But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the devoted things; for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. Therefore Yahweh’s anger burned against the children of Israel. Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth Aven, on the east side of Bethel, and spoke to them, saying, “Go up and spy out the land.” The men went up and spied out Ai.
They returned to Joshua, and said to him, “Don’t let all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and strike Ai. Don’t make all the people to toil there, for there are only a few of them.” So about three thousand men of the people went up there, and they fled before the men of Ai. The men of Ai struck about thirty-six men of them. They chased them from before the gate even to Shebarim, and struck them at the descent. The hearts of the people melted, and became like water. Joshua tore his clothes, and fell to the earth on his face before Yahweh’s ark until the evening, he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust on their heads. Joshua said, “Alas, Lord Yahweh, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to cause us to perish? I wish that we had been content and lived beyond the Jordan! Oh, Lord, what shall I say, after Israel has turned their backs before their enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and will surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. What will you do for your great name?”
Yahweh said to Joshua, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face like that? Israel has sinned. Yes, they have even transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. Yes, they have even taken some of the devoted things, and have also stolen, and also deceived. They have even put it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel can’t stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction. I will not be with you any more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. Get up! Sanctify the people, and say, ‘Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, for Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, “There is a devoted thing among you, Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted thing from among you.” In the morning therefore you shall be brought near by your tribes. It shall be that the tribe which Yahweh selects shall come near by families. The family which Yahweh selects shall come near by households. The household which Yahweh selects shall come near man by man. It shall be, that he who is taken with the devoted thing shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed Yahweh’s covenant, and because he has done a disgraceful thing in Israel.’ ”
So Joshua rose up early in the morning and brought Israel near by their tribes. The tribe of Judah was selected. He brought near the family of Judah, and he selected the family of the Zerahites. He brought near the family of the Zerahites man by man, and Zabdi was selected. He brought near 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 selected. Joshua said to Achan, “My son, please give glory to Yahweh, the God of Israel, and make confession to him. Tell me now what you have done! Don’t hide it from me!”
Achan answered Joshua, and said, “I have truly sinned against Yahweh, the God of Israel, and this is what I have done. When I saw among the plunder a beautiful Babylonian robe, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, then I coveted them and took them. Behold, they are hidden in the ground in the middle of my tent, with the silver under it.”
So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent. Behold, it was hidden in his tent, with the silver under it. They took them from the middle of the tent, and brought them to Joshua and to all the children of Israel. They laid them down before Yahweh. Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his cattle, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and all that he had; and they brought them up to the valley of Achor. Joshua said, “Why have you troubled us? Yahweh will trouble you today.” All Israel stoned him with stones, and they burned them with fire and stoned them with stones. They raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Yahweh turned from the fierceness of his anger. Therefore the name of that place was called “The valley of Achor” to this day.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25 1. But the children of Israel committed, etc Reference…
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, (1 Corinthians 5:4-6) 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.
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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.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 19, 21, 24, 25 In taking that which was commanded to be destroyed.
In taking that which was commanded to be destroyed.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–26 Jos 7:1 But the children of Israel committed a…
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}
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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.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 The children of Israel, i.e. one of them, by…
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 Judah’s 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 man’s sin?
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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.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 10, 16 The story of this chapter begins with a but.…
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, Jos 7:1. 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, Jos 6:18. 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 12:15), 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.
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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. man 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, Jos 3:10. 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.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–26 But the children of Israel committed a trespass in…
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, Gen 38:30,
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and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel; because of the sin of Achan.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 We have here the sin of Achan in taking…
We have here the sin of Achan in taking the accursed thing, ver. 1. The defeat of Israel before Ai, ver. 2-5. Joshua's humiliation and prayer, ver. 6-9. God's directions to him, ver. 10- 15. The discovery, conviction, and execution of the criminal, ver. 16-26.
