Gods grace alone, Heb 13:9.

Joshuas humble prayer before God.God withstands the proud but giveth grace unto the humble. Joshuas grief for his people compared with the lamentation of Moses and Ezra.Joshua as an example of mourning before God.Parallel between Joshuas penitence and that of Ahab.Rending of the garments a significant symbol of the rending of the heart, Joe 2:13.How God hears prayer.

The discovery and punishment of Achan the transgressor, a case of the divine administration of Justice.(1) How Achan was hit upon; (2) how he confessed his sin; (3) what punishment he received; or (1) the discovery of the criminal; (2) his confession; (3) his punishment.Joshua and Achan; (1) How Joshua seeks to bring Achan to a confession of his guilt; (2) how the latter actually confesses it.We give honor to God when we say the truth.Achans lowly confession of sin.Every sin a sin against the Lord.Covetousness, unlawful desire, a source of every sin.The stoning of Achan.The judgment in the valley of Achor.The monument of the crime a warning to Israel.The stoning of Achan, and that of Stephenwhat a contrast?

Starke: He who has done iniquity should own the truth to the honor of God. But woe to those who deny their misdeeds, Psa 32:1. Si fecisti nega, is not a divine but a devilish rule. Ye advocates, put nothing of such into any mans head.

Cramer: However shrewdly men begin a thing it does no good except in so far as God gives it success. For if God is not with us all is lost.The heart of man can nowhere observe a just proportion. In prosperity it is too proud, in adversity too pusillanimous.

Bibl. Tub.: When God goes with us into the field the mightiest foe cannot hurt us, but where God is not we cannot resist the weakest enemy.God lets us not sink away in our mourning, but when He has sufficiently humbled us and laid us in the dust, and sees in us a true repentance for our sins, He himself also raises us up again and exalts the miserable from the dust, Psa 113:7; 1Co 10:13.

Hedinger: If, in the spiritual conflict also we are left to come off worsted, there is often nothing to blame but some, perhaps hidden, sin which yet lurks in us and of which we have not yet repented.

Gerlach, Calvin: That they in this prayer turn straight to God, and recognize that He who has wounded can heal them, springs from their faith; but carried away by excess of grief they transgress all limits. Hence the boldness of their controversy with God; hence the perverse wish: O that we had remained in the wilderness! But it is nothing new that when men with holy zeal seek God, the light of their faith is dimmed by the intensity, the tempest of their emotions And yet when they thus strive with God and pour out before Him all which weighs them down, though this their simplicity needs forgiveness, it is still far more agreeable to God than the mock-humility of hypocrites, who take great care that no word of assurance may cross their lips, while they are inwardly filled with pride.It is a fine trait in this narrative that the criminal, detected by the lot, should be condemned only on his own confession. Joshua does not promise him exemption from punishment, but by his confession God was honored before all the people, since the accuracy of the lot was confirmed. At the same time there lies in these words a hint of a divine judgment hereafter, before which guilt and penalty will be abated when one has given himself up to suffer the earthly penalty ordained by God, confessing that he has deserved it. There is manifested here a truly holy, paternal disposition in Joshua, as a judge who relaxes nothing of the rigor of the divine command, but, so far as is possible in consistency with that, deals mercifully with the transgressor.By his robbery of the sanctuary Achan had entirely broken the covenant with God, and he and his had become the same as the Canaanites; as they had snatched for themselves what had been devoted to destruction, they must themselves now be destroyed. Similar in this respect was the punishment, which in ancient times was inflicted on the families of those guilty of high treason, and in some degree is still inflicted among us.

[Scott: Every failure in such undertakings as evidently accord to the will of God, and the duty of our place and station, should cause us to humble ourselves before him, to flee to his mercy seat, to pour out our hearts in prayer, and inquire wherefore he contendeth with us; and to plead his promises and the glory of his great name, as engaged to support that cause which we are endeavoring to promote whatever becomes of us and our worthless names.Would we avoid the commission of gross iniquity, we must make a covenant with our eyes and all our senses; we must repress the first movements of concupiscence, and pray earnestly not to be led into temptation, we must habituate ourselves to meditate on the future consequences of sinful gratification; and to place ourselves, by an effort of the imagination, in those very circumstances in which we should be were the sin committed, and the infatuation vanished; and to consider what our judgment and feelings in that case would be.Finally, though atrocious criminals, should be punished with unrelenting firmness, and all should unite in protesting against their crimes; yet their misery should not be insulted, nor their immortal souls forgotten; but calm expostulations, serious instructions, and compassionate exhortations, should be used to bring them to repentance, that they may obtain mercy from God in a future world.

G. R. B: Jehovah is a prayer-hearing Godblessed be His name!but with what impatience He listens to the cries of those, however proper the matter of their petitions, who have need themselves to act in order that their wishes may be granted! Up! sanctify thyself, we may hear Him saying to many an earnest suppliant; put away thy sins, supply thy own deficiencies, and do thy part to remove the stumbling-blocks from among thy brethren; then expect my help towards what thou desirest further. Happy for us if we get even this answer to our mistaken prayer!Tr.]

Footnotes:

[1][Ver 11. repeated to the fifth time very emphatically distinguishes the several momenta of their crime sinned, and also taken . and also stolen, and also dissembled, and also put it, etc. See Exeg Note.Tr.]

[2]Different Codd., the LXX., the Vulg., instead of read , which pointing we follow with Keil and Bunsen. [But it seems sufficient and quite consistent with the principle of the following foot-note to understand to be used axly for tribe, . Gesen.Tr.]

[3]Different Codd., some old editions, the Syr., Vulg., have instead of , the reading to make an agreement with Jos 7:16. But since the former is the more difficult reading we hold fast to it with Keil and Bunsen See Exegetical Notes.

[4] [Jos 7:21.. The is as nearly redundant here probably as it ever is (it is treated as if it were entirely so by De Wette, Zunz, and Fay), and yet is not redundant. It betrays the confusion of thought in which Achan spoke: Thus and thus have I done: and I saw . and I coveted them, etc.

The manner in which our version, and perhaps all others, not unfrequently substitute a conditional sentence (when I saw; then I coveted) for two cordinate, copulative sentences of narration (and I sawand I coveted) sometimes gives a welcome variety to the monotonous succession of copulative clauses with which the Hebrew is content; but by just so much it misrepresents the child-like artlessness of the Hebrew. It is scarcely ever exactly equivalent to the original expression of the thoughts. It is strictly allowable only when, if ever, the former of two facts may be assumed as known or obvious, and the latter is to be represented in its dependence upon that.Tr.]

[5][And yet the subsequent statement (Jos 8:25) that the entire population of the city amounted to only twelve thousand, would imply on general principles that a few thousand chosen warriors would be sufficient to overcome its military force. Something must be allowed for the effect of the divine displeasure.Tr.]

[6][Father-house, represented by Zabdi.TR.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

We have a sad interruption to the conquest of Canaan related in this chapter, in one of the children of Israel disobeying the commands of God, and taking of the spoil for himself; for which sin the Lord manifested his displeasure against Israel, and causeth the men of Ai, to be victorious over a party of Israel. Joshua’s distress upon this occasion is related also, and his prayer to God. The Lord informs Joshua of the cause; enquiry is made for the transgressor. And he and his house being found, are stoned in the valley of Achor.

Jos 7:1

Observe, Reader, though but one person is said to have taken of the accursed thing, yet, the whole of Israel are included in the trespass. And the reason is plain. Israel is here considered as a body, and if one member transgress, of consequence the whole body is implicated. Doth not this suggest to the Reader, that solemn doctrine of the fall, in which, by one man ‘s disobedience many were made sinners. And doth not the same doctrine lead by grace the Reader to that glorious soul-transporting truth, that as in Adam all die, in Christ shall all be made alive. See those scriptures, Rom 5:12 to the end. 1Co 15:22 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Hindered by Sin

Jos 7

AS a matter of fact, there are unexplained checks in human progress. We wonder why we do not advance more surely and quickly. Mystery comes upon us in great clouds. Every appointment is right, the direction unquestionably true, and all the conditions seem to be as they ought to be; but somehow there is an invisible wall through which we cannot pass, and over which we cannot climb: so progress comes to a standstill. Men are troubled, and can give no reason for their sorrow; they feel that they ought to be advancing, and yet progress is impossible. It is so in business. For months together the business goes swingingly; customers throng the threshold; everything that is done bears upon it the sign of prosperity. It was so easily done, that business became a kind of play. Suddenly there is a dead stop in the machine. How is it to be accounted for? It cannot be accounted for at first sight. What a wonderful change has taken place! everything has fallen off. The sun used to blister the windows with light, and now for days together not a gleam is seen. It is so in social honour. Men used to be able to go up and down social lines amid applause, and cordial recognition, and every symptom of genuine friendliness. What a change has taken place! Men look coldly; the very exchange of civilities is sobered down to the lowest possible point. No open fault can be found with anything, but still there is the fact that a change of social atmosphere has taken place; the climate is by no means so warm as it used to be; and men who had but a step to take to the very throne are unable to move a limb in the direction indicated by their ambition. It is also the same even in lawful enterprise. The business is morally sound, thoroughly respectable, honourable, useful; and yet it brings in no return: the principal is disheartened, the followers are all cowed, the whole organisation is out of gear and will not respond to the friendliest touch; the enterprise is practically dead. These are not matters of ancient history; they are matters of modern and immediate experience.

Such checks bring divine providence under criticism and suspicion. Even Joshua, hearing of the defeat of his people, “rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads,” and complained heavily against God ( Jos 7:6-9 ). This is an easy refuge for men. Providence has had to sustain many a slander. It seems the handiest of all things to blame the mysteriousness of the divine way. Who ever says, “The fault must be within the house itself; let every man in the house be examined, right away down to the youngest child in the whole home; somebody is to blame for this mystery who is it? By inquiry, or by lot, or by some exhaustive process, let us find out the criminal and exculpate eternal Providence”? But it is easier to sit down under the supposedly comforting doctrine that all this is meant for our good; it is chastisement; it is part of the mysterious process of human education; it is God who arbitrarily says to gold, Do not enter that house; to friends, Do not be so cordial today as you were yesterday; to lawful enterprise, Sit down, and terminate your progress disappointingly. That would be religious, if it were true; but whatever truth there may be in the mysteriousness of the divine action and undoubtedly there is truth in it we must not imagine that we ourselves are poor, innocent, guileless creatures who have done nothing to deserve the cloud or the famine. At the same time it must be remembered that the sufferer himself may not be personally guilty. Certainly Joshua was no criminal in this case; yet Joshua suffered more than any other man. Here we may find the mysteriousness of the divine action. Joshua had a larger capacity for suffering; he was spiritually sensitive, he was intimately allied with God, he felt as if he were representing the divinity of heaven to the heathen nations of his time; and that which others might hardly feel, would penetrate to his very soul, and throw a shadow upon the altar of his life. We suffer indirectly, yet not always so indirectly as we suppose. What is “indirectness” in this matter of suffering? Who can occupy an indirect relation to the human race? Again and again we are taught how true it is that we are one. Humanity is not a concourse of individual atoms; there is a solidarity of humanity a holy and indissoluble unity: whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. This is the doctrine which has yet to be realised on the largest possible scale; and not until this doctrine is recognised shall we have the great problem of social inequality and hostility, struggle and suffering, permanently adjusted and determined. Human nature was never intended by its Creator to represent a battle as between the strong and the weak; humanity was meant to be a great commonwealth, a great family, a whole commune not in some vulgar and debasing or selfish sense which may have been conceived here and there, but on a scale and according to an inspiration truly and eternally divine. The leader was hindered by the follower; in other words, Joshua was kept back by Achan a man whose name had to be sought out; reference had to be made to the register to find who the man was, and not until after considerable searching was it found that he was “Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah.” Our hindrances are often in obscurity, among the shadows of the hardly-remembered past. In every sense is this true. Many an appetite for which we are blamed was set burning within us by a man who has been dead five hundred years. We must view this whole subject therefore in high light and within broad spaces. Christ is hindered by his followers. The Son of God is kept back by some criminal unknown to fame. That criminal misrepresents Christ, travesties the holy character, plays impiously with the ineffable morality; and thus Christ in the very heavens is kept out of his throne by men who have no name, by obscure Achans, by sinners who within their own circle are exposing the Saviour to continual shame.

What, then, was to be done? Divine partiality was to be shown. Here comes a great problem in theology, What direction does the partiality of God always take? The doctrine is that the partiality of God is not for persons, but for character. “Therefore,” reads the twelfth verse, which sums up the logic of the divine argument:

“Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you.” ( Jos 7:12 )

A new light is thus thrown upon sovereignty and God’s elective laws. God elects righteousness, pureness, simplicity, nobleness. He will forsake Israel, if Israel forsake him. He will tear the covenant into pieces, and put the rags of it into heathen hands, that pagans may laugh at Israel dispossessed, rather than associate himself with a mere name, or carry out any covenant that is supposed to be conventionally binding. There is nothing binding upon God but character. Love God, and all the rest will follow; and by “the rest,” we mean beauty of character, sweetness of soul, nobleness of conduct. The Lord gives the reason why we are stopped. We must go to Heaven to find out why we are not making more money, more progress, more solidity of position. We must ask heaven to explain how it is that it is not with us as it used to be in the olden time the sweet, bright days of old, when roses sprang up in our footprints, and when rivers of water refreshed the desert; days when, before we began to pray in words, we had the answer stored in our hearts; brave days of old, memorable days of the Son of man upon the earth Sabbath days. So rigid inquiry must be made into the cause or origin of failure.

Joshua, accepting the divine direction, arranged for this inquiry:

“In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes: [in the morning of scrutiny, that long-delayed day, tomorrow morning] and it shall be, that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof; and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households; and the household which the Lord shall take shall come man by man” ( Jos 7:14 ).

Achan was detected. Achan told the tale of fraud, and Joshua executed the judgment of Heaven. In those days the law maintained its sovereignty. Joshua himself would have been ground to pieces by it as certainly as the obscurest man in all the host. “God spared not the angels that sinned.” He would grind the stars to powder, were they conscious, and did they sin against his throne. Not a planet but God can spare, if the planet has stained the universe. Do not imagine that men are held up because they are great, distinguished, sons of the morning, and have high social stewardship to maintain and justify. Be the man who he may, he goes down before the divine judgment. Achan, the son of Zerah, was taken, “and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had,” and judgment fell upon him: “all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire… and they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day” ( Jos 7:24-26 ). There is no heap big enough to hide the hinderer of the kingdom of heaven. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! Sin is not to be apologised for, excused, compromised, allowed for; it must be extirpated, dragged out every root and fibre; and not until that eradication has been completed can the kingdom go on, fair as the heavenly lights and terrible as a bannered army.

Prayer

Almighty God, thou hast set the day and the night closely together; the summer and the winter follow quickly. Behold, thou art always teaching us by things which differ from one another, so that by their contrast we may be brought to thoughtfulness and religious wonder. Life and death seem to go hand in hand: the tomb is in the garden. We are shocked by these conjunctions; we do not understand these contrasts: but thou wilt give unto U3 wisdom: then we shall see all their meaning and be thankful for their instruction, and shall be the better for looking into things contrary to all beauty and light and loveliness. What must thine own eyes behold I We ourselves see things so contrary to one another; yet we see hardly anything: what we look at is a transient vision. We do not know what thou seest, thou who knowest where the chamber of imagery is, thou who seest all heaven and all hell. Enable us to know that, notwithstanding these things, there is but one throne, one Lord, one Eternal Sovereign, righteous, wise, full of compassion, accepting the death of the Cross, rising to the throne of the universe. May we fix our minds upon these ultimate truths, which yet are first truths, embracing all other truths and making life noble even to sublimity. Reign thou whose right it is! reign, O Christ, until thine enemies are made thy footstool! Thou shalt have the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. We long to behold the light of that glad day. Others have been yearning to see it. If thou hast inflicted disappointment upon the generations, it is because thou seest what they could not behold, and understandest what was beyond their comprehension. We leave everything in thy hands: thou knowest what is right and best; thou dost keep the time of the universe; thou wilt come in thine own way and at thine own hour, and when we see thy coming and know thy presence, we shall bless thee even for the delay. Let thy mercy multiply itself towards us: let it be tender mercy; let thy kindness be loving kindness, so that it may not press upon us unduly, but may have sympathy with us, and patience with us, the very mercy of mercy, the very kindness of kindness. Amid all visions show us the blessed Cross of Christ, full of deepest meaning, pregnant with infinite love, the very door of pardon and of heaven. Amen.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

Curious Conjunctions

Jos 7

APART from the main course of this narrative, there are some conjunctions of names which are full of interest, and full also of spiritual instruction and comfort. We have to go in search of some beautiful things: they do not always lie upon the broad and open surface. The loveliest parts of a country are not always seen by travellers who keep on the highway: they lie apart, they have to be sought for; there are little dells, waterfalls, tarns, and natural gardens which only the pedestrian can see, and he only as the result of patient inquiry. It is so with the Scriptures. Almost every verse has its hidden jewel. We read perhaps too rapidly, or we have come under the mischievous operation of a familiarity which supposes it knows all about the Bible. “All about the Bible” it is impossible for any finite intellect to know. The deepest and most continuous readers of the holy record rise from their last perusal to assure us that they have hardly begun to spell out the initial meaning of God’s written revelation.

What conjunction, then, strikes us first in reading this exciting narrative? There is a remarkable one in the second verse: “Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai” where is that? “which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Bethel.” The striking conjunction is in these two names “Beth-aven” and “Bethel.” For a long time they were supposed to be different names of the same place, but the latest and highest authorities have determined them to be two distinct places. Coming before us in these strange syllables, many may not be able to see the contrast or feel its. force. “Beth-aven” means, “house of vanity,” “house of idols;” “Bethel” means, “house of God.” Now read: “Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, the house of vanity, on the east side of Bethel, the house of God.” So we find it all through life. Contrarieties face us every day, and make us wonder why they should be. It is possible to draw two totally different pictures of society, each of which shall be exactly done, and neither of which shall represent the reality of the whole case. There are people so constituted that they can see but in one direction: they can see only that which is good; they multiply the sanctuary into a church which covers the whole earth, and they say, The millennium has come, if not in its fulness of splendour, yet in a dawn about which there can be no mistake; they listen to the reports of gracious charity; they hear the song of the worshipping multitude; they see what is being done on the right hand and on the left all of which is good, beneficent, beautiful; and they say, looking at these things alone, This is the Sabbath of the world, the great rest-period of time; now is the day of God’s salvation. There are others who can see only the darkness, the miser, the sin, and the sorrow the fatal wound; and they say, Churches have failed, ministries have come to nothing, evangels have sounded their silver trumpets and delivered their sweet messages, and all their sounding has died upon the air and nothing is left but emptiness. Neither of these statements, taken as a whole statement, is correct; we must put them together if we would really understand the exact position of the world. But there are people who will not look upon Beth-aven the house of vanity, the house of idols. They are singularly constituted at least, in the sense that they will not look upon evil or believe in its existence. When evil is described, they follow the description with the criticism that it is an exaggeration. They are hopeful, buoyant, generous themselves, and most pure, and therefore they will not believe in the so-called revelations of the perdition of modern civilisation. There are others who will only look upon that side. The point to be kept in view is that there are two sides, and they must both be looked at fearlessly in a spirit of righteousness, with an intention to ascertain the truth, abide by righteous consequences, and make lifelong reparation for lifelong unrighteousness. The timid people who will not look upon Beth-aven are often most exasperating. Nothing can persuade them to look into certain cases: they prefer not to be shocked; they pass Beth-aven in haste, and speed to the house of God. We recognise their goodness in a measure, and the sweetness of their disposition generally, but we must not take the key-note of progress and administration from people who are oppressed with such timidity. Beth-aven exists in every age, in every civilised land; it stands next door to the house of God, and we must face the fact and all its consequences. Enter into what city we may, there is the house of wealth, and there is the hovel of poverty just behind. The city has its great thoroughfares aflare with gas, brilliant with decoration, astir with all the signs of modern activity and progress; but, alas! the city has its back streets, its out-of-the-way places; some of us dare not go through such portiors of the city, what wonder if we only see thoroughfare life, and say, Behold the signs of wealth, and splendour, and power; this is the culmination of civilising influence? Who reflects that there are quarters in every metropolis in Europe into which decency dare not enter, and purity itself, except associated with the highest moral strength, shudders to think of? We find also in this city the house of piety and the house of profanity. How we deprive ourselves of many a stimulus to fuller labour by concealing from ourselves that there is a house of profanity! We do not destroy the house by ignoring it. We bless God that there are some brave spirits who do not ignore the existence of the house of profanity, but who go boldly up to it, and ask to walk through it, and leave a message to its owner, and ask its inhabitants to discuss great questions and submit themselves to the influence of new atmospheres. These are the apostles of the time the brave pioneers of heaven’s own King; they should be supported, honoured, and sustained by persons who have not their moral nerve or their spiritual dauntlessness. All this we may admit and yet forget that Beth-aven and Bethel are in the same man. Every man would seem to be two men. What contrasts there are in our own personal character! On one side how generous, noble, trustful, philanthropic; almost grand to a heroic point in our impulses and propositions and activities; and yet presently we come upon a vein of the purest selfishness that ever debased a character. We have public benevolence and private self-will: we will do anything for the masses, we begrudge everything expended upon our own family. Or contrariwise: the little personal house may have everything every door-panel a picture, every window a garden, every floor a bed of flowers; but we care nothing for those who are outside, wasting, suffering, dying, hastening, for aught we know, to all the horrors of perdition. Let every man examine his own character, and he will be struck with the contrasts which it presents the singular and instructive conjunctions which come together even in the individual spirit. One self speaks up in the name of right; another self says, Do not speak so loudly. Everything depends upon the self which is uppermost at the time. It is perfectly possible in a moral sense for the same fountain to pour sweet waters and bitter. The apostle asks the question in a sense which was not intended to exclude that possibility. There does not live a Christian man who is not conscious of this dual movement in his own soul: within himself he says, I know not what to do; when I would do good, evil is present with me; when I would pray, the evil spirit will not allow me; when I would sing, I am suddenly choked; when I would give, my hand seems smitten and it falls by my side in helplessness. So everywhere the seeing eye beholds Beth-aven, the house of vanity, Bethel, the house of God; and the Christian teacher wants in some way to bring the influence of the latter to bear upon the action of the former.

What a curious conjunction is found in Jos 7:24 : “Achan the son of Zerah.” This does not strike us as a conjunction or contrast in English reading. “Achan” means “trouble;” “Zerah” means “the rising of light.” “Achan the son of Zerah” not immediately, for Achan was “the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah.” But the division is most startling as seen in this twenty-fourth verse: Achan trouble; Zerah the rising of light! How family histories vary! A praying father has a blaspheming son. The honestest man in the city lives to see his firstborn expatriated as a felon. Heredity in virtue is exploded. Good men have not good sons by necessity. It is easy and pleasant talking to say, Given a good stock, and the branches will all be right; given an excellent father and mother, and the children need not be much looked after; they will come up in the way of righteousness and be ornaments in society. That sophism has been exploded in countless tragical instances. Zerah, representing the rising of light quite a poetical name; the horizon widens as he gazes upon it, all heaven heightens as he looks the prayerful look towards its sublimity; how little he thinks that presently there will arise in his family a man who will be stoned to death as a thief! He could not help that. Abel is not responsible for Cain. We do not understand the working of many a mystery in Providence. Things are not to be explained by one reference, or two: the explanation lies far back in history. The dead live. Reproduction accompanies development. We cannot tell what virus stained our blood. But, on the other hand, heredity in vice is not fated. The blaspheming father has a praying son. The man who was never known for his goodness has a child who is a philanthropist, a missionary, who dies with Christ upon the cross, and counts the crucifixion coronation. So the law does not operate in one direction only: it is an impartial and comprehensive law. Let no man say, I am fated to do thus, and so. It would be a wicked criticism upon Providence. The answer is in every man’s soul; and who does not know that he could if he chose be a better man, a larger man altogether? Let the soul itself answer the question in its own identity and in the solemnity of its own oath.

What a beautiful conjunction is found in Jos 7:26 , when connected with another passage of Scripture in a later book! In the twenty-sixth verse are these words: “Wherefore the name of that place was called, the valley of Achor, unto this day” that is, the “valley of trouble.” The valley of Achor is said to be a pass leading from Gilgal towards the centre of the country, or, as it might be represented, from Jericho to Jerusalem, that is, from the city of destruction to the city of God. Remember that “Achor” means what Achan also means, namely, trouble. Now read Hos 2:15 , and see what is meant by the beauty of the conjunction: “And I will give her… the valley of Achor for a door of hope” I will make the valley of trouble the door of hope. See the great power of God! He can accomplish even this miracle. “Thy dead men shall live.” The desert shall blossom as the rose, and the wilderness shall become as a fruitful field. Where thou didst weep, thou shalt laugh in godly triumph; where thou didst fall, thou shalt rise: affliction shall become an altar; tears shall be turned into telescopes through which thou shalt see still further into the heights of God’s astronomy the mystery of heaven’s blazing glories. God will not have valleys of trouble left in his earth. It is the purpose of Heaven to cleanse out all the stains and taints of sin and all the footprints of misery, and to grow a flower where poison grew before. “I will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope;” she will hope the more when she remembers the trouble. Our afflictions add to our enjoyments when sanctified and turned to their highest uses. Chastening lifts up victory to higher, if soberer, triumph. It is the contrast that arrests the soul. Had all been garden-land flowers, singing birds, summer air, we should not have known want or pain, nor should we have been surprised by new revelations of God’s goodness. We see the stars in the darkness. We know where home is, and think of it as the evening closes in. We left the house in the morning, it may have been thoughtlessly or carelessly, without highly-accented recognition of its security and plentifulness; but as the shadows gathered, and the wind grew colder, and people rose from labour and went away from the field, we too thought of home. The light scattered us, the darkness brought us together! “I will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope;” the background shall be adapted to the picture: she shall see the light thrown upon the darkness, and be astonished with great amazement when she beholds what can be done in unexpected or forsaken places. Our own experience confirms this. We know this sweet passage to be quite true. We are the better for the visit to the churchyard. We are the richer for the grave; it is to us a freehold worth more than a thousand acres, nay, it consecrates all other acres: it touches the whole land with religious suggestiveness and solemnity. Now we are the better and richer for the loss. Now we feel that we would not forego the advantages of the great sorrow. Let us find in our own experience a commentary upon Holy Scripture. If the Bible is a book far outside of us, without any vital relation to what we know and feel and handle, what wonder if it should fall into desuetude or become almost contemptuously neglected? But finding in the Bible our own history, a mirror in which we can see ourselves, reading in the Bible the universal language and not a provincial dialect, feeling that it touches life at every point, who can wonder if it should be the man of our counsel, the chief book in the house, our chart at sea, our confidence on land? Let us say again and again to ourselves, as if reciting heaven’s own poetry, “I will make the valley of Achor a door of hope.” The very repetition of such words discovers their music Say it in your distresses, repeat it in the snowy winter-time, rehearse it when the fig tree doth not blossom, whisper it to your souls on the way to the graveyard; and in the time of personal despondency, of which you can only speak with reluctance even to your dearest friend, hold this soliloquy, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God.” The utterance of that word will break the spell of misery. To speak such a sentence to the soul will be to break the fetters which bind it in unholy and humiliating bondage. I will make the valley of Achor a door of hope. So though today we be in trouble and darkness and distress, wait awhile, and the valley shall be a door, and the door when it springs back will open heaven.

Selected Notes

” The valley of Achor for a door of hope” ( Hos 2:15 )- The Easterns prefer a figure that is suggestive but at the same time hazy and indistinct, and this passage belongs to such a class. The Valley of Achor runs up from Gilgal towards Bethel. There Achan was stoned, and the divine indignation removed. The word Achor means trouble, affliction; and it is just possible that from it we get our word ache. Thus the valley of affliction was the door through which Israel first entered the land of Canaan. And so again, by Hosea, the Lord promised to lead Israel to peace and rest through the valley of trouble. The very indistinctness makes this mode of speaking the more suggestive.

“Achan… was taken” ( Jos 7:18 ). When Jericho was taken and devoted to destruction, Achan fell under the temptation of secreting an ingot of gold, a quantity of silver, and a costly Babylonish garment, which he buried in his tent, deeming that his sin was hid. For this which, as a violation of a vow made by the nation as one body, had involved the whole nation in his guilt, the Israelites were defeated with serious loss, in their first attack upon Ai; and as Joshua was well assured that this humiliation was designed as the punishment of a crime which had inculpated the whole people, he took immediate measures to discover the criminal. As in other cases, the matter was referred to the Lord by the lot, and the lot ultimately indicated the actual criminal. The conscience-stricken offender then confessed his crime to Joshua; and his confession being verified by the production of his ill-gotten treasure, the people, actuated by the strong impulse with which men tear up, root and branch, a polluted thing, hurried away not only Achan but his tent, his goods, his spoil, his cattle, his children, to the valley (afterwards called) of Achor, north of Jericho, where they stoned him, and all that belonged to him; after which the whole was consumed with fire, and a cairn of stones raised over the ashes. The severity of this act, as regards the family of Achan, has provoked some remark. Instead of vindicating it, as is generally done, by the allegation that the members of Achan’s family were probably accessories to his crime after the fact, we prefer the supposition that they were included in the doom by one of those sudden impulses of indiscriminate popular vengeance to which the Jewish people were exceedingly prone, and which, in this case, it would not have been in the power of Joshua to control by any authority which he could under such circumstances exercise. It is admitted that this is no more than a conjecture: but as such it is at least worth as much as, and assumes considerably less than, the conjectures which have been offered by others.

Prayer

Almighty God, we ask for a clean heart and a right spirit, an obedient will, an unquestioning, restful faith. “We would say the Lord’s prayer, Not my will, but thine, be done. Who but the Lord could say this to thee? We can repeat the words; we can feel after the sentiment as blind men grope for what they want, but we cannot pray the prayer in all the fulness of its meaning, because of the infirmities which disable us, and because of the temptations which assail and weaken the soul. What we do not understand is God’s will. If we knew that, we should wish it to be done. But we do not know it; we misunderstand it; we make it narrow, and empty it of all divinest thought and meaning: so how can we pray that it should be done? But even this miracle thou canst’ work within us; thou canst reveal thy will to our hearts, and make us know how good it is, how necessarily wise and beneficent, righteous and pitiful. Lord, do this great thing for us, and so deliver us from ourselves, and lead us into thy personality, that we may live and move and have our being in God, and be conscious of no other life, but have all the triumph and sense of security rising from the sure consciousness that we are in the Living One. We are blind, and would see afar off. Thou seest the end from the beginning. We mistake all things; we misplace them; we cannot follow all the drift of their meaning, or appreciate all the colour of their suggestion; we are poor, inapt scholars in the great school. Give us rest from ourselves by giving us deeper peace in God. Thus would we come to the Lord’s prayer, which lay so near the Lord’s Cross. If we can pray this prayer, the bitterness of death will be past, and the Cross we shall despise as to its shame. Help us to carry life’s burdens with some measure of cheerfulness, and enable us to say, This also cometh forth from the Lord, even this great cross, this dark cloud, this large loss, this weakening infirmity. Thus we shall count the stones upon the road as jewels; the Cross will be a way to the crown; and all the discipline of life will have as its promise an exceeding great reward. As for our sin, we remember it only to mourn it, and we bring it to the Cross, and we nail it there: there it is borne away by the Lamb of God, in whom is our heart’s trust, and from whom is our daily expectation. Love us every one, throw thine arms more closely and tenderly around us, give us a feeling of security, work within us a godly discontent with everything that is less than ourselves, and create in us that fierce hunger which only the infinite can satisfy. Pity us in our weaknesses and reckon not our infirmities against us until they aggravate thy righteousness and provoke thy law, and come over the mountain of our sin as one who travelleth in haste, and destroy the mountain as thou dost touch it in the passage. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray. Until he came, our prayers were poor, and narrow, and selfish; but he being in our hearts, by the Spirit, we can pray to have no will: we can say, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XXI

THE FALL OF JERICHO, AI, EBAL, AND GERIZIM

Jos 6:1-10:43

This section commences with Jos 6:1 and the first item of the discussion is the capture of Jericho. The method of the capture of Jericho was intensely spectacular. The dramatic feature of it was cumulative; it got more intense every day. We have only to read two or three verses to see just what was done, and such a thing as was never done before or since, but done in the taking of the city. No sword was unsheathed, no man struck a blow in the capture of that place. The priests with the jubilee trumpets, not the ordinary trumpets, led the procession, seven priests, seven trumpets, seven days round that city. They would blow and the people were silent, not a word in the ranks. Once a day for six days they marched all around the high walls of Jericho and on the seventh day they went round it seven times, and at the close of the seventh time the trumpets sounded and the people shouted and the walls of Jericho fell, and each one in his position in their circuit, marched over the fallen walls and captured the city. It was God’s work throughout. You will notice that this capture was discriminative; that place in the wall where the house of Rahab stood did not fall; every other place fell.

The next thought in the capture of this city is that it was devoted. Learn the meaning of that word “devoted.” That means, when it applies to man, that death occurs; when it applies to materials as spoils, that it belongs to Jehovah. The Israelites had nothing to do with the capture of the city. It was entirely God’s. And the strongest prohibition was issued, that no man must rob God by appropriating to himself any part of the spoils which had been set apart for Jehovah’s own use.

Now, we come to another feature of the capture, and that is a curse was pronounced on any man that ever attempted to rebuild the walls of Jericho, not Jericho the city, for that still existed, but the fortified part of the city, where the arms were kept. It must never be rebuilt. Turn to 1Ki 16:34 , and read that verse: “In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho; he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of Abiram, his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of Jehovah which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.” That is many hundred years after Joshua spoke that word, and there you come to a great text and a very appropriate one, if you are going to make a prohibition address. One of the great arguments for the continuance of the sale of ardent spirits in a city is that it promotes the interests of the city; that the grass would grow in the streets of a city if you did not allow it. The statement is erroneous, but if it were true, men ought not to lay the foundation of the city in the souls of men.

You will notice that the next says that Joshua, whom they had supported as leader in this, acquired great fame by the fall of Jericho throughout all the Promised Land; among the enemies the fame and dread of Joshua spread.

It is in connection with the capture of this city that we come across the sin of Achan, and that is the second thought for us to discuss. The text says, “Israel’s sin,” and the context shows that on Israel fell the punishment The real sinner was one person, Achan. Now, the question comes up, With what propriety can the action of a man with which the others had nothing to do, be called the sin of Israel and the Israelites be punished for the sin? You recall a passage in Corinthians, recently studied, where Paul accuses the church of sin in that it had retained one man and covered up the sin of that man that took his father’s wife, and he went on to say that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. So when you look at the solidarity of the people, their unity, or the solidarity of the church, a sin committed by one member that passes unrebuked will become the sin of the entire organization, and the whole body must suffer the penalty for what one does, because they being many constitute one body.

That is why this is called Israel’s sin.

I ask you to notice again the cause of this sin; it was covetousness. He knew about the prohibition; that he didn’t capture Jericho but God captured it, and that its spoils were devoted by the word of God, but he saw some gold and a goodly Babylonish garment and he took them and hid them in his tent. The people knew nothing about this sin. So far as they were concerned, it was a covered sin, and it doesn’t keep a ship from sinking when a leak is there, be it unknown to the captain of the crew. So that a covered sin is even more dangerous than a sin that is in the open. A fire that is merely smouldering, sending forth no blaze and no smoke, is more dangerous than a fire that advertises itself with its illumination and its roar, because in that case you can hedge against its spreading, but if it is unseen it spreads beyond control.