The children of Israel - That is, one of them, by a very usual figure, as Matt. xxvi, 8, where that is ascribed to the disciples, which belonged to Judas only, John xii, 4. Accursed thing - That is, in taking some of the forbidden and accursed goods. Zabdi - Called also Zimri, 1 Chron. ii, 6. Zerah - Or, Zarah, who was Judah's immediate son, Gen. xxxviii, 30, who went with Judah into Egypt: and so for the filling up the 256 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 man's 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, partly because divers of them might be guilty of this sin, either by coveting 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: partly to make sin the more hateful; as being the cause of such dreadful judgments: and partly to oblige all the members of every society to be more circumspect in ordering their own actions, and more diligent to prevent the miscarriages of their brethren, which is a great benefit to them, and to the whole society.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26 The trespass of the Israelites, 1.
CHAPTER VII
The trespass of the Israelites, 1.
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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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25 Jos 7:1. But the children of Israel — That…
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 God’s 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 Judah’s 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 man’s 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.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21, 24, 26 Committed a trespass - (compare Lev 5:15 note), “acted…
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 Achan’s 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.
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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 עכר ‛âkar, “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 Jacob’s household to Egypt and the Exodus. (Num 26:5, see the note).
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26 Children. Achan was guilty of theft: some of the…
Children. Achan was guilty of theft: some of the rest might have connived at his fault. He had taken what was reserved for the Lord. The offender was discovered, to inspire all with a horror for his conduct. Some of his brethren were punished, (ver. 5,) but they suffered for their own secret transgressions, or death might be no real punishment to them; while the Israelites were awakened to a sense of their own inability to conquer without the divine protection, and were forced to humble themselves. (Haydock) --- Chastisements are the marks of God’s displeasure, though they frequently proceed also from his clemency. --- Achan is called Achar, 1 Paralipomenon ii. 7. These five persons occupy the space of 265 years; so that they must have been 50 or 55 years old, when they had children.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 2. Achan’s Theft
2. Achan’s Theft
Joshua 7
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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. Joshua’s humble Prayer and God’s 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 Achan’s 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. מָעַל signifies properly to cover, from which מְעִיל 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 מָעַל מַעַל = to sin through falsehood, treachery, namely, בַּיִהוָֹה, 1Ch_5:25; 1Ch_10:13; 2Ch_12:2, here בחרם therefore indirectly ביהוה Jos_22:20; 1Ch_2:7.
Achan. In 1Ch_2:7 the man is called עָכָר = the troubler, with which chaps, Jos_6:18; Jos_7:26, may be compared. “Josephus also calls him, therefore,’́Αχαρος” , the LXX. in Cod. Vat. ’́Αχαρ, while Cod. Alex, has ’́Αχαν” (Keil). Stier and Theile’s polyglott reads with Vat. ’́Αχαρ. 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. שְׁבָרִים, 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 ἕως συνέτριψαν ἀυτόυς, which supposes instead of the Masoretic עַד־הַשְּׁבָרִים the reading הַשְׁבִּירִים עַד־. 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. Joshua’s humble Prayer and God’s 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, Joshua’s 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. Cœs. 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 cœpimus of the Vulgate, by which הוֹאַלְנוּ is translated. Unquestionably הוֹאִיל means to commence, and is eleven times rendered by the LXX., according to Gesenius, ἄρχομαι; here, however, as Jdg_19:6; Jdg_17:11, it means, to let one’s 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: Εἰ κατεμείναμεν καὶ κατωκίσθημεν παρὰ τὸν ’Ιορδάνην.
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.