We now come to the nature of his offence. It was not ordinary stealing. It was not ordinary dishonesty. It was that blasphemy which robs God. You will recall in the New Testament that when the church had just started on its progress and donations were being given, people would sell their land and come and say, “It is all the price of the land,” Ananias and his wife conspired together to keep back a portion of the price and thus lied not to man, but unto God, and if that sin had not at the beginning been punished by instant death, the church never would have retained its power. Just as in this new nation coming among enemies with a world of conquest just ahead of them, their sole dependence was keeping in favor with God. Whoever then lost them the favor of God practically would bring about their destruction; therefore, it was not a case for mercy. Now, we find Israel paying the penalty of that sin. A detachment of men was sent out to Ai, their next stronghold, and to their own surprise they became panic stricken and fled and a number of them lost their lives. You can see the significance of their defeat. The enemy had been panic stricken and the only way to succeed was to keep up their prestige. This defeat took away from the enemy their fear of Israel, and unless that sin had been discovered and speedily punished, Israel would have been beaten back across the Jordan or enslaved in a very short time. But one of the most remarkable things in connection with the sin of Achan is God’s omniscient method of ascertaining and exposing it. Dr. Burleson preached all over Texas from this text. “Be sure your sin will find you out.”. And a great sermon of Jonathan Edwards that spread over a quarter of the nation and resulted in the conversion of 250,000 people was from this text, “Their feet shall slide in due time.” “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”; there is no escape from the omniscient eye of God. There is no getting away from his presence, there is no evasion of his omnipotence. A man who has committed a sin is like a horse staked out on the prairie; the stake rope may be long but yet it is not long enough to enable him to be free. He can go only to the end of his tether, and every time the horse walks around the stake pin, shortens his tether, and after a time it brings his nose right up to the stake pin. So is any sinner in the hands of God.

When God maketh an inquisition for sin, he remembers, he doesn’t forget, he knows where to go to look for it. It has chanced that three times I have preached from the text, “Be sure your sin will find you out,” at ten years’ interval, and each time I preached some one came and made me a confession that I never told, but the confessions of the strangest and most awful sin, and one of them was a young preacher. I have never been so puzzled as I have been puzzled by these three confessions. In two of these cases I was able not only to suggest a remedy, but to put the remedy into effect. The third case was not in any power of mine. Now, God’s plan was this: The whole camp, 3,000,000 of them, were drawn up and they were ordered to march by Jehovah, that is, where his presence was, at the tabernacle, and God would say which tribe, and he took one of the twelve tribes, Judah, and they were required to march by again and God designated which clan of Judah (the Zarhites) held the criminal, and that clan was required to pass by and God designated the head of the family, and the family was required to pass by and God designated the man. It is a remarkable exhibition of sin by divine Providence. When exposed, Achan confessed his sin and the Israelites, by purging themselves, regained the power over their enemies which they had lost. Following this detection and punishment of Achan’s sin, Ai easily falls before Joshua, as our chapter tells us and I need not repeat.

Now, with the conquest of Ai the children of Israel were established in an exceedingly strong strategical position. They struck a country sideways, about the center; they camped in the mountainous part that held the open ways to the south, and the open ways to the north, and the open ways to the west. Therefore we have an account of the first league. The nations around saw that no one nation could stand before Israel, and that as Israel was coming against all of them, it behooved them to make a defensive league. All the Amorites who held mountain country entered into that league except one nation, the Gibeonites, who held four cities in the mountains and controlled certain mountain passes. These Gibeonites came before Joshua disguised in apparel and in every way, and they told Joshua that they had heard of him and of Israel and that they came in peace. Now, Israel was allowed to make a league with other nations than the Canaanites, the enemies that inhabited the territory of Israel, therefore it was necessary to make treaty with these people. The only error of which they were guilty was in not asking God before they made it. It was found out that the Gibeonites’ territory lay in that path just ahead of them, but the covenant had been made and it was agreed that their lives should be spared, but they should become hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Israelites. This gave Joshua control of the crest of the land.

This brings us to consider the binding power of a nation’s obligation to God. It is just as important as that of individuals. If the United States makes a treaty with another nation, the national honor is involved in due observance of that treaty. Therefore this treaty with the Gibeonites, having been made, had to stand. Later we will see that Saul violated that covenant and his sons were hanged to pay for the violation of the covenant that was made with the Gibeonites. There are some people who say that one generation cannot bind another generation. Mr. Jefferson, in his works, goes dangerously near if not altogether right up to the thought that involves the very destruction of the idea of national responsibility, viz.: that every generation should be bound only by the obligations that that generation assumed. That would not have worked and did not work in the Achan case, and no statesman ought to stand in office who advises the people to disregard a national obligation. We have to meet it; we have to pay it. Suppose England should repudiate its national debt because this generation did not contract that debt, she would destroy all modern civilization. If the British debt was repudiated, the foundation of both continents would be destroyed.

Now, having obtained this strategical position, we come to Ebal and Gerizim. They are the two mountains that face each other. In Deuteronomy Moses commanded that when they got over into the land they must place half of the people on Mount Ebal and half on Mount Gerizirn and the priests with the ark in between, and the law should be read. When you come to the curses, the six tribes on Mount Ebal shall cry out “Amen”; and when you come to the blessings the six tribes on Mount Gerizirn shall cry out “Amen”; and when you come to the end of the law, all of the twelve tribes shall cry out “Amen.” It was a scene earth never witnessed before, mountaintop speaking to mountaintop. The voice of the people aligning themselves with the decrees of God and pronouncing themselves to be cursed if they disobeyed and to be blessed if they obeyed.

The next item in our history is that five mountain kings, Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, and Hoham, king of Hebron, Piram, king of Jarmuth, and Japhia, king of Lachish, and Debir, king of Eglon, were to make war on the Gibeonites (Jebus means City of Judah, finally called Jerusalem), because they had practically surrendered to Joshua and it behooved these nations to stand together and to punish the traitor. This is what they thought. Notice that Adonizedek is king of Jerusalem, that her king is no longer Melchidedek. You will find in your Hurlbut’s Atlas many maps that show Jerusalem, and you will have to study about Jerusalem all through the Bible, and when you get up to heaven to the New Jerusalem, you will still study about it. This is the first time you come to it.

This brings us to the great decisive battle of Beth-horon. When the Gibeonites found themselves invaded by these five allied kings, they sent a rapid messenger to Joshua at Gilgal, after he had gotten through the Ebal and Gerizirn matter. It is a very urgent appeal, “Come quick!” And Joshua marches all night and makes a certain attack and that brings about the decisive battle of Beth-horon. There are three stages: The first stage, Joshua attacks and discomfits them; they begin to retreat and seem to be about to get away. That brings us to the second stage, when God intervenes with an electric storm, an awful storm of hailstones, and more of that allied army perish by hailstones than by the sword of Joshua’s people. Hailstones are very large sometimes. If you take your encyclopaedia, you will find that a hailstone once fell that passed through a battleship and sank it, and another hailstone fell on land that buried itself, that weighed several tons, being as big as a house. You remember the remarkable account of the plague in Egypt and its awful destructive power, and if you ever have a chance to go to see the moving picture show of the life of Moses, you will see that hailstorm just as vividly as if you were standing looking on it, and you will see it kill cattle and people. In the third stage of the battle, the allies had been defeated, then they had been discomfited by the hailstorm. Joshua saw that a great deal depended on keeping the ranks together and so with sublime audacity he said, “Stand still,” to the sun, and “Thou moon,” that is, let the day be prolonged, and the record says that the sun did stand still and the moon, and that the day was so prolonged that there was no day like it before in the history of the world and none after it An infidel once said to me, “Do you know what Joshua ought to have done? He ought to have said, ‘Stand still, O earth.’ ” I said, “You are very smart in your knowledge of science. You could not stop the earth if you don’t stop the sun.” The earth is a satellite and the moon is a satellite, and the earth’s motion is of two kinds, centripetal and centrifugal, those forces combined make a circular motion that carries the earth around the sun. Just like a mechanic with a complicated piece of machinery in order to stop the outlying wheels, all he has to do is to stop the main wheel. If you want to talk about the language of science Joshua said exactly the right thing.

Now comes up the question about that miracle. It is perfectly foolish for people to waste time in the discussion of the credibility of miracles, the supernatural. All you have to do is just admit one thing God. Now, if there be a God, he can just as well control that which is above nature as nature itself. According to Horace in his Art of Poetry, “Never introduce a god unless there is a necessity for a god.” Well, it certainly was necessary. Upon that battle hinged all the southern part of the Promised Land. That battle would have been no more than a skirmish if these nations had gotten away and gotten into their walled cities. What was necessary was to have time, daylight enough to prosecute the work So the God that intervened at the passage of the Red Sea and at the Jordan, and in shaking down the walls of Jericho, intervened here. Now, it is the object of the miracle to accredit, to attest. Joshua needed to be accredited; there must be the most overwhelming evidence that he stood for God. If he stood in heat of battle and commanded the sun to stand still and the sun stood still, and the moon, and God heard him, then he stood accredited before the people, before the nations of the earth.

This brings us to the book called Jasher. What is the book of Jasher? “Is not this written in the book of Jasher?” Now notice the full quotation: “Is not this written in the book of Jasher? so the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel. And Joshua returned and all Israel with him, unto the camp to Gilgal.” That last sentence is a part of the quotation, for Joshua had not returned yet, but after the event, it was written in the book of Jasher. That was the poem that was said to have been written in that book of Jasher. It was a book of poems that selected the great events in Jewish history. Twice it is referred to in the Old Testament. David’s song was written in it and this poem on the battle of Beth-horon was put in it.

Still going back to the battle, they pursued the enemy until the five kings took refuge in a cave and Joshua sealed the mouth of the cave with a stone and still pursued until the destruction of the enemy was complete, and the result of the battle was that while there were few enemies left in the city, he kept marching on, taking one town after another until we come to this description, that his conquest extended from Goshen to Gath; from Goshen to Kadesh, Negeb, Hebron, to the Dead Sea. Here comes up a question about Joshua, and some of these people that can believe half things, but are utterly at a loss to believe all things. Some believe that Goshen was not a border of Israel. We will take the definition of the Bible. Don’t look at your commentaries, look at the Bible. It shows that by this one battle Joshua captured all the country upon the Mediterranean coast to Gath and from Gath to Jerusalem, and from there to Hebron, and from there to the lower edge of the Dead Sea, and extending up on a line with Goshen. One battle practically gave him the whole of the south country. I will add this, that the five kings were executed and then hanged on a tree, for “cursed is every man that is hanged on a tree.”

I have one other remark to make. Later on in the book and even in the book of Judges you will find references to the conquest of certain places in this southern country that only Joshua took, but when you look at the details it mentions the junior officers that took it. From instance, Kirby Smith attacked the Federal outposts on the Mississippi River near Vicksburg and all on one day, and yet it was General McCullough, one of his subordinate officers, that attacked one point, and General Young that attacked another point. Now, if I should see in the life of Kirby Smith that he accomplished all that, and later if I take up the life of General McCullough and find that he took certain points, I would know which one was there. I do know, for I was there in it. Now, just so with these later accounts that some people use to indicate that the book of Joshua was not written until after the book of Judges. There is no evidence to show that any of these events occurred after the book of Judges, but they are generally stated here, and later, in putting the events of Joshua’s life, they will be specifically considered as when we come to the tribe of Dan.

QUESTIONS

1. Describe the capture of Jericho.

2. What discrimination in this capture?

3. What is the meaning of “devoted,” & what prohibition was issued?

4. What curse was pronounced on the rebuilder of Jericho, its fulfilment and a present day application of the text?

5. What exaltation of Joshua as the result, & the effect on his enemies?

6. Why called Israel’s sin and why Israel’s punishment? Give New Testament explanation.

7. What its cause?

8. Its nature?

9. Its effect?

10. Effect of social sin?

11. Its result?

12. Significance of defeat of Ai?

13. What its method of exposure?

14. Its confession and punishment? Give New Testament example.

15. What was the first league?

16. Give the case of the Gibeonites.

17. What of the covenant made with them and who violated it and the result?

18. What the application to modern nations?

19. What command did Moses give concerning this transaction?

20. Describe its fulfilment.

21. Describe the confederacy against the Gibeonites, and why its necessity?

22. Describe the great decisive battle that followed, giving 1Th 3 stages.

23. What the book of Jasher? What other reference to it?

24. What the result of the campaign? Outline the South Country.

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Jos 7:1 But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.

Ver. 1. But the children of Israel committed. ] All were involved, because of the same body politic: and every man is bound to be his brother’s keeper, to see that the law be not only observed but preserved: since one sinner may destroy much good. Ecc 9:18 Propter contagionem peccati. a

For Achan, the son of Carmi, &c. ] He was well descended, but became a stain to his ancestors by his covetousness, which was the worse in him, because he had, of his own, oxen, asses, sheep, &c. Jos 6:24 Pro 6:30 The devil knew his temper, felt which way his pulse beat, and accordingly fitted him with an object, set a prize before him: hence he is called “the tempter” Mat 4:3

And the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. ] Who all smarted for this one man’s sin: as the neck is seared and rowled oft for the rheum that runneth down into the eyes: and as a vein is opened in the arm to turn the course of the blood, or to ease the pain of the head.

a Propter arctam coniuactionem.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Joshua

ACHAN’S SIN, ISRAEL’S DEFEAT

Jos 7:1 – Jos 7:12 .

This passage naturally parts itself into- 1 . The hidden sin Jos 7:1; 2 . The repulse by which it is punished Jos 7:2 – Jos 7:5; 3. The prayer of remonstrance Jos 7:6 – Jos 7:9; and 4. The answer revealing the cause Jos 7:10 – Jos 7:12. We may briefly note the salient points in these four divisions, and then consider the general lessons of the whole.

I. Observe, then, that the sin is laid at the doors of the whole nation, while yet it was the secret act of one man. That Is a strange ‘for’ in verse 1-the people did it; ‘for’ Achan did it. Observe, too, with what bitter particularity his descent is counted back through three generations, as if to diffuse the shame and guilt over a wide area, and to blacken the ancestors of the culprit. Note also the description of the sin. Its details are not given, but its inmost nature is. The specification of the ‘Babylonish garment,’ the ‘shekels of silver,’ and the ‘wedge of gold,’ is reserved for the sinner’s own confession; but the blackness of the deed is set forth in its principle in Jos 7:1 . It was a ‘breach of trust,’ for so the phrase ‘committed a trespass’ might be rendered. The expression is frequent in the Pentateuch to describe Israel’s treacherous departure from God, and has this full meaning here. The sphere in which Achan’s treason was evidenced was ‘in the devoted thing.’ The spoil of Jericho was set aside for Jehovah, and to appropriate any part of it was sacrilege. His sin, then, was double, being at once covetousness and robbing God. Achan, at the beginning of Israel’s warfare for Canaan, and Ananias, at the beginning of the Church’s conquest of the world, are brothers alike in guilt and in doom. Note the wide sweep of ‘the anger of the Lord,’ involving in its range not only the one transgressor, but the whole people.

II. All unconscious of the sin, and flushed with victory, Joshua let no grass grow under his feet, but was prepared to push his advantage to the utmost with soldierly promptitude. The commander’s faith and courage were contagious, and the spies came back from their perilous reconnaissance of Ai with the advice that a small detachment was enough for its reduction. They had not spied the mound in the middle of Achan’s tent, or their note would have been changed. Three thousand, or three hundred, would have been enough, if God had been with them. The whole army would not have been enough since He was not. The site of Ai seems to have been satisfactorily identified on a small plateau among the intricate network of wild wadys and bare hills that rise behind Jericho. The valley to the north, the place where the ambush lay at the successful assault, and a great mound, still bearing the name ‘Et Tel’ the heap, are all there. The attacking force does not seem to have been commanded by Joshua. The ark stayed at Gilgal, The contempt for the resistance likely to be met makes the panic which ensued the more remarkable. What turned the hearts of the confident assailants to water? There was no serious fighting, or the slaughter would have been more than thirty-six. ‘There went up . . . about three thousand and they’-did what? fought and conquered? Alas, no, but ‘they fled before the men of Ai,’ rushing in wild terror down the steep pass which they had so confidently breasted in the morning, till the pursuers caught them up at some ‘quarries,’ where, perhaps, the ground was difficult, and there slew the few who fell, while the remainder got away by swiftness of foot, and brought back their terror and their shame to the camp. As the disordered fugitives poured in, they infected the whole with their panic. Such unwieldy undisciplined hosts are peculiarly liable to such contagious terror, and we find many instances in Scripture and elsewhere of the utter disorganisation which ensues. The whole conquest hung in the balance. A little more and the army would be a mob; and the mob would break into twos and threes, which would get short shrift from the Amorites.

Ill. Mark, then, Joshua’s action in the crisis. He does not try to encourage the people, but turns from them to God. The spectacle of the leader and the elders prone before the ark, with rent garments and dust-bestrewn hair, in sign of mourning, would not be likely to hearten the alarmed people; but the defeat had clearly shown that something had disturbed the relation to God, and the first necessity was to know what it was. Joshua’s prayer is perplexed, and not free from a wistful, backward look, nor from regard to his own reputation; but the soul of it is an earnest desire to know the ‘wherefore’ of this disaster. It traces the defeat to God, and means really, ‘Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me.’ No doubt it runs perilously near to repeating the old complaints at Kadesh and elsewhere, which are almost verbally reproduced in its first words. But the same things said by different people are not the same; and Joshua’s question is the voice of a faith struggling to find footing, and his backward look is not because he doubts God’s power to help, or hankers after Egypt, but because he sees that, for some unknown reason, they have lost the divine protection. His reference to himself betrays the crushing weight of responsibility which he felt, and comes not from carefulness for his own good fame so much as from his dread of being unable to vindicate himself, if the people should turn on him as the author of their misfortunes. His fear of the news of the check at Ai emboldening not only the neighbouring Amorites highlanders of the western Palestine, but the remoter Canaanites lowlanders of the coast, to make a combined attack, and sweep Israel out of existence, was a perfectly reasonable forecast of what would follow. The naive simplicity of the appeal to God, ‘What wilt Thou do for Thy great name?’ becomes the soldier, whose words went the shortest way to their aim, as his spear did. We cannot fancy this prayer coming from Moses; but, for all that, it has the ring of faith in it, and beneath its blunt, simple words throbs a true heart.

IV. The answer sounds strange at first. God almost rebukes him for praying. He gives Joshua back his own ‘wherefore’ in the question that sounds so harsh, ‘Wherefore art thou thus fallen upon thy face?’ but the harshness is only apparent, and serves to point the lesson that follows, that the cause of the disaster is with Israel, not with God, and that therefore the remedy is not in prayer, but in active steps to cast out ‘the unclean thing.’ The prayer had asked two things,-the disclosure of the cause of God’s having left them, and His return. The answer lays bare the cause, and therein shows the conditions of His return. Note the indignant accumulation of verbs in Jos 7:11 , describing the sin in all its aspects. The first three of the six point out its heinousness in reference to God, as sin, as a breach of covenant, and as an appropriation of what was specially His. The second three describe it in terms of ordinary morality, as theft, lying, and concealment; so many black sides has one sin when God’s eye scrutinises it. Note, too, the attribution of the sin to the whole people, the emphatic reduplication of the shameful picture of their defeat, the singular transference to them of the properties of ‘the devoted thing’ which Achan has taken, and the plain, stringent conditions of God’s return. Joshua’s prayer is answered. He knows now why little Ai has beaten them back. He asked, ‘What shall I say?’ He has got something of grave import to say. So far this passage carries us, leaving the pitiful last hour of the wretched troubler of Israel untouched. What lessons are taught here?

First, God’s soldiers must be pure. The conditions of God’s help are the same to-day as when that panic-stricken crowd ignominiously fled down the rocky pass, foiled before an insignificant fortress, because sin clave to them, and God was gone from them. The age of miracles may have ceased, but the law of the divine intervention which governed the miracles has not ceased. It is true to-day, and will always be true, that the victories of the Church are won by its holiness far more than by any gifts or powers of mind, culture, wealth, eloquence, or the like. Its conquests are the conquests of an indwelling God, and He cannot share His temples with idols. When God is with us, Jericho is not too strong to be captured; when He is driven from us by our own sin, Ai is not too weak to defeat us. A shattered wall keeps us out, if we fight in our own strength. Fortifications that reach to heaven fall flat before us when God is at our side. If Christian effort seems ever fruitless, the first thing to do is to look for the ‘Babylonish garment’ and the glittering shekels hidden in our tents. Nine times out of ten we shall find the cause in our own spiritual deficiencies. Our success depends on God’s presence, and God’s presence depends on our keeping His dwelling-place holy. When the Church is ‘fair as the moon,’ reflecting in silvery whiteness the ardours of the sun which gives her all her light, and without such spots as dim the moon’s brightness, she will be ‘terrible as an army with banners.’ This page of Old Testament history has a living application to the many efforts and few victories of the churches of to-day, which seem scarce able to hold their own amid the natural increase of population in so-called Christian lands, and are so often apparently repulsed when they go up to attack the outlying heathenism.

‘His strength was as the strength of ten,

Because his heart was pure,’

is true of the Christian soldier.

Again, we learn the power of one man to infect a whole community and to inflict disaster on it. One sick sheep taints a flock. The effects of the individual’s sin are not confined to the doer. We have got a fine new modern word to express this solemn law, and we talk now of ‘solidarity,’ which sounds very learned and ‘advanced.’ But it means just what we see in this story; Achan was the sinner, all Israel suffered. We are knit together by a mystical but real bond, so that ‘no man,’ be he good or bad, ‘liveth to himself,’ and no man’s sin terminates in himself. We see the working of that unity in families, communities, churches, nations. Men are not merely aggregated together like a pile of cannon balls, but are knit together like the myriad lives in a coral rock. Put a drop of poison anywhere, and it runs by a thousand branching veins through the mass, and tints and taints it all. No man can tell how far the blight of his secret sins may reach, nor how wide the blessing of his modest goodness may extend. We should seek to cultivate the sense of being members of a great whole, and to ponder our individual responsibility for the moral and religious health of the church, the city, the nation. We are not without danger from an exaggerated individualism, and we need to realise more constantly and strongly that we are but threads in a great network, endowed with mysterious vitality and power of transmitting electric impulses, both of good and evil.

Again, we have one more illustration in this story of the well-worn lesson,-never too threadbare to be repeated, until it is habitually realised,-that God’s eye sees the hidden sins. Nobody saw Achan carry the spoil to his tent, or dig the hole to hide it. His friends walked across the floor without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which tightened its folds, and hissed more loudly, as each step in the lot brought discovery nearer home; and when, at last, his own name fell from the vase, how terribly the thought would glare in on him,-’And God knew it all the while, and I fancied I had covered it all up so safely.’ It is an awful thing to hear the bloodhounds following up the scent which leads them straight to our lurking-place. God’s judgments may be long in being put on our tracks, but, once loose, they are sure of scent, and cannot be baffled. It is an old, old thought, ‘Thou God seest me’; but kept well in mind, it would save from many a sin, and make sunshine in many a shady place.

Again, we have in Achan a lesson which the professing Christians of great commercial nations, like England, sorely need. I have already pointed out the singular parallel between him and Ananias and Sapphira. Covetousness was the sin of all three. It is the sin of the Church to-day. The whole atmosphere in which some of us live is charged with the subtle poison of it. Men are estimated by their wealth. The great aim of life is to get money, or to keep it, or to gain influence and notoriety by spending it. Did anybody ever hear of church discipline being exercised on men who committed Achan’s sin? He was stoned to death, but we set our Achans in high places in the Church. Perhaps if we went and fell on our faces before the ark when we are beaten, we should be directed to some tent where a very ‘influential member’ of Israel lived, and should find that to put an end to his ecclesiastical life had a wonderful effect in bringing back courage to the army, and leading to more unmingled dependence on God. Covetousness was stoned to death in Israel, and struck with sudden destruction in the Apostolic Church. It has been reserved for the modern Church to tolerate and almost to canonise it; and yet we wonder how it comes that we are so often foiled before some little Ai, and so seldom see any walls falling by our assault. Let us listen to that stern sentence, ‘I will not be with you any more, except ye destroy the devoted thing from among you.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

NASB (UPDATED TEXT): Jos 7:1

1But the sons of Israel acted unfaithfully in regard to the things under the ban, for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, from the tribe of Judah, took some of the things under the ban, therefore the anger of the LORD burned against the sons of Israel.

Jos 7:1 the sons of Israel acted unfaithfully The VERB acted unfaithfully (BDB 591, KB 612, Qal IMPERFECT) means to act under cover or trust-breaking. Although this was only done by one soldier it was seen as an unfaithful act on behalf of all the people. This illustrates the Hebrew concept of corporality. As Adam sinned, all mankind sinned; as one animal dies, humans are forgiven; as Jesus gave Himself to die, all mankind is potentially saved (cf. Isaiah 53; Rom 5:17-19). The one affects the whole, either negatively or positively!

In the Hebrew text the NOUN form of the VERB acted unfaithfully is repeated, which intensifies the scandal of the act of rebellion.

under the ban This is the term herem (BDB 356 ). It meant something dedicated to God and, therefore, it became too holy for human use.

the anger of the LORD burned against the sons of Israel The Bible that speaks of the tremendous love of God is the same Bible that speaks of the burning (BDB 354, KB 351, Qal IMPERFECT, e.g., Exo 4:14; Exo 22:24; Exo 32:10; Num 11:1; Num 11:10; Num 12:9; Num 22:22; Deu 6:15; Deu 7:4; Deu 11:17; Deu 29:27; Deu 31:17) anger of God. They are both anthropomorphic phrases (from Greek terms man and form, see Special Topic: God Described As Human [anthropomorphism] ). However, they both speak of the true nature of a personal, holy God.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

children = sons.

a trespass = a treachery, unfaithfulness. Hebrew ma’al. App-43. Compare Lev 6:2. Deu 32:51. 1Ch 5:25, breach of faith or trust.

accursed = devoted. Compare Jos 6:17, &c.

Achan Troubler; called Achar, 1Ch 2:7.

took. Septuagint has enosphisanto = took for themselves, i.e. sacrilege. Same word as in Act 5:1, Act 5:2 of Ananias and Sapphire.

the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 7

Now in chapter seven we read that,

The children of Israel committed a trespass against the Lord in the [holy thing, or in the] accursed thing: [rather] for Achan took of the accursed thing: [That is he took some of the spoil that they said was to go only to God, and he took it for himself.] and God’s anger was kindled against the children of Israel ( Jos 7:1 ).

So Moses sent some men up to look over Bethel and Ai. Now Jordan is down in the plains. Jericho is down in the plains of Jordan. It’s quite a climb up the valley from Jericho to Bethel, and Ai. Actually when you’re in Jericho you’re about twelve hundred feet below sea level. When you get up to Bethel, you’re about twenty-eight hundred feet above sea level. There is this valley that goes up, a very beautiful valley, that goes up from Jericho up to Bethel. It was the natural route. So the men went up and they looked and Ai, and they came back to Joshua. They said, “Joshua there’s no need of sending the whole army, just give us two or three thousand men, and we’ll take Ai.”

So Joshua sent a regiment up to take the men of Ai. The men of Ai came out against them and they began to flee, and the men of Ai pursued them and thirty-six of them were slain. They came running back to camp. Joshua fell on his face before the Lord, down in verse seven, and he prayed, tore his clothes, fell to the earth on his face.

And Joshua said, Alas, [That’s a term that means, “we’ve had it”, kind of a thing, “Alas”,] O Lord, why have you brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and we had stayed on the other side of Jordan. O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turns their backs before their enemies. When the Canaanites hear of this, they shall encircle us, and cut off our name from the earth: and what will you do to your great name? And the Lord said to Joshua, Stand up, why are you lying on your face ( Jos 7:7-10 )?

I like this. It’s like when Moses was lying on his face when they had found themselves trapped between Pihahiroth and Zephon, and the Red sea in front of them, and the Egyptian army had cut off their retreat route. Moses cried out unto the Lord, “We’re trapped.” The Lord said, “Wherefore thou criest unto me?” “Well who else am I gonna cry to? You’re the one that led me down here.” The Lord said, “Stretch forth your hand.” In other words, “Hey, now’s not the time to pray, time to move.” There comes a time to move, and there’s a time to pray. True. But then there’s a time to get up and start moving. “And Moses, this isn’t the time to pray, this is the time to move.”

Now with Joshua, here he is laying out the whole lament. “Lord, what are You doing to us? What are we gonna do turning our backs to the enemies? Boy, when this word gets around, they’re all gonna come down, we’re gonna get wiped out. We’d have been better off if we’d stayed on the other side. Lord, what are You doing?” The Lord said, “Stand up. Why are you crying unto me?” Then the Lord revealed to him that there was sin in the camp.

They have transgressed God’s covenant for they have taken unto themselves of the treasure from Jericho ( Jos 7:11 ).

Now as we make a spiritual analogy here, and I think it is important that we do it. You see spiritually now we are entering into a new dimension of relationship with God, the life and the walk of the Spirit. Now God hasn’t promised that it’s gonna be all victory. There are battles. There are giants in the land. Your flesh has been deeply entrenched for a long, long time.

Now they conquered over the first obstacle because they followed the instructions of the Lord implicitly. But having gained the first victory, a danger arose, that was this business of self-confidence. “Lord we don’t need Your help with Ai. We now know what the process of victory is. We’re flushed with victory. God has just delivered this strong city into our hands. Ai, it isn’t nearly as big as Jericho. If we can conquer Jericho then Ai will be nothing. Lord, we don’t need You on this one. We can handle this one on our own. Joshua don’t send the whole army, just a couple thousand of us. We’ll go up and take that thing for you.”

How many times, when God has given us a victory over some major issue of our flesh, we get flushed with victory? And with a feeling of confidence, and we think, “Oh my, I’ve got it, I’ve arrived. I don’t need help anymore. I can handle this little area. This is nothing, Lord, you know. I’ll be able to manage this one, no problem God.” I go out on my own without first seeking God. God says, “Stand up. Why are you crying unto Me?” Had he prayed first, he wouldn’t have been in the predicament he was in.

Now that is often true of our lives. If we had only prayed beforehand, we would have never been in the mess. So many times we are crying unto the Lord saying, “Lord, why?” He says, “Hey, why are you crying unto Me? Where were you before you started the thing? I didn’t tell you to go there. I didn’t command you to get into that mess. I’m not the one that directed you there. You went there on your own.” Self-confidence, I think, “Lord, I can manage this. I can handle this. I don’t need Your help.” Man, that’s when the enemy always just gives me a real trumping. Beware of that kind of self-confidence, and know that you can’t conquer the least of the areas of your flesh without divine guidance and help. Sorry about that, but you’re just as weak as I am when it comes to dealing with the flesh. We’ve got to have the help of the Lord in every area of our lives if we are going to know victory over the flesh.

Now the reason why that is so is because God doesn’t want you to become a proud fool, and to go around boasting of how you conquered over your appetite. Or you conquered over this, or that, or the other, and start laying heavy trips on us, and becoming sort of pharisaical against us, saying, “Well, I used to have that problem too, but I just did this, and that and the other, and anybody can do it if they really set their mind to it, you know.” That kind of bologna, and you start putting down everybody else like “If you were only as good as I am, then you could make it.” So God lets us realize how hopelessly and helplessly we are lost without His help. So that when the victory comes, all I can say is, “Oh thank You, Lord. You did it.”

I tried everything, everything to get rid of my temper. You don’t know how hard I tried. I hated it. I hated myself whenever I would lose my temper. But one day God took it away. For a long time I was trying to control my temper because that’s what my mother told me. “Son, control yourself.” I tried, and there were times when I was relatively successful, building up a real head of steam inside, but keeping it capped. But then sometimes that cap didn’t work, and then when I blew, I really blew because there was so much pressure inside at that point, that you know, then you really go wild. You just tear everything up. Then you feel miserable and horrible. “Oh no. Why did I do that?” Just going through the whole thing.

One day God took it away. It was no longer a process of controlling my temper. I didn’t have a temper. I didn’t realize that He had taken it away for several years. One day something happened that would’ve really triggered me with a tremendous outburst, and there was no outburst. There was no steam, there was no anger, and I realized God had taken that vile, horrible temper away. “Oh praise the Lord.”

So I don’t have any little formulas of success, on how to control your temper. I tried them all and they didn’t work. But I have discovered that what I couldn’t do for myself, the Lord was able to do for me when I came to the end of myself. When I despaired of myself, when I knew that I couldn’t do it, and I cried out in desperation, “God help me. I can’t do it.”

Now so often we think that, “Oh, that’s the end of the road when I have to call upon God when I can’t do it”. Oh how tragic that you would get to that point. No. How blessed, because that final cry of despair is often the prelude for the first cry of victory. When God brings you to the absolute end and despairing of yourself, and you know that there is no way you can do it and you give up. Then is when God has the opportunity to step in and begin His work, because He’s taking you one point beyond yourself. That’s always a great point to be. “God it can’t be done unless You do it.” So that then when He goes ahead and does it, I then don’t play the fool and take the glory as though I did it.

Now God wants the glory for the victories in your life. God gave them a glorious victory at Jericho. They thought, “We got it made. Don’t send the whole army, we’ll just go up.” They got whipped, came running back to Joshua. God said, “Don’t cry unto Me there’s sin in the camp. If everything was all right within the camp, you would’ve had the victory. But there’s sin in the camp.” They had taken of the accursed thing. So they called off the tribes, had the tribes come by, and God chose the tribe of Judah. They had the families of Judah come by, and God chose this particular family out of the tribes of Judah. Then God had the families to pass by, and God then picked out from the family, this fellow by the name of Achan from the family of the Zarhites.

and Zabdi was taken: And he brought out his household man by man; and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken ( Jos 7:17-18 ).

Now if you were Achan, how would you feel if all the tribes passed by, and then they say, “The tribe of Judah”, you think, “Oh, I wonder.” Then they have all the families of Judah pass by, and they choose this family, the Zarhites. You think, “Uh oh getting closer.” Then they have all the families of the Zarhites pass by, and they choose then your own household. Then it comes right down to you.

And Joshua said to Achan, My son, [I love the way that Joshua deals with him in tenderness, course he dealt pretty firmly in a little bit, but gives him a chance to repent at least, “And Joshua said unto Achan, My son,”] give, I pray thee, glory to Jehovah the God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what have you done; don’t try to hide it from me. And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and I’ve done this: And when I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, I coveted them, and I took them; behold, they are hid in the earth in the middle of my tent, the silver is under it. So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran unto the tent; and, behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it. And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and all the children of Israel, and they laid them out before the Lord ( Jos 7:19-23 ).

So Achan was guilty of stealing, this belonged to God. It was to be given to the Lord all of the spoil of Jericho. But this man coveted, he saw this beautiful Babylonish garment. He saw this silver and gold, and he coveted these things, and took them and hid them in his tent figuring no one would know, no one would see. But his sin was costly, it cost the lives of thirty-two, thirty-six of the men of Israel, who fell before the men of Ai.

Lot of times a person thinks that he, that his sin only bothers me. “My sin it may hurt me, but it only hurts me”, kind of bit. No sir. Your sin has a bad effect on others. So Achan and his family were brought forth, and Achan was stoned for his sin.

“

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

This chapter opens with a significant and ominous “But.” So far we have had the record of remarkable progress but! We now see the triumphant people defeated and flying and the reason is declared. It was the sin of a man, but it was also the sin of the nation. Israel had now become a nation in very deed, and therefore no one person could act alone. Individualism is a far more tremendous responsibility when it has ceased to be mere individualism. The sin of the one became the sin of the community, and all the hosts of God were defeated and His enterprises checked because one man had disobeyed.

The story of Achan’s sin as he told it is full of warning. Mark carefully its progress; “I saw,” “I coveted,” “I took.”

The confession he made was complete, but it was worthless. The reason of its worthlessness lay in the fact that it was never made until there was no escape. Gradually the walls closed around him until not on his own confession, but by the appointed method of divine detection, he was manifested as guilty.

Joshua’s cry to God as recorded here was a cry full of agony, and, as in the case of Moses, its deepest note of sorrow was created by his jealousy for the name of God.