ß. Jos_7:10-15. God’s Reply. The entire tone of this answer attests that God’s 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 Jehovah’s ill-will. Hence God’s 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 גּם is scarcely more than and,” Knobel remarks, but we would call attention to the rhetorical climax—suited to express God’s vehement displeasure—in the several designations of their sin as connected by גַם: transgressed—taken—stolen—dissembled—put 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 (גּוֹרָל) 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 גּוֹרָל from גּרר = גּרל to be rough, signifies properly a small stone, ψῆφος. Farther particulars may be found in Mauritius, De Sortitione apud Hebrœos, Basil, 1692. [Diet, of the Bible, art. “Lot.”]. Like the Hebrews, the Romans also resorted to the lot in divisions (sortes divisoriœ), and elections (“sors urbana” and “peregrina” in the choice of a prætor) as also to explore the will of the divinity (staff oracle, rhabdomancy). The Homeric heroes cast lots (κληροῦν κλῆρος) 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, נְבָלָה. The נבל is not so much a fool in an intellectual respect as in a moral; hence נְבָלָה 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 נבל, 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 God’s 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 משפחת 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 לגברים. 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 lotTribe of Judah.Second lotClan of Zerah.Third lotHouse of Zabdi.6Fourth lotMan 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. [Bohn’s Eng. ed.]. Movers’ Phœnicians, 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 Herzog’s Realencyk. vol. iv. p. 764. [Gesen. s. v. שֶׁקֶל, 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. האהלי, 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 Achan’s Tent. The messengers laid it down, after they had found it, before Jehovah.הִצֹיק from יָצַק, to pour out, is equivalent to הִצִּיג, 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 Achan’s 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., Rosenmüller, think they had had a share in their father’s 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 God’s 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 father’s 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 Jerome’s time the name was still in use.
Jos_7:25. And all Israel stoned him. Here רָגַם is used, afterwards at the close of the verse, in an addition which the LXX omit, סָקַל. Both words are used in the Bible of stoning, but רגם has the more general signification, and is found only once, Lev_24:14, without אֶבֶך. 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 סקלו אתם באבנים is superfluous, and may perhaps be intended, as Knobel conjectures, to obviate a misunderstanding of אֹתוֹ 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 writer’s time. The casting of stones on certain graves was customary in other nations also, e.g. among the Arabs (Schulte’s 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. God’s anger is not an ebullition of blind passion, but a holy displeasure against the unrighteousness of men. When this unrighteousness is removed God’s 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 quœ 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. Keil—Tr.]
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 Caleb’s 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 God’s honor, and yet how humbly! Their sorrow is truly a λύπη κατὰ θεὸν (2Co_7:10), from which proceeds the μετάνοια ἀμεταμέλητος. 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 name’s 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 (לָקַד, 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 (נְבָלָה, that every sinner is a fool (נבל), 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 God’s 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 God’s grace alone, Heb_13:9.
Joshua’s humble prayer before God.—God withstands the proud but giveth grace unto the humble. Joshua’s grief for his people compared with the lamentation of Moses and Ezra.—Joshua as an example of mourning before God.—Parallel between Joshua’s 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.—Achan’s 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 Stephen—what 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 man’s 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 God—blessed 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.—וְגַם 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 מִשְׁפַּחַת יְהוּדָה read מִשׁפְּחֹת יְהוּדֻה, 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 מִיֹעְפַּחַת to be “used axly for tribe, שֶׁבֶט.” Gesen.—Tr.]
[3]Different Codd., some old editions, the Syr., Vulg., have instead of לגברים, the reading לַבָּתִּים 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.—וָאֶרְאֵה. The וְ 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 coördinate, copulative sentences of narration (“and I saw—and 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.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26 THE ISRAELITES SMITTEN AT AI. (Jos. 7:2-26)
THE ISRAELITES SMITTEN AT AI. (Jos. 7:2-26)
Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai--After the sacking of Jericho, the next step was to penetrate into the hills above. Accordingly, spies went up the mountain pass to view the country. The precise site of Ai, or Hai, is indicated with sufficient clearness (Gen 12:8; Gen 13:3) and has been recently discovered in an isolated tell, called by the natives Tell-el-Hajar, "the mount of stones," at two miles', or thirty-five minutes' distance, east southeast from Beth-el [VAN DE VELDE].
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Beth-aven--("house of vanity")--a name afterwards given derisively (Hos 4:15; Hos 5:8; Hos 10:5), on account of its idolatries, to Beth-el, "house of God," but here referred to another place, about six miles east of Beth-el and three north of Ai.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–26 THE TRESPASS AND PUNISHMENT OF ACHAN, Jos_7:1-26.