Swift and terrible and yet necessary and just was the judgment which fell on the man who had so grievously sinned.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

the First Defeat and Its Cause

Jos 7:1-15

Israel was taught that victory is possible only where there are exact obedience and sincere consecration. We cannot cope with our foes, unless we live in unclouded fellowship with God. See 2Ch 15:2. Our spiritual allies in the heavenly places cannot co-operate while evil is harbored. Canaan was a gift to faith, and a strong spiritual life was peremptory. The gold and silver of Jericho were consecrated to God, so that Achan committed sacrilege as well as theft.

Ai (see Gen 12:8; Gen 13:3) lay two miles north of Jericho, and was a comparatively small place; but without God the smallest opposition is too great for us. Joshua seemed more concerned for the disgrace brought on the divine name than for the disaster to his men. Let us always look at our failures from Gods side! We must not lie too long in the dust of despair, but arise to detect and put away the hidden cause of our defeat, Hos 5:15; Hos 6:1-2.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Bethaven, on the east side of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai. And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither; for they are but few. So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted and became as water. And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.

The fall of Jericho in such a miraculous way, without any real effort on Israels part, evidently led to overconfidence and forgetfulness of the fact that it was God alone who had destroyed this first barrier to their possession of the land. The next city to be subdued was small compared to Jericho and a detachment sent out to reconnoiter reported that it would be easily captured and that it would be quite unnecessary for the entire host to move against it. So about three thousand men undertook to destroy it, but were defeated ignominiously. We are told they fled before the men of Ai and thirty-six of them were slain. It was a great shock naturally to Joshua and to the people as a whole, but we are told at once of the reason for the defeat.

God had commanded Israel to take nothing for themselves of the spoil of Jericho. The silver and the gold and metallic vessels were to be devoted to the service of the Lord, but all else was under a curse and was to be destroyed. One man and his family failed to obey the Word of the Lord and committed a trespass in the accursed thing. Thus Israel had no power to stand against their foes.

There are two important lessons that we may take to our own hearts from this incident. First, note how God looked upon the twelve tribes of Israel as a unit. They formed one nation, and what affected one part of the nation affected all. Though strife and division came in afterwards, God still speaks of the twelve tribes of Israel. To them the Epistle of James is addressed and the Apostle Paul speaks of the Resur- rection as that to which our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hoped to come. In the Christian dispensation one of the great outstanding truths set forth in the Word is that of the entity of the body of Christ. So intimately are the members of Christ linked to one another by the Spirit that it is written: If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; if one member be honored all the members rejoice with it. This is very precious, but it is also exceedingly solemn. As individual members of Christ we need to realize that our attitude and behavior has an effect for good or ill upon the body as a whole. We know how true this is in the human body: often some affected hidden gland is the cause of great discomfort and misery to the entire body. When this condition is rectified the whole body is freed of its distress. And so the secret of Israels defeat at Ai was the fact that one man and his family had disobeyed the Word of the Lord and committed a trespass in the accursed thing. When the defeated soldiers of Israel came fleeing for their lives back to their brethren in the camp, the hearts of the people melted. All their hopes of a speedy defeat of their enemies seemed to be at an end and they were utterly bewildered and discouraged. Their great leader himself was shocked and perplexed at what had taken place, and we are told that Joshua rent his clothes and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads. This was the expression of utter self-abnegation and grief.

We have Joshuas prayer recorded in verses 7 to 9:

And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan! O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies! For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?

Note the two things that troubled him: O Lord, he exclaimed, what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs upon their enemies? The story of their defeat at Ai would spread rapidly throughout the land and the other nations of Canaan would be encouraged to defend their cities with renewed valor, whereas before the fear of the Lord had fallen upon them. Then Joshua also asked: What wilt Thou do unto Thy great name? But Jehovah can be depended upon to defend His own name. He will not condone sin in His own people to do this. Sin must be dealt with before God will manifest Himself openly on their behalf.

We are told that the Lord said unto Joshua:

Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff (verses 10, 11).

This was the cause of their defeat. Prayer is always good in its place, but this was not the time for prayer. It was the time to deal in unsparing judgment with the family who had committed the sin that had weakened Israel before their foes. It was because of this sin that they had no strength to stand before their enemies, and God declared that He would not be with them any more until they destroyed the cursed thing from among them.

How often similar conditions have prevailed even in the churches of God in this dispensation of grace! Hidden sin, unconfessed, unjudged, has made the people of the Lord as weak as water when they came in conflict with their satanic foes.

In accordance with the Word of the Lord all Israel was called to stand before God, and Joshua cast lots to determine the particular tribe in which the guilty party was to be found. The casting of lots was an Old Testament way of determining the mind of the Lord. We read in the book of Proverbs: The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord (16:33). Again and again we find this method used in determining the will of God. The last time which God seems to have recognized is that recorded in the book of Acts, when the apostles cast lots to determine whether Joseph or Matthias should be appointed as successor to Judas. After the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, no such method is ever indicated in the New Testament. The believer today is able to determine the will of God as he searches the Scriptures in dependence on the Holy Spirit.

The story is told of a young curate in the Church of England who was greatly helped in his understanding of the Scriptures by frequent conversations with an uneducated cobbler, who was, nevertheless, well acquainted with the Word of God. On one occasion when a friend of his, a young theologian, was visiting him, he mentioned the remarkable knowledge of the Bible which this cobbler possessed. The young theologue, in a spirit of pride, expressed a desire to meet him, saying he felt sure he could propose some questions to him on the Scriptures which he would be quite unable to answer. Upon being introduced to him in his little shop the question was put: Can you tell me what the Urim and Thummim were? The cobbler replied: I dont know exactly; I understand that the words apply to something that was on the breastplate of the high priest. I know the words mean Lights and Perfection and that through the Urim and Thummim the high priest was able to discern the mind of the Lord. But I find that I can get the mind of the Lord by just changing one letter. I take this blessed Book and Usim and Thummim, and I get the mind of the Lord that way.

When the lots were cast in this particular instance, the tribe of Judah was taken; then the various families of Judah stood before the Lord; lots were cast for them and the family of the Zarhites was taken. The households of this family were then brought before God and lots were cast and the household of Zabdi was taken. His household was brought man by man before the Lord and the lot fell on Achan, the guilty person whose disobedience to the word of the Lord was responsible for Israels defeat at Ai. Adjured by Joshua to make confession of his sin and tell what he had done, Achan answered:

Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done: When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

Unhappily, this confession came too late. Had Achan come to God of his own accord and acknowledged his sin and brought a proper offering, doubtless there would have been forgiveness for him. But the confession wrung from him only after the lot had indicated who the wicked one was, could not avail to shield him from judgment.

We need to remember that this event occurred in the dispensation of the law. Law knows no mercy; law is absolutely just. Therefore Achan and his family had to be destroyed because of their sin. It is very evident that the family were implicated in the evil deeds of the head of the house, because the law strictly forbade putting the children to death for the sins of the parents, but inasmuch as all were devoted to judgment, it is evident that all participated in the evil. They were brought down into the Valley of Achor; that is, the valley of trouble. As they stood there before the Lord and His people,

Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day.

It is a sad story, but it has a serious lesson for Gods people everywhere. Sin in the camp will weaken the host of the Lord and hinder blessing and victory. Sin judged and dealt with leaves God free to work in the way in which He delights.

In the book of Hosea there is a word of comfort even in connection with this sad story. The Lord tells Israel that in the latter days He is going to recover them from their wandering and restore them to Himself and He will give them the valley of Achor for a door of hope (Hos 2:15). The valley of Achor speaks of the trouble that we bring upon ourselves by our own sins: retributive justice because of our departure from the Lord. But if we judge ourselves before God and turn to Him in sincerity of heart, He will give deliverance, and even the valley of Achor will become an entrance into blessing.

We need to remember that grace does not set aside government. It is still true that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap, and he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong that he hath done and there is no respect of persons with God. We cannot sin with impunity because we are saved by grace. But on the other hand, if we judge ourselves we shall not be judged of the Lord.

Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets

7. Achans Sin and Israels Defeat

CHAPTER 7

1. The defeat of Israel (Jos 7:1-5)

2. The source of the defeat revealed (Jos 7:6-15)

3. The transgressor found out (Jos 7:16-23)

4. The judgment of Achan (Jos 7:24-26)

The insignificant place Ai brings defeat. Joshua sent men to view Ai. What authority was given to him to do so? There was no need to send spies once more, for the Lord had said, that the whole land was given to them. They report Ai a place without walls and recommend that only two or three thousand men be sent up. Defeat follows.

Ai means ruins. It is mentioned for the first time in Genesis 12. Abraham built his altar between Bethel (House of God) and Ai. Ai is another type of the world. But the source of the defeat was Achans sin. The shekels of silver and gold, the Babylonian garment, had blinded his eyes. These things were to be accursed, which literally means devoted; devoted to the treasury of the Lord (6:19). Joshua had given the command that such should be the case, and also announced, that disobedience would bring trouble upon Israel. Achans sin was responsible for the defeat of the people. He confesses, I saw–I coveted–I took. The same old story, first enacted in the garden of Eden. The evil in the midst of the people of God, unjudged, becomes the most powerful agent against Israel and withholds Gods power and blessing. It is so still. As soon as we cling to the things of the world, the enemy gets an advantage over us, and we have little power and cannot advance in the things of Christ. Ah! the Achans in our lives! Judge self, bring the evil thing into the light and victory and blessing will follow. Joshuas prayer and Jehovahs answer; Achans sin discovered and forced confession; the judgment which falls upon him and his house; the heap of stones raised over him–all is of interest and instruction, which our limited space forbids to follow in detail.

The valley of Achor is mentioned in Hos 2:15 as a door of hope. The place and door of hope is in Him, who died not for his sins, but who took the sin and guilt of the nation upon Himself.

The valley of Achor was not only the place of national repentance, and of a national repudiation of sin, but it was also the place of a great and tragic national expiation. Israel had sinned, and so Israel had suffered, but it was the sin of one man that had brought judgment on the camp. Now, observe, the sin of a single man was imputed to Israel, and became Israels sin, and because of that imputation of sin, the wrath of God fell on the whole nation. But when the sin of that one man was discovered, and when it was confessed before God, then the sin imputed to the congregation reverted on to the head of the one criminal. Thus the penalty due to a national sin was actually carried out upon him whose guilt had involved the nation in judgment; and as the deadly stones were hurled upon him, that man in his death was not only reaping the reward of his disobedience, but the sin of the nation was being expiated in the death of the individual; and thus was opened a door of hope through the valley of trouble, whereby Israel might enter the land of promise, and find her vineyards from thence.–Aitken.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

committed: Jos 7:20, Jos 7:21, Jos 22:16, 2Ch 24:18, Ezr 9:6, Dan 9:7

for Achan: Jos 22:20, 1Ch 2:6, 1Ch 2:7, Achar, Zimri

took: Jos 6:17, Jos 6:18

the anger: Jos 22:18, 2Sa 24:1, 1Ch 21:7, Ecc 9:18, Jon 1:7, 1Co 5:1-6, Heb 12:15, Heb 12:16

Reciprocal: Gen 34:27 – they Gen 44:16 – God hath Lev 10:6 – lest wrath Lev 27:28 – no devoted Num 16:22 – one man sin Deu 7:25 – thou shalt Deu 7:26 – shalt Deu 13:17 – cleave Deu 29:21 – separate Jos 7:11 – Israel Jos 7:24 – took Achan 2Sa 21:1 – It is 2Ki 5:24 – and bestowed Job 35:8 – may hurt Pro 10:22 – he Mic 6:10 – the treasures Act 23:12 – under a curse

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

The Woes of Achan

Jos 7:1-10

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

Our Scripture opens with the following statement: “But the Children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing.” The fact is as we all know that the trespass was committed by one man, Achan, the son of Carmi. However, even as a false brick in a building mars the beauty of the whole building; thus the sin of one affects a whole people.

The Children of Israel sinned because Achan was one of their number, and no man sinneth unto himself. The leper of old contaminated everything he touched. The sin of a father and husband brings shame and disgrace upon the children and wife.

Let us look at sin for a little while:

1. Sin is always disrupting. Sin tears down, destroys, wrecks, and ruins. Everything that sin touches feels a blight. There is nothing that casts a deeper shadow than does sin. The form of sin is as a hideous specter, seeking to scatter the seeds of disease and death.

2. Sin in its first beginnings. The Children of Israel had but just come over the Jordan. They were now entering into a new sphere of life, as they went into the promised land. It was at that time that Achan sinned.

We think that the severity of God’s judgment against Achan was, in part, a warning to Israel in their new life lest they should continue in sin.

It was so in the Church. When the first great sin was committed by Ananias and Sapphira in the matter of holding back a part of the price of the land, God slew them both, that the Church might know the seriousness of sin.

3. Saints suffer for sin, as much as the wicked suffer. Think you that, because we are children of God, we may therefore sin without fear of punishment? Shall we sin because we are under grace? Nay, “for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”

In this life Christians who sin will be punished by a loving Saviour. At the bema judgment saints also may suffer. Is it not written: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” The next verse adds, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.”

Mark you, we are not teaching that saints are lost when they sin. We are teaching that God could not be just, unless He chastens those who sin.

We know that Christ died for sin, that He took our stripes. We also know that Christians who have been saved, and stand before God clothed in the righteousness of Christ are freely forgiven when, having sinned, they confess their sins. All of this, however, does not lessen the fact that a believer, living in unconfessed sin, must suffer.

The whole Bible is filled with the story of how God punishes saints.

I. ATTEMPTING TO CONQUER WHILE SIN IS IN THE CAMP (Jos 7:2)

The Children of. Israel had gone forth to conquer the village of Ai, which was on the east side of Bethel. They had gone expecting an easy conquest, for the people at Ai, compared to Jericho, were but few.

There was one thing, however, they had neglected to do. Before they crossed the Jordan and marched around Jericho, they had sanctified themselves (Jos 3:5). Now they were attempting to take Ai with sin hidden in their midst.

Alas, there are many churches today who are undertaking for God while they, also, are sheltering grievous sins. Think you, that there are not some things which should be first, before any conquest is attempted?

1. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” Here is a first thing that is vital to everything relative to our temporal needs. If we expect God to feed us and to clothe us, we are told to seek first His Kingdom, then says the Spirit: “All these things shall be added unto you.”

2. First be reconciled to thy brother. God tells us if we are bringing our gift to the altar, and we remember that our brother hath ought against us, we are to leave there our gift and to go our way. Then He says: “First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Think you, that God will receive anything of our hand, until we are first right with each other?

3. First get the beam out of thine own eye. Think you, that a man with a beam in his own eye is prepared to pull out the mote that is in his brother’s eye? Certainly not.

Beloved, let us remember that if we want conquest, we must first rid sin from our camp. Have you not read that God can do no mighty works where there is unbelief?

God cannot, and will not bless the unclean. “Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.”

II. SMALL TASKS DEMAND TRUE HEARTS (Jos 7:3)

1. Why the big task at Jericho proved successful.

(1) The people sanctified themselves. This was God’s definite instruction to them in Jos 3:5. “Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” They did sanctify themselves, and the Lord did do wonders. He did wonders because they were sanctified. Have we not read, “Sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use.”

(2) The people believed God. It is written, “According to your faith be it unto you.” The walls of Jericho fell down by faith. Where there is no faith, there certainly will be no victory.

(3) The people obeyed implicitly. They did just what the Lord told them to do. Obedience is an adjunct to faith. That man who does not obey his Lord, cannot have blessings from Him.

2. Wherein the small task at Ai failed.

(1) They sought not the Lord. They depended upon their own strength, and were overconfident. They said to Joshua: “Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai.” They not only overestimated their own strength, but they underestimated the people of Ai. Thinking themselves masters, they sought not the aid of the Lord.

(2) They sanctified not themselves. They failed to discover whether there was any sin among them. How many times the Church of God fails the Lord in this very thing.

(3) They had not fully learned that power belongeth unto God. No man of God, no servant of Christ, who goes forth trusting in the arm of flesh can obtain victory. We receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon us. Therefore, let us fight in His imparted strength, and not in our own.

III. THE FAITHFUL FLEE (Jos 7:4-5)

1. They went up about three thousand men. We can see them going now. No doubt they went expecting victory, because they had already had victory in the past. Do we ever get to the place in. our Christian experience where we think we can live on past blessings?

There was a wonderful victory at Pentecost when about 3,000 were baptized. Did the disciples imagine that because they had seen such a great and glorious time on that wonderful day, that the next day and the next could be met and conquered without prayer, and without waiting on God? Not so. In chapter 3 of Acts, we read of how, immediately following Pentecost, “Peter and John went up together into the Temple at the hour of prayer.”

We thank God for all past achievements, but we must remember that their victories were won through faith and prayer, through sanctification and obedience, through the presence of Christ, and the enduement of power. An automobile running at 60 miles an hour, may continue a good distance from generated speed, even with the motors shut off. A church, however, cannot continue at all on past successes. They must move along every day, under direct contact with power supernatural.

2. They fled. That is the statement of our key verse, “They fled before the men of Ai.” It was a pitiful sight. It seems that the moment the men of Ai saw the Children of Israel coming against them, they rushed out to meet them, and God’s people turned their backs in fright.

We are always in danger of fleeing, even when no man is pursuing, if we are serving in our own strength, or undertaking apart from the will of God. God has given us an armor by which we must be panoplied if we would meet successfully the enemy. God has given us a plan of battle. This plan must be followed. God has given us His promised presence to go with us. This presence must be realized, in order to conquer.

The Lord help us never to flee from the enemy. May we, the rather, stand and having done all, stand.

IV. JOSHUA’S GREAT GRIEF (Jos 7:6-7)

1. We have the broken morale of the people. In Jos 7:5 we read: “The hearts of the people melted, and became as water.” No wonder they couldn’t fight. Their morale was gone, their courage had left them. It is written to Christian warriors: “Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees.”

“God lives, shall we despair

As if He were not there?

Is not our life His care,

Is not His hand Divine?”

2. We have Joshua rending his clothes. When news of the routing of Israel came to their leader, Joshua tore his raiment and fell to the earth upon his face before the Ark of the Lord, until the eventide. He and the others of Israel put dust upon their heads. We do not condemn Joshua for this. It should always be a matter of great sorrow when we see God’s children running from the enemy.

If we mistake not there are thousands today among the faithful ministers of the land, whose hearts are crushed because of the church’s defeat.

3. We have Joshua’s complaining cry. Joshua said: “Alas, O Lord God.” We think of Jeremiah the wailing Prophet. It was he who said, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow?” Jeremiah felt that God had sent fire into his bones. He could not refrain from weeping when he saw his people and their city overwhelmed. Beloved, the time has come in the Church of God, when we need to teach our children weeping and wailing. The church is being depleted by the world. How can we do ought, excepting that we cry, “Alas, O Lord”?

We remember what the Apostle Paul said: “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.” This sorrow came to the Apostle because he saw the Children of Israel depleted, cast down, and scattered among the nations. Let us give ourselves to tears.

V. A QUESTIONING LEADER (Jos 7:7)

1. Joshua placed the defeat of Ai upon God. He said: “Wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us?” This meant, in plain language, that Joshua charged God with the defeat of His people, that God had set Himself to destroy them.

We need not deal harshly with Joshua, for it is very customary in our day to lay upon God all of our defeats, and to claim as due to our own prowess, our victories. Let some dire disaster overtake us and we will say God did it. Some even cry, “God does not love us, or else He would not do so and so.” Beloved, we have had enough of this.

God may chasten us, but if He does, we need to search out the cause, and we will find that some sin lies with us.

2. Joshua misconstrued the purposes of God. He insinuated that God had brought them over the Jordan to deliver them into the hands of the Amorites, and to destroy them. He had brought them over, in order to bless them, not to curse them; to sustain them, not to defeat them.

Shall we impugn God’s purposes toward us? A temporary disappointment may beset us by the way, and a transient storm may cross our path, but through it all, and in it all, God is working together for good to those who love Him.

3. Joshua discounted the finality of grace. If we want to know God, we must look beyond the present moment. We must see what Job discovered, that the end of the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

When Jacob heard of Joseph’s falsely announced death, he cried out: “All these things are against me.” Entirely to the contrary, God was working out His purpose to sustain and to keep alive, not only Jacob, but all of Jacob’s sons and grandchildren.

Let us remember that faith must possess a far-flung vision. Many of the patriarchs passed through every kind of tribulation and trouble, yet we read in Heb 11:1-40 : “these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.”

VI. A TWOFOLD COMPLAINT (Jos 7:8-9)

1. Joshua said: “O Lord, what shall I say?” Joshua put himself in this, before his Lord. He was greatly troubled about Israel’s defeat. He felt that if his people had been overwhelmed by so small a group, that they would stand little hope of success before the seven nations which infested the land of Canaan, and whom they must conquer, if they were ever to possess the land.

Beloved, we are in small business if we allow ourselves any place of prominence and recognition, in the service which we seek to render in His Name. Of course, the church’s defeat does affect us. It causes the world to have an ever-lessening confidence in the church, and therefore, in our testimony. There is, however, a deeper cause for sorrow than this.

2. Joshua said unto God: “What wilt Thou do unto Thy great Name?” He felt that the inhabitants of the land, hearing of Israel’s retreat from Ai, would shortly environ them around and cut off their name from the earth.

Joshua also felt that when Israel had their name cut off, that the Name of Israel’s God was likewise in danger. In all of this, Joshua was eminently right.

The Lord plainly told Israel, through Ezekiel, that she through her sins had blasphemed His Name among the nations-that she had profaned Him, in the midst of them, because of their unseemly ways.

Thus it is today. Saints are dragging the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ down into the murk and the mire of the swineherd, when they are unfaithful to their Lord. No man ever had a more urgent call, than that which comes to saints to watch their ways, and words, that Christ may be glorified.

We believe that the supreme reason that the old-time revivals are passing, lies in the fact that the old-time separation and spiritual vigor of saints is passing.

VII. A DIVINE COMMAND AND A DIVINE QUERY (Jos 7:10)

1. The Divine command: “Get thee up.” Joshua was in prayer. He was prostrate before the Lord. He had rent his clothes. He had put dust upon his head. He had spent hours on his face before the Ark of the Covenant. When God viewed His prostrate servant. He said: “Get thee up.”

We wonder if there is not a great deal of useless praying going on just now. Churches that are worldly and unclean often have good pastors and spiritual leaders who are undone and crushed because the church is meeting defeat. Few are being saved.

2. The Divine query, “Wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” In this query, God seemed to say to Joshua, “Dost thou think that I have forsaken Israel? dost thou think that I am about to destroy a people whom I love, and to deliver them to death at the hands of the Canaanites? dost thou impugn My righteousness. My integrity to thee, to Israel, and to My promised oath of thy victory?”

Why art thou lying upon thy face?

There was a time when Israel (Isa 51:1-23) cried unto God saying: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old.” To this cry God quickly responded: “Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury.”

Shall we cry unto God as though He were asleep, simply because we have slept? Shall we ask God to stand up and to stretch out the arm of His strength, so long as we ourselves are prone upon our faces in shame? To Israel, the Spirit said: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem.”

AN ILLUSTRATION

Rev. G. P. Merrick, of Holloway Prison, England, has compiled statistics which show that crime is not very remunerative. For 372 cases of housebreaking, which “gave employment” to 488 men, the average “earnings” were only $63.50. Four hundred and twenty-two pickpockets had to divide the proceeds of 364 successful attempts, the average takings being $22.75. Defrauding pays better. In 309 cases of this sort, each partner received on an average of $731.75. But as there is a long time of inaction between each case, criminals are among the worst “paid” individuals.

Sin, Eternal Loss. Look at the fact, the mathematical certainty, that if you deduct from the experience of a man’s holiness for a while, you have deducted something of absolutely measureless value. You have poisoned the possible bliss of that man. The poison lasts. It never will stop its course, will it? “There will be no final pain or permanent loss in the universe! Oh, no!” I affirm that you cannot take out of human history six thousand years, and give them over to your blackest sins, or to your least black, without subtracting from the bliss of the universe; and that this gap is a part of the record of the past; and that you never can fill it up. That gap will exist

“Till the sun is old,

And the stars are cold,

And the leaves of the judgment book unfold.”

-Unknown.

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

A Defeat Because of Sin

Jos 7:1-26

The Lord had instructed Israel to make Jericho a devoted city, that is, set apart for him. He especially instructed them to place the silver, gold and vessels of brass in his treasury ( Jos 6:17-19 ). Leslie G. Thomas noted that Satan always began his work to ensnare man in sin right at the start of a new relationship with God. He tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, Cain at the beginning of recorded worship, Nadab and Abihu at the start of Moses’ law and Ananias and Sapphira in the early days of the church on earth ( Gen 3:1-24 ; Gen 4:1-26 ; Lev 10:1-7 and Act 5:1-11 ). In each case, the devil used some item that was to be devoted to God’s service to tempt man to evil. The first recorded sin in the land of Canaan is no exception. The temptation was to take the devoted thing despite God’s strong warnings to the contrary.

Jos 7:1-26 opens with the sad fact that Achan took of the devoted thing. 1Ch 2:7 calls him Achar which, as the text tells us, means trouble. He troubled the whole nation by taking of the banned items and thereby robbing Israel of its purity much like an infection in one of its members can bring down the whole body. Apparently, Joshua did not know of the sin and sent out spies to observe the next place of conquest, Ai. Upon their return, they reported that the town could be taken with between 2,000 and 3,000 men. So, Joshua sent out 3,000 confidant of victory after the fall of Jericho. They were routed and thirty-six lost their lives in the defeat. Further, the people lost their courage because of the loss to such and insignificant place.

The defeat obviously came about because the Lord had left Israel’s side. Joshua began to mourn before the ark of the covenant until evening when he started to talk with God. His first words might be considered murmuring if it were not for the fact that he goes on and asks what answer he should give for the Lord when those people round about them heard that Israel, God’s people, had turned their backs in battle. Naturally, he foresaw the nations around them becoming bold, surrounding Israel and destroying them. The nations, as Rahab had said, had come to recognize the power of Jehovah and the greatness of his name. Joshua did not want the memory of that to be wiped off the earth.

God’s answer to Joshua’s depression over the defeat of Israel was threefold. First, he should get up (7:6). Second, the people would have to acknowledge their sin in taking the banned items and putting it among their own stuff in violation of God’s command. Israel would no longer be able to stand before their enemies until they destroyed the accursed thing (compare Deu 13:12-18 ). While God sometimes allowed the people to keep some of the spoils of war, he had specifically told them not to take of the things of Jericho and what items were to go into his treasury ( Deu 20:10-14 ; Jos 8:1-2 ). Third, the people would have to be sanctified. To accomplish this, God had them cleanse themselves that night in preparation for coming before the Lord the next morning. They would come by tribes, families, households and then man by man until the one who had violated God’s law was exposed. Then, as he had warned in the original commandment, that man would be treated as a part of the accursed thing and would be burned.

Joshua followed the Lord’s instructions and at last Achan appeared before him as the man who had specifically violated God’s will. Thomas says the word “confess” literally means “to say the same thing.” God already knew of the sin of Achan and now Achan told the people the same thing. He described his sin by saying he saw, coveted and took the items involved. Other scriptures warn us of the danger of these very actions ( 1Jn 2:15-17 ; 1Co 6:9-10 ; Col 3:5 ; Eph 4:28 ). In this case, Achan had robbed God because he had taken that which was devoted to him.

Since Deu 24:16 expressly forbids punishing the children for the crimes of their fathers, we have to assume one of two things. Either Achan’s children became accomplices to the crime because the goods were hidden in the tent where they lived, or the plural “them” in verse 24 describes Achan and his things. At any rate, the whole nation participated in the punishment of Achan by stoning and then burning him as God directed. In this way, the people put the evil away from them and were again sanctified in God’s sight.

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Jos 7:1. But the children of Israel That is, one of them. It is a usual form of speech in the Holy Scriptures, to ascribe that to many indefinitely, which properly belonged only to one or two of the same body or society. Thus (Mat 26:8) we find that to be ascribed to all the disciples which was done by Judas alone: see Joh 12:4. Committed a trespass in the accursed thing Offended God by taking some of the spoils which were devoted to destruction, or appropriated to Gods treasury, with a curse upon him who took them. Achan, the son of Carmi He is called Achar, (1Ch 2:7,) a word that signifies, He troubled. It is probable that as he had troubled Israel, (Jos 7:25,) they changed his name thus in after-times. Zabdi Called also Zimri, 1Ch 2:6. Zerah Or Zarah, who was Judahs immediate son, (Gen 38:30,) who went with his father into Egypt when he was very young. And thus, for making up the two hundred and fifty-six years that are supposed to come between that and this time, we must allow Achan to be now an old man, and his three ancestors to have begotten each his son at about sixty years of age; which at that time was not incredible nor unusual. Against the children of Israel Why did God punish the whole society for this one mans sin? All of them were punished for their own sins, whereof each had a sufficient proportion; but God took this occasion to inflict the punishment upon the society. 1st, Because divers of them might be guilty of this sin, either by coveting to do what he actually did, or by concealing his fault, which, it is probable, could not be unknown to others, or by not sorrowing for it, and endeavouring to purge themselves from it: 2d, To make sin the more hateful, as being the cause of such dreadful judgments: and, 3d, To oblige all the members of every society to be more circumspect in ordering their own actions, and more diligent to prevent the miscarriage of their brethren.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Jos 7:1. The children of Israel committed a trespass; that is, Achan and his children, who concealed their fathers sin, by hiding the accursed plunder in their tent. The sin of one man is here attributed to all the people of Israel; as the sin of one member vitiates and shames the whole body.

Jos 7:2. From Jericho to Ai; called Hai, Gen 12:8; and Aija, Neh 11:31. This town lay nine miles west of Jericho on a hill, and fell to the lot of Benjamin. There was another town of that name among the Ammonites. Jer 49:3.

Jos 7:9. What wilt thou do unto thy great name? When the church comes to extremities, Gods honour comes to extremities: his great name is closely connected with that of his family.

Jos 7:14. The tribe which the Lord taketh, as was the case when Saul was elected king. Our critics say, by lot; the text says, the Lord took the man. This was probably by the judgment of the Urim; a cloud of obscuration passed on the brilliant stones when the name was called. Be that as it might, the Lord will surely take the guilty in the day of scrutiny.

Jos 7:24. His sons and his daughters. These by concealment became partakers of their fathers sin; and as in Korahs case, were involved in his punishment.

Jos 7:25. Why hast thou troubled us? Alluding to Achans name, as well as to his sin; and sin is the cause of all trouble.And burned them with fire. This also is a gentile punishment. See on Exo 22:18.

Jos 7:26. They raised over him a great heap of stones. Tumuli of earth or of stones were raised by all the ancients on great occasions, as on Absalom. 1Ki 18:17. Our Downs are full of burrows by Romans, Danes, and Saxons. The Romans are distinguished by urns and coins, and the Saxons by armour.

REFLECTIONS.

Jericho being the strongest city in all the vicinity, and excelling the other cities in wickedness, the Lord had peculiarly charged himself with its punishment, as a devoted place. The gold, silver, and brass, after being purified with fire, he had appropriated to his service. The first spoil the Lord claimed on the same principle as he had claimed the firstborn, and the firstfruits. The inhabitants he had devoted to the sword, and their houses to the flames. The whole city was therefore the Lords, not only by a divine claim, but because he had by an omnipotent arm thrown down the walls.

From the tragic case of Achan we may learn, that all sin is, in Gods account, an accursed thing. The anathema of the Lord is denounced against every violation of his holy law, Gal 3:10; against all unbelievers, Mar 16:16; and against all who love not the Lord Jesus, 1Co 16:22.

One predominant sin often proves the ruin of men and of nations. Luxury and dissipation are frequently the ruin of our youth; a habit of saving in commercial people, not unfrequently becomes a confirmed covetousness in old age. This was Achans sin. He entered the house of a prince; and after inflicting death on the family he saw in a secret place a splendid robe decorated with gold; he saw the silver and gold lying contiguous. At this sight the lusts of his heart, which he had neglected to mortify, gained the ascendency over him. This money, he said, will elevate me above my contemporaries; this robe will distinguish me above the families of Israel. I have children; old age will come, and I ought to consult the good of my family. Conscience would reply, touch it not; the God who divided the Jordan, and threw down the strong walls of Jericho, has pronounced it accursed; this transgression and sacrilege will bring all the sins of the devoted city on thee and thy house. True, he replied, but the Lord is merciful. I may repent in future; and I will make a good use of the treasure. Passion, which had already overpowered his understanding, next overpowered his conscience. So he put the money in his pouch; and casting away his own upper garment, folded up the robe in its place cautiously covered. What could human prudence do more? He enjoyed his guilty triumph of secresy and success.

One mans sins, however secret, may involve himself and his country in the dreadful visitations of God. Achan made his family parties in his crime; and the curse of Jericho being hereby transferred to them, the whole family perished. This was the first sin after the passover at Gilgal; and God, as in many places of scripture, has peculiarly punished the first gross offences after the renewal of a covenant. Israel, all elevated with the triumph, went up to Ai, but fainted on seeing the arms of the enemy and fled. So Samson, after violating his vows, was weak as another man. The reason of all this was, because Israel was one body, and shared in common the benefits of one covenant: therefore God thought proper to suspend the course of his blessings, that his people might be searched and sanctified: how instructive is this history to the christian church! If religion fall into decay in any place, when according to the promises it ought to flourish, a scrutiny should be made into the cause. Do the ministers and the people live in the spirit of holiness and love; for the loss of love will make any community droop? Is the public ministry faithfully enforced? Are the children and the young people properly instructed? Is there a sacred line of distinction drawn between the communicants and the corruptions of the world? Does no one live in the habits of adultery, fornication, drunkenness, malice, or fraud?

Are all family duties discharged, and the public worship respectfully attended? For all wilful and habitual sins will cause the Lord to suspend the glory of his presence, and restrain the course of his blessings. He will not be present with his people while Achan covers his crimes.

Ministers and magistrates, like Joshua and the elders, should weep and mourn when secret offences chill the spirit of religion; and when the crimes of our country retard its prosperity, and load it with calamities. Oh it was a fine spirit to see all Israel prostrate before the Lord in the day of humiliation.

God will soon discover all the secret sins of men, and bring the offenders to punishment. Achan little thought of the trouble he was bringing on his family and nation. Dazzled with ideas of opulence and splendour, he had no idea that the lot would soon find him out. Ah, and shall men for a fortune, a name, a villa, a carriage, indulge in habitual fraud. He who oppresses the labourer, or withholds a part of his treasure from religious and charitable uses, like Achan, defrauds his God. Wealth not justly acquired will prove to him and his house an accursed thing; and the Lord, far sooner than he expects, will take him by name and reveal his punishment.

Mark next the effects of Achans sin. He concealed it, he dissembled, and did not make an ingenuous confession till death stared him in the face. Thus it is with wicked men. Oh, what it costs them to say, I have sinned. His confession nevertheless gave glory to the holiness and omniscience of God, who will by no means clear the guilty. It partially relieved the wounds of his conscience by a copious discharge; and it was all the fruits of repentance which circumstances allowed. Offenders should always be exhorted to give glory to God, and to take the shame to themselves.

From Joshua and the elders we learn how the ministers of religion should purge the church of those who work folly in Israel, leaving them with God to grant them repentance, or farther punishment, as he shall judge in his holy counsel. In many cases a man makes his family a party in his crimes, for guilt seems to contaminate all eyes which behold it destitute of tears. May the sin of this man, so dreadful to himself and instructive to the world, warn us not to leave one wicked propensity unsubdued in the heart.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

VII. Achans Trespass, Israels Defeat, Achans Punishment.

Jos 7:1. The name should probably be Achar. The narrative presents no difficulties till the end of the chapter, where Achans punishment is recorded.

Jos 7:2. Ai: probably 2 miles SE. of Bethel (p. 31).

Jos 7:9. And what wilt thou do for (or on account of) thy great name? The meaning is that if Israel is destroyed there will be none to worship Yahweh; an interesting example of the ancient belief in the close connexion between the deity and his worshippers.

Jos 7:19. Give . . . Lord: i.e., tell the truth, cf. Joh 9:24.A. S. P.].