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.]
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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.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26 Ch. Jos_7:1-5. The Sin of Achan, and Assault on…
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.”
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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. Cæsar 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 sæpe 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).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 19, 21, 23, 24 (1) Achan . . . of the tribe of…
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.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26 Committed a trespass in the accursed thing. The word…
THE DEFEAT BEFORE AI
Committed a trespass in the accursed thing. The word lm, here used, signifies originally to cover, whence lyim a garment. Hence it comes to mean to act deceitfully, or perhaps to steal (cf. the LXX enosfisanto , 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 Lev_5:15 it is used of an unwitting trespass, committed hggvBi, 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" (rk), ver. 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 idea that 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 damns his own soul is the least part of his mischiefs; he commonly draws vengeance upon a thousand, either by the desert of his sin, or by the infection" (Bp. Hall).
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Vers. 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 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. 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 Ver. 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 dispensation nay, 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 (ver. 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 ( () 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" (ver. 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 Ver. 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 Lord all living beings slain, and destructible materials consumed as a sacrifice to His offended Majesty; all indestructible materials silver and gold, vessels of iron and brass consecrated 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 revealed the 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 deeds though the memorials of their guilt be carefully concealed, like the "costly garment," etc., of Achan beneath the ground yet 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 transaction to place yourself willingly in any sort of connection with it is 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 Ver. 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 transgression 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 surprised 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.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 6, 10, 16, 20, 25 But the children of Israel committed a trespass
Jos_7:1
But the children of Israel committed a trespass
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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.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 10, 16, 24 Jos_7:1. Committed a trespass] Lit., “deceived a deceit” The…
TROUBLE IN THE LORD’S CAMP
CRITICAL NOTES.—
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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” Ἄχαρος for the same reason; the Vat. Cod. of the LXX. reads “Ἄχαρ, the Alex. Ἀχάν” (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 God’s fair world. Sin is that ingredient from the devil’s laboratory, which, thrown into the cup of creation’s 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 God’s 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 Achan’s 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 God’s 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, Achan’s 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 people—that 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 Achan’s 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 conscience—The 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 world’s 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
“God’s anger is not an ebullition of blind passion, but a holy displeasure against the unrighteousness of men. When this unrighteousness is removed, God’s 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 transgressor’s name, but each transgressor’s 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.—MAN’S UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD’S 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 God’s work is not a sufficient guarantee of having God’s 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 God’s cause, but without God’s guidance; (c) the three thousand Israelites fighting God’s battle, but none of them having God’s assistance.
2. God’s 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 God’s absence and Israel’s defeat at Ai. We need manifest grace for each day of our lives. Yesterday’s 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 Jehovah’s future presence.
3. The godliness of any part of a body of the Lord’s people is no sufficient guarantee of the Lord’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 Lord’s 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 Lord’s 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 Lord’s 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 God’s changelessness. God here appears to have altered His mind, and to have turned completely round in His relation to the Israelites. From being Israel’s 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 Achan’s 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 God’s changelessness. In plainer words, God’s 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, Navigation’s 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 God’s 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 King’s 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 Achan’s 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 God’s 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 man’s 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 man’s 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 man’s 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.” [Hävernick.]
“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.]
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 Jos 7:1 - Jos 7:12.
Joshua
ACHAN’S SIN, ISRAEL’S DEFEAT
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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.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Repulse at Ai, due to Achan's Sin
Repulse at Ai, due to Achan's Sin
The capture of Jericho is followed by an attempt upon Ai, a place of strategic importance, as commanding a main entrance into the interior of Canaan westward; the upper entrance into the valley of Aijalon being commanded by Ai and Bethel. This chapter has an interest of its own, as exhibiting Joshua in a new light, as the spiritual guide, drawing out, with the mingled sweetness and severity of a father (Jos_7:19), the sinner's detailed confession (see on Jos_7:20). The incident of Achan's sin and its effects upon