Jos 7:24. The text has undergone considerable alteration. Originally, as the Heb. shows, the clause ran, And Joshua took Achan the son of Zerach and all Israel with him and brought him to the valley of Achor. The insertion was probably made under the influence of Deu 13:15 f. It has been suggested that Achan alone was put to death, but considering the views of ancient times, it is probable that the original narrator considered him to include Achans household.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

DEFEATED BY AI

(vs.1-9)

Though Joshua and Israel as such were unaware of it, there was sin in the camp that affected all of Israel, for we are told that “the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things” (v.1). Only one man had done this, but God held the nation responsible because the man, Achan, was part of Israel. He had taken some things that were under the curse and God was therefore angry with Israel (v.1).

Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai to spy out that city (v.2). Notice, they had not returned to Gilgal after the defeat of Jericho. If they had taken time to go back to Gilgal, the place of self-judgment, the Lord would likely have revealed to them that sin was in the camp. But we do not even read that Joshua enquired of God as to attacking Ai. He had before depended fully on the Lord in reference to Jericho, but we too easily fall into the snare of being flushed with a great victory and thinking therefore that we can easily win a lesser victory. Are we any more capable of a small thing than a large thing? No! If God is not in it, the small as well as the large will defeat us.

The advice of the spies to Joshua was to send only about 3000 men against Ai because it was small (v.3). Joshua took this advice from men without asking God’s counsel, and the result was that the men of Ai came out and soundly defeated Israel, killing 36 men.

Jericho is a picture of the world in principle. All believers by faith in Christ Jesus “overcome the world” (1Jn 5:4-5), as Israel overcame Jericho. But Ai pictures the world in its details. these things may seem small to us, and we can easily be defeated by them. Young men are told, “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1Jn 2:14-15). They had overcome the wicked one, yet in spite of this there was danger that they might be defeated by attraction to the world or its things. Through faith they had become strong, but if faith becomes virtually inactive in our lives, we may be overcome by even small worldly attractions.

When Israel was defeated the hearts of the people melted in apprehension (v.5). This was a shock they had not expected. Joshua tore his clothes and prostrated himself before the Lord, together with the elders of the people, putting dust on their heads (v6). These things speak of repentance which they saw was evidently needed, though they were still not aware of the sin in the camp that had occasioned their defeat.

At least Joshua pled with the Lord then, though he did not think of asking what was the reason for this defeat: rather he asked why God had even brought Israel across the Jordan just to deliver them into the hand of their enemies. He thought it would have been better to remain on the other side of Jordan. Did he not stop to consider that the mighty way in which God had already reduced Jericho’s opposition to nothing?

“O Lord,” he says, “What shall I say when Israel turns its back before its enemies?” (v.8). He felt that the news of this would imbue the Canaanites with boldness and strength to surround Israel and destroy them. Then he adds, “then what will You do for Your great name?” (v.9). He did not realize that in Israel’s painful defeat God was rightly caring for the honor of His great name.

ACHAN’S SIN EXPOSED AND JUDGED

(vs.10-26)

The Lord answered Joshua’s prayer by telling him to get up and act. For He says, “Israel has sinned” (v.11). Though only one man was guilty and his guilt was concealed, yet all Israel was held accountable. If they had consulted God before attacking Ai, He would have told them about this, but our lack of communion with God will too easily leave us ignorant of Satan’s attacks. This is a serious lesson for the Church of God today.

God told Joshua that Israel had taken some of those things that were under the curse and put it among their own goods. Therefore they could not stand before their enemies, and could not stand until they had destroyed the evil from their midst, because God would not be with them (v.12).

Joshua must sanctify the people, that is, separate them from the normal pursuits of life, to concentrate on this one matter of importance, that there was an accursed thing in their midst and it must be taken away. We might wonder why this could not be taken care of without involving the whole congregation, but all must learn publicly that God is a God of true holiness. This public dealing was thus intended to impress the seriousness of such sin upon every individual, to guard against any further infractions. The probe and its results would take no little time. The prosecution of the war must be held up, to emphasize that God governs among His own.

Certainly the Lord could have exposed Achan as the offender immediately, but in His great wisdom He made all the tribes come as though all were under suspicion (v.14). This would call for serious heart searching among all, so that there would be no mere resentment aroused against Achan, but that all would be humbled by the evil. The process would gradually narrow down to the individual whom the Lord had already judged must be burned with fire (v.15).

Early in the morning the examination began. Of the twelve tribes, the tribe of Judah was singled out by the Lord (v.16), and from this the family of the Zarhites was taken. Then the family came, man by man, and Zabdi was taken. Zabdi’s household was then brought man by man, and the finger of accusation was pointed at Achan (vs.17-18). Achan had been given plenty of time to confess his guilt, but evidently he was hoping right to the end that he might not be exposed. How foolish is the unbelief of greed! If people will not confess their guilt before God while He waits patiently, how humiliating will be the exposure of their guilt at the Great White Throne! (Rev 20:11-12).

Joshua shows no hostility toward Achan, but pleads with him to at least now give glory to the Lord God of Israel by confessing candidly what he has done (v.19). What else could Achan do now but confess his guilt? He admitted he had sinned against the Lord God of Israel and had Stolen three things from the spoil of Jericho, a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, and had buried them under his tent floor (v.21). The silver would be about eight pounds in weight, the gold two pounds, the value of which would be great. The Babylonian garment represents idolatrous luxury which should have been destroyed, while the silver and gold ought to have been put in the treasury of the Lord.

What did Achan think he could do with these things? But greed is often foolish and unthinking. He has to admit he coveted them and took them. He is like many today who grasp after all they can get when they can put it to no practical use.

The stolen goods being recovered from Achan’s tent, he and the stolen property, his sons and his daughters, his oxen, donkeys, sheep and his tent were all taken to the Valley of Achor (meaning “trouble”). Then Joshua solemnly pronounced sentence against Achan (v.25), he reaping trouble because of the trouble he sowed. All Israel was called upon to stone them to death and burn them. The fact that his sons and daughters were included in this judgment indicates that they knew of his crime and did not report it, for in Israel no children were to be put to death for their father’s sins (Deu 24:16). Achan’s animals also were destroyed, however. As to the silver and gold, we are not told whether this was brought into the treasury of the Lord. But of course it would not be destroyed by burning A great heap of stones was raised over the remains, a testimony to God’s holiness in judgment. Only when this stern judgment of the evil took place was God’s anger abated. The place was called “the Valley of Achor” (V.26).

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

7:1 But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the {a} accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.

(a) In taking that which was commanded to be destroyed.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

2. Defeat at Ai ch. 7

At Jericho, Israel learned God’s strength. At Ai, she learned her own weakness. She could only conquer her enemies as she remained faithful to God’s covenant.

"We are never in greater danger than right after we have won a great victory." [Note: Henry Jacobsen, Claiming God’s Promises: Joshua, p. 62.]

"The pinching of the [east-west] ridge route by Ai . . . makes it a natural first line of defense for the Hill Country around Bethel. Therefore, tactically speaking, the strategic importance of the region and routes around Bethel . . . and Bethel’s natural eastern approach from Jericho via Ai explain Joshua’s choice of this region and this site as his first objective in the Hill Country. This basic fact cannot be ignored in any discussion of the identification of the location of Ai.

"In the Bible the site of Ai (HaAi in Hebrew means the ruin or the heap of stones) is linked with Bethel. The most prominent ruin in the entire area east of the Bethel Plateau is called in Arabic et-Tell . . . at the junction of the two main natural routes from Jericho to the Hill Country. . . . The site of et-Tell has no equal in the region both in terms of strategic importance and in terms of surface debris indicating an ancient city.

"Excavations at et-Tell have revealed a large city from the Early Bronze Age [3150-2200 B.C.] in the millennium prior to Joshua’s conquest. A small village later than Joshua’s conquest (later than both the early and the late dates for the conquest) does not provide the answer to the question of the lack of remains at et-Tell. Therefore, although the setting of et-Tell fits perfectly the detailed geographical information in Joshua 8, 9, an archaeological problem exists due to the lack of remains from the period of Joshua at the site." [Note: Monson, pp. 168-69. For a review of excavations in search of Ai and the problem of the lack of archaeological evidence for Ai’s existence at et-Tell in Joshua’s day, see Ziony Zevit, "The Problem of Ai," Biblical Archaeology Review 11:2 (March-April 1985):58-69. See also Archer, "Old Testament . . .," p. 111.]

One scholar argued for et-Tell being the Ai of Abraham’s time, el-Maqatir being the Ai of Joshua’s time, and still another close site being the Ai of Nehemiah’s time (Ezr 2:28; Neh 7:32). El-Maqatir is less than a mile west of et-Tell. [Note: Peter Briggs, "Testing the Factuality of the Conquest of Ai Narrative in the Book of Joshua," a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Colorado Springs, Colo., Nov. 15, 2001.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

"But" very significantly introduces this chapter. Chapter 6 is a record of supernatural victory, but chapter 7 describes a great defeat.

Even though Achan was the individual who sinned, and even though his sin was private, God regarded what he did as the action of the whole nation. This was so because he was a member of the community of Israel and his actions affected the rest of the Israelites. The Hebrew word translated "unfaithfully" (maal) means "treacherously" or "secretly."

Achan had not just taken some things that did not belong to him. This would have been bad in itself. He stole what was dedicated to God, and he robbed the whole nation of its innocence before God. The Lord’s blazing anger against Israel fell on Achan and literally consumed him (Jos 7:25; cf. Heb 12:29).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

CHAPTER XIV.

ACHAN’S TRESPASS.

Jos 7:1-26.

A VESSEL in full sail scuds merrily over the waves. Everything betokens a successful and delightful voyage. The log has just been taken, marking an extraordinary run. The passengers are in the highest spirits, anticipating an early close of the voyage. Suddenly a shock is felt, and terror is seen on every face. The ship has struck on a rock. Not only is progress arrested, but it will be a mercy for crew and passengers if they can escape with their lives.

Not often so violently, but often as really, progress is arrested in many a good enterprise that seemed to be prospering to a wish. There may be no shock, but there is a stoppage of movement. The vital force that seemed to be carrying it on towards the desired consummation declines, and the work hangs fire. A mission that in its first stages was working out a beautiful transformation, becomes languid and advances no further. A Church, eminent for its zeal and spirituality, comes down to the ordinary level, and seems to lose its power. A family that promised well in infancy and childhood fails of its promise, its sons and daughters waver and fall. A similar result is often found in the undertakings of common life. Something mysterious arrests progress in business or causes a decline. In “enterprises of great pith and moment,” “the currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.”

In all such cases we naturally wonder what can be the cause. And very often our explanation is wide of the mark. In religious enterprises, we are apt to fall back on the sovereignty and inscrutability of God. “He moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.” It seems good to Him, for unknown purposes of His own, to subject us to disappointment and trial. We do not impugn either His wisdom or His goodness; all is for the best. But, for the most part, we fail to detect the real reason. That the fault should lie with ourselves is the last thing we think of. We search for it in every direction rather than at home. We are ingenious in devising far-off theories and explanations, while the real offender is close at hand – “Israel hath sinned.”

It was an unexpected obstacle of this kind that Joshua now encountered in his next step towards possessing the land. Let us endeavour to understand his position and his plan. Jericho lay in the valley of the Jordan, and its destruction secured nothing for Joshua save the possession of that low-lying valley. From the west side of the valley rose a high mountain wall, which had to be ascended in order to reach the plateau of Western Palestine. Various ravines or passes ran down from the plateau into the valley; at the top of one of these, a little to the north of Jericho, was Bethel, and farther down the pass, nearer the plain, the town or village of Ai. No remains of Ai are now visible, nor is there any tradition of the name, so that its exact position cannot be ascertained. It was an insignificant place, but necessary to be taken, in order to give Joshua command of the pass, and enable him to reach the plateau above. The plan of Joshua seems to have been to gain command of the plateau about this point, and thereby, as it were, cut the country in two, so that he might be able to deal in succession with its southern and its northern sections. If once he could establish himself in the very centre of the country, keeping his communications open with the Jordan valley, he would be able to deal with his opponents in detail, and thus prevent those in the one section from coming to the assistance of the other. Neither Ai nor Bethel seemed likely to give him trouble; they were but insignificant places, and a very small force would be sufficient to deal with them.

Hitherto Joshua had been eminently successful, and his people too. Not a hitch had occurred in all the arrangements. The capture of Jericho had been an unqualified triumph. It seemed as if the people of Ai could hardly fail to be paralysed by its fate. After reconnoitering Ai, Joshua saw that there was no need for mustering the whole host against so poor a place – a detachment of two or three thousand would be enough. The three thousand went up against it as confidently as if success were already in their hands. It was probably a surprise to find its people making any attempt to drive them off. The men of Israel were not prepared for a vigorous onslaught, and when it came thus unexpectedly they were taken aback and fled in confusion. As the men of Ai pursued them down the pass, they had no power to rally or retrieve the battle; the rout was complete, some of the men were killed, while consternation was carried into the host, and their whole enterprise seemed doomed to failure.

And now for the first time Joshua appears in a somewhat humiliating light. He is not one of the men that never make a blunder. He rends his clothes, falls on his face with the elders before the ark of the Lord till even, and puts dust upon his head. There is something too abject in this prostration. And when he speaks to God, it is in the tone of complaint and in the language of unbelief. ”Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan! O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies! For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?” Thus Joshua almost throws the blame on God. He seems to have no idea that it may lie in quite another quarter. And very strangely, he adopts the very tone and almost the language of the ten spies, against which he had protested so vehemently at the time: “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey?” What has become of all your courage, Joshua, on that memorable day? Is this the man to whom God said so lately, “Be strong, and of good courage; as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee”? Like Peter on the waters, and like so many of ourselves, he begins to sink when the wind is contrary, and his cry is the querulous wail of a frightened child! After all he is but flesh and blood.

Now it is God’s turn to speak. “Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” Why do you turn on Me as if I had suddenly changed, and become forgetful of My promise? Alas, my friends, how often is God slandered by our complaints! How often do we feel and even speak as if He had broken His word and forgotten His promise, as if He had induced us to trust in Him, and accept His service, only to humiliate us before the world, and forsake us in some great crisis! No wonder if God speak sharply to Joshua, and to us if we go in Joshua’s steps. No wonder if He refuse to be pleased with our prostration, our wringing of our hands and sobbing, and calls us to change our attitude. ”Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?”

Then comes the true explanation – “Israel hath sinned.” Might you not have divined that this was the real cause of your trouble? Is not sin directly or indirectly the cause of all trouble? What was it that broke up the joy and peace of Paradise? Sin. What brought the flood of waters over the face of the earth to destroy it? Sin. What caused the confusion of Babel and scattered the inhabitants over the earth in hostile races? Sin. What brought desolation on that very plain of Jordan, and buried its cities and its people under an avalanche of fire and brimstone? Sin. What caused the defeat of Israel at Hormah forty years ago, and doomed all the generation to perish in the wilderness? Sin. What threw down the walls of Jericho only a few days ago, gave its people to the sword of Israel, and reduced its homes and its bulwarks to the mass of ruins you see there? Again, sin. Can you not read the plainest lesson? Can you not divine that this trouble which has come on you is due to the same cause with all the rest? And if it be a first principle of Providence that all trouble is due to sin, would it not be more suitable that you and your elders should now be making diligent search for it, and trying to get it removed, than that you should be lying on your faces and howling to me, as if some sudden caprice or unworthy humour of mine had brought this distress upon you?

”Behold, the Lord’s ear is not heavy that it cannot hear, nor His arm shortened that it cannot save. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God.” What a curse that sin is, in ways and forms, too, which we do not suspect! And yet we are usually so very careless about it. How little pains we take to ascertain its presence, or to drive it away from among us! How little tenderness of conscience we show, how little burning desire to be kept from the accursed thing! And when we turn to our opponents and see sin in them, instead of being grieved, we fall on them savagely to upbraid them, and we hold them up to open scorn. How little we think if they are guilty, that their sin has intercepted the favour of God, and involved not them only, but probably the whole community in trouble! How unsatisfactory to God must seem the bearing even of the best of us in reference to sin! Do we really think of it as the object of God’s abhorrence? As that which destroyed Paradise, as that which has covered the earth with lamentation and mourning and woe, kindled the flames of hell, and brought the Son of God to suffer on the cross? If only we had some adequate sense of sin, should we not be constantly making it our prayer – ”Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”?

The peculiar covenant relation in which Israel stood to God caused a method to be fallen on for detecting their sin that is not available for us. The whole people were to be assembled next morning, and inquiry was to be made for the delinquent in God’s way, and when the individual was found condign punishment was to be inflicted. First the tribe was to be ascertained, then the family, then the man. For this is God’s way of tracking sin. It might be more pleasant to us that He should deal with it more generally, and having ascertained, for example, that the wrong had been done by a particular tribe or community, inflict a fine or other penalty on that tribe in which we should willingly bear our share. For it does not grieve us very much to sin when every one sins along with us. Nay, we can even make merry over the fact that we are all sinners together, all in the same condemnation, in the same disgrace. But it is a different thing when we are dealt with one by one. The tribe is taken, the family is taken, but that is not all; the household that God shall take shall come man by man! It is that individualizing of us that we dread; it is when it comes to that, that “conscience makes cowards of us all.” When a sinner is dying, he becomes aware that this individualizing process is about to take place, and hence the fear which he often feels. He is no longer among the multitude, death is putting him by himself, and God is coming to deal with him by himself. If he could only be hid in the crowd it would not matter, but that searching eye of God – who can stand before it? What will all the excuses or disguises or glosses he can devise avail before Him who “sets our iniquities before Him, our secret sins in the light of His countenance”? “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; for all things are naked, and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Happy, in that hour, they who have found the Divine covering for sin: ”Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.”

But before passing on to the result of the scrutiny, we find ourselves face to face with a difficult question. If, as is here intimated, it was one man that sinned, why should the whole nation have been dealt with as guilty? Why should the historian, in the very first verse of this chapter, summarise the transaction by saying: “But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the devoted thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zevsihy of the tribe of Judah, took of the devoted thing; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel”? Why visit the offence of Achan on the whole congregation, causing a peculiarly humiliating defeat to take place before an insignificant enemy, demoralizing the whole host, driving Joshua to distraction, and causing the death of six-and-thirty men?

In dealing with a question of this sort, it is indispensable that we station ourselves at that period of the world’s history; we must place before our minds some of the ideas that were prevalent at the time, and abstain from judging of what was done then by a standard which is applicable only to our own day.

And certain it is that, what we now call the solidarity of mankind, the tendency to look on men rather as the members of a community than as independent individuals, each with an inalienable standing of his own, had a hold of men’s minds then such as it has not to-day, certainly among Western nations. To a certain extent, this principle of solidarity is inwoven in the very nature of things, and cannot be eliminated, however we may try. Absolute independence and isolation of individuals are impossible. In families, we suffer for one another’s faults, even when we hold them in abhorrence. We benefit by one another’s virtues, though we may have done our utmost to discourage and destroy them. In the Divine procedure toward us, the principle of our being a corporate body is often acted upon. The covenant of Adam was founded on it, and the fall of our first parents involved the fall of all their descendants. In the earlier stages of the Hebrew economy, wide scope was given to the principle. It operated in two forms: sometimes the individual suffered for the community, and sometimes the community for the individual. And the operation of the principle was not confined to the Hebrew or to other Oriental communities. Even among the Romans it had a great influence. Admirable though Roman law was in its regulation of property, it was very defective in its dealings with persons. ”Its great blot was the domestic code. The son was the property of the father, without rights, without substantial being, in the eye of Roman law. . . . The wife again was the property of her husband, an ownership of which the moral result was most disastrous.”*

*See Mozley’s “Ruling Ideas in the Early Ages,” p. 40.

We are to remember that practically the principle of solidarity was fully admitted in Joshua’s time among his people. The sense of injustice and hardship to which it might give rise among us did not exist. Men recognised it as a law of wide influence in human affairs, to which they were bound to defer.

Hence it was that when it became known that one man’s offence lay at the foundation of the defeat before Ai, and of the displeasure of God toward the people at large, there was no outcry, no remonstrance, no complaint of injustice. This could hardly take place if the same thing were to happen now. It is hard to reconcile the transaction with our sense of justice. And no doubt, if we view the matter apart and by itself, there may be some ground for this feeling. But the transaction will assume another aspect if we view it as but a part of a great whole, of a great scheme of instruction and discipline which God was developing in connection with Israel. In this light, instead of a hardship it will appear that in the end a very great benefit was conferred on the people.

Let us think of Achan’s temptation. A large amount of valuable property fell into the hands of the Israelites at Jericho. By a rigorous law, all was devoted to the service of God. Now a covetous man like Achan might find many plausible reasons for evading this law. “What I take to myself (he might say) will never be missed. There are hundreds of Babylonish garments, there are many wedges of gold, and silver shekels without number, amply sufficient for the purpose for which they are devoted. If I were to deprive another man of his rightful share, I should be acting very wickedly; but I am really doing nothing of the kind. I am only diminishing imperceptibly what is to be used for a public purpose. Nobody will suffer a whit by what I do, – it cannot be very wrong.”

Now the great lesson taught very solemnly and impressively to the whole nation was, that this was just awfully wrong. The moral benefit which the nation ultimately got from the transaction was, that this kind of sophistry, this flattering unction which leads so many persons ultimately to destruction, was exploded and blown to shivers. A most false mode of measuring the criminality of sin was stamped with deserved reprobation. Every man and woman in the nation got a solemn warning against a common but ruinous temptation. In so far as they laid to heart this warning during the rest of the campaign, they were saved from disastrous evil, and thus, in the long run, they profited by the case of Achan.

That sin is to be held sinful only when it hurts your fellow-creatures, and especially the poor among your fellow-creatures, is a very common impression, but surely it is a delusion of the devil. That it has such effects may be a gross aggravation of the wickedness, but it is not the heart and core of it. And how can you know that it will not hurt others? Not hurt your fellow countrymen, Achan? Why, that secret sin of yours has caused the death of thirty-six men, and a humiliating defeat of the troops before Ai. More than that, it has separated between the nation and God. Many say, when they tell a lie, it was not a malignant lie, it was a lie told to screen some one, not to expose him, therefore it was harmless. But you cannot trace the consequences of that lie, any more than Achan could trace the consequences of his theft, otherwise you would not dare to make that excuse. Many that would not steal from a poor man, or waste a poor man’s substance, have little scruple in wasting a rich man’s substance, or in peculating from Government property. Who can measure the evil that flows from such ways of trifling with the inexorable law of right, the damage done to conscience, and the guilt contracted before God? Is there safety for man or woman except in the most rigid regard to right and truth, even in the smallest portions of them with which they have to do? Is there not something utterly fearful in the propagating power of sin, and in its way of involving others, who are perfectly innocent, in its awful doom? Happy they who from their earliest years have had a salutary dread of it, and of its infinite ramifications of misery and woe!

How well fitted for us, especially when we are exposed to temptation, is that prayer of the psalmist: “Who can understand his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be perfect, and I shall be clear of great transgression.”

CHAPTER XV.

ACHAN’S PUNISHMENT.

Joshua Ch. 7.

“BE sure your sin will find you out.” It has an awful way of leaving its traces behind it, and confronting the sinner with his crime. ”Though he hide himself in the top of Carmel, I will search and take him out thence; and though he be hid from My sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite him” (Amo 9:3). ”For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil ” (Ecc 12:14).

When Achan heard of the muster that was to take place next morning, in order to detect the offender, he must have spent a miserable night. Between the consciousness of guilt, the sense of the mischief he had done, the dread of detection, and the foreboding of retribution, his nerves were too much shaken to admit the possibility of sleep. Weariedly and anxiously he must have tossed about as the hours slowly revolved, unable to get rid of his miserable thoughts, which would ever keep swimming about him like the changing forms of a kaleidoscope, but with the same dark vision of coming doom.

At length the day dawns, the tribes muster, the inquiry begins. It is by the sure, solemn, simple, process of the lot that the case is to be decided. First the lot is cast for the tribes, and the tribe of Judah is taken. That must have given the first pang to Achan. Then the tribe is divided into its families, and the family of the Zarhites is taken; then the Zarhite famity is brought out man by man, and Zabdi, the father of Achan, is taken. May we not conceive the heart of Achan giving a fresh beat as each time the casting of the lot brought the charge nearer and nearer to himself? The coils are coming closer and closer about him; and now his father’s family is brought out, man by man, and Achan is taken. He is quite a young man, for his father could only have been a lad when he left Egypt. Look at him, pale, trembling, stricken with shame and horror, unable to hide himself, feeling it would be such a relief if the earth would open its jaws and swallow him up, as it swallowed Korah. Look at his poor wife; look at his father; look at his children. What a load of misery he has brought on himself and on them! Yes, the way of transgressors is hard.

Joshua’s heart is overcome, and he deals gently with the young man. “My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto Him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.” There was infinite kindness in that word “my son.” It reminds us of that other Joshua, the Jesus of the New Testament, so tender to sinners, so full of love even for those who had been steeped in guilt. It brings before us the Great High Priest, who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, seeing He was in all things tempted like as we are, yet without sin. A harsh word from Joshua might have set Achan in a defiant attitude, and drawn from him a denial that he had done anything amiss. How often do we see this! A child or a servant has done wrong; you are angry, you speak harshly, you get a flat denial. Or if the thing cannot be denied, you get only a sullen acknowledgment, which takes away all possibility of good arising out of the occurrence, and embitters the relation of the parties to each other.

But not only did Joshua speak kindly to Achan, he confronted him with God, and called on him to think how He was concerned in this matter. “Give glory to the Lord God of Israel.” Vindicate Him from the charge which I and others have virtually been bringing against Him, of proving forgetful of His covenant. Clear Him of all blame, declare His glory, declare that He is unsullied in His perfections, and show that He has had good cause to leave us to the mercy of our enemies. No man as yet knew what Achan had done. He might have been guilty of some act of idolatry, or of some unhallowed sensuality like that which had lately taken place at Baal-peor; in order that the transaction might carry its lesson, it was necessary that the precise offence should be known. Joshua’s kindly address and his solemn appeal to Achan to clear the character of God had the desired effect. “Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done: when I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.”

The confession certainly was frank and full; but whether it was made in the spirit of true contrition, or whether it was uttered in the hope that it would mitigate the sentence to be inflicted, we cannot tell. It would be a comfort to us to think that Achan was sincerely penitent, and that the miserable doom which befell him and his family ended their troubles, and formed the dark introduction to a better life. Where there is even a possibility that such a view is correct we naturally draw to it, for it is more than our hearts can well bear to think of so awful a death being followed by eternal misery.

Certain it is that Joshua earnestly desired to lead Achan to deal with God in the matter. “Make confession,” he said, “unto Him.” He knew the virtue of confession to God. For ”he that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Pro 28:13). ”When I kept silence; my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day. … I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Psa 32:3; Psa 32:5). It is a hopeful circumstance in Achan’s case that it was after this solemn call to deal with God in the matter that he made his confession. One hopes that the sudden appearance on the scene of the God whom he had so sadly forgotten, led him to see his sin in its true light, and drew out the acknowledgment, – ”Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.” For no moral effect can be greater than that arising from the difference between sin covered and sin confessed to God. Sin covered is the fruitful parent of excuses, and sophistries, and of all manner of attempts to disguise the harsh features of transgression, and to show that, after all, there was not much wrong in it.

Sin confessed to God shows a fitting sense of the evil, of the shame which it brings, and of the punishment which it deserves, and an earnest longing for that forgiveness and renewal which, the gospel now shows us so clearly, come from Jesus Christ. For nothing becomes a sinner before God so well as when he breaks down. It is the moment of a new birth when he sees what miserable abortions all the refuges of lies are, and, utterly despairing of being able to hide himself from God in his filthy rags, unbosoms everything to Him with whom “there is mercy and plenteous redemption, and who will redeem Israel from all his transgressions.”

It is a further presumption that Achan was a true penitent, that he told so frankly where the various articles that he had appropriated were to be found. ”Behold, they are hid in the midst of my tent.” They were scalding his conscience so fearfully that he could not rest till they were taken away from the abode which they polluted and cursed. They seemed to be crying out against him and his with a voice which could not be silenced. To bring them away and expose them to public view might bring no relaxation of the doom which he expected, but it would be a relief to his feelings if they were dragged from the hiding hole to which he had so wickedly consigned them. For the articles were now as hateful to him as formerly they had been splendid and delightful. The curse of God was on them now, and on him too on their account. Is there anything darker or deadlier than the curse of God?

And now the consummation arrives. Messengers are sent to his tent, they find the stolen goods, they bring them to Joshua, and to all the children of Israel, and they lay them out before the Lord. We are not told how the judicial sentence was arrived at. But there seems to have been no hesitation or delay about it. “Joshua and all the children of Israel took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of Achor. And Joshua said. Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and they burned him with fire, after they had stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place was called. The valley of Achor, unto this day.”

It seems a terrible punishment, but Achan had already brought defeat and disgrace on his countrymen, he had robbed God, and brought the whole community to the brink of ruin. It must have been a strong lust that led him to play with such consequences. What sin is there to which covetousness has not impelled men? And, strange to say, it is a sin which has received but little check from all the sad experience of the past. Is it not as daring as ever today? Is it not the parent of that gambling habit which is the terror of all good men, sapping our morality and our industry, and disposing tens of thousands to trust to the bare chance of an unlikely contingency, rather than to God’s blessing on honest industry? Is it not sheer covetousness that turns the confidential clerk into a robber of his employer, and uses all the devices of cunning to discover how long he can carry on his infamous plot, till the inevitable day of detection arrive and he must fly, a fugitive and a vagabond, to a foreign land? Is it not covetousness that induces the blithe young maiden to ally herself to one whom she knows to be a moral leper, but who is high in rank and full of wealth? Is it not the same lust that induces the trader to send his noxious wares to savage countries and drive the miserable inhabitants to a deeper misery and degradation than ever? Catastrophes are always happening: the ruined gambler blows out his brains; the dishonest clerk becomes a convict, the unhappy young wife gets into the divorce court, the scandalous trader sinks into bankruptcy and misery. But there is no abatement of the lust which makes such havoc. If the old ways of indulging it are abandoned, new outlets are always being found. Education does not cripple it; civilization does not uproot it; even Christianity does not always overcome it. It goeth about, if not like a roaring lion, at least like a cunning serpent intent upon its prey. Within the Church, where the minister reads out “Thou shalt not covet,” and where men say with apparent devoutness, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law” – as soon as their backs are turned, they are scheming to break it. Still, as of old, “love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after they erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

Achan’s sin has found him out, and he suffers its bitter doom. All his visions of comfort and enjoyment to be derived from his unlawful gain are rudely shattered. The pictures he has been drawing of what he will do with the silver and the gold and the garment are for ever dispersed. He has brought disaster on the nation, and shame and ruin on himself and his house. In all coming time, he must stand in the pillory of history as the man who stole the forbidden spoil of Jericho. That disgraceful deed is the only thing that will ever be known of him. Further, he has sacrificed his life. Young though he is, his life will be cut short, and all that he has hoped for of enjoyment and honour will be exchanged for a horrible death and an execrable memory. O sin, thou art a hard master! Thou draggest thy slaves, often through a short and rapid career, to misery and to infamy!

Nevertheless, the hand of God is seen here. The punishment of sin is one of the inexorable conditions of His government. It may look dark and ugly to us, but it is there. It may create a very different feeling from the contemplation of His love and goodness, but in our present condition that feeling is wholesome and necessary. As we follow unpardoned sinners into the future world, it may be awful, it may be dismal to think of a state from which punishment will never be absent; but the awfulness and the dismalness will not change the fact. It is the mystery of God’s character that He is at once infinite love and infinite righteousness. And if it be unlawful for us to exclude His love and dwell only on His justice, it is equally unlawful to exclude His justice and dwell only on His love. Now, as of old, His memorial is, ”The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.”

But if it be awful to contemplate the death, and the mode of death of Achan, how much more when we think that his wife and his sons and his daughters were stoned to death along with him! Would that not have been a barbarous deed in any case, and was it not much more so if they were wholly innocent of his offence?

To mitigate the harshness of this deed, some have supposed that they were privy to his sin, if not instigators of it. But of this we have not a tittle of evidence, and the whole drift of the narrative seems to show that the household suffered in the same manner and on the same ground as that of Korah (Num 16:31-33). As regards the mode of death, it was significant of a harsh and hard-tempered age. Neither death nor the sufferings of the dying made much impression on the spectators. This callousness is almost beyond our comprehension, the tone of feeling is so different now. But we must accept the fact as it was. And as to the punishment of the wife and children, we must fall back on that custom of the time which not only gave to the husband and father the sole power and responsibility of the household, but involved the wife and children in his doom if at any time he should expose himself to punishment. As has already been said, neither the wife nor the children had any rights as against the husband and father; as his will was the sole law, so his retribution was the common inheritance of all. With him they were held to sin, and with him they suffered. They were considered to belong to him just as his hands and his feet belonged to him. It may seem to us very hard, and when it enters, even in a modified form, into the Divine economy we may cry out against it. Many do still, and ever will cry out against original sin, and against all that has come upon our race in consequence of the sin of Adam.

But it is in vain to fight against so apparent a fact. Much wiser surely it is to take the view of the Apostle Paul, and rejoice that, under the economy of the gospel, the principle of imputation becomes the source of blessing infinitely greater than the evil which it brought at the fall. It is one of the greatest triumphs of the Apostle’s mode of reasoning that, instead of shutting his eyes to the law of imputation, he scans it carefully, and compels it to yield a glorious tribute to the goodness of God. When his theme was the riches of the grace of God, one might have thought that he would desire to give a wide berth to that dark fact in the Divine economy – the imputation of Adam’s sin. But instead of desiring to conceal it, he brings it forward in all its terribleness and universality of application; but with the skill of a great orator, he turns it round to his side by showing that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness has secured results that outdo all the evil flowing from the imputation of Adam’s sin. “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered that the offence might abound; but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:18-21).

Very special mention is made of the place where the execution of Achan and his family took place. “They brought them unto the valley of Achor, . . . and they raised over him a great heap of stones, . . . wherefore the name of that place is called, The valley of Achor, unto this day.” Achor, which means trouble seems to have been a small ravine near the lower part of the valley in which Ai was situated, and therefore near the scene of the disaster that befell the Israelites. It was not an old name, but a name given at the time, derived from the occurrence of which it had just been the scene. It seemed appropriate that poor Achan should suffer at the very place where others had suffered on his account. It is subsequently referred to three times in Scripture. Later in this book it is given as part of the northern boundary of the tribe of Judah (Jos 15:7); in Isaiah (Isa 65:10) it is referred to on account of its fertility; and in Hosea (Hos 2:15) it is introduced in the beautiful allegory of the restored wife, who has been brought into the wilderness, and made to feel her poverty and misery, but of whom God says, “I will give her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope.” The reference seems to be to the evil repute into which that valley fell by the sin of Achan, when it became the valley of trouble. For, by Achan’s sin, what had appeared likely to prove the door of access for Israel into the land was shut; a double trouble came on the people – partly because of their defeat, and partly because their entrance into the land appeared to be blocked. In Hosea’s picture of Israel penitent and restored, the valley is again turned to its natural use, and instead of a scene of trouble it again becomes a door of hope, a door by which they may hope to enter their inheritance. It is a door of hope for the penitent wife, a door by which she may return to her lost happiness. The underlying truth is, that when we get into a right relation to God, what were formerly evils become blessings, hindrances are turned into helps. Sin deranges everything, and brings trouble everywhere. The ground was cursed on account of Adam: not literally, but indirectly, inasmuch as it needed hard and exhausting toil, it needed the sweat of his face to make it yield him a maintenance. “We know” says the Apostle, “that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

No man can tell all the “trouble” that has come into the world by reason of sin. As little can we know the full extent of that deliverance that shall take place when sin comes to an end. If we would know anything of this we must go to those passages which picture to us the new heavens and the new earth: “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary

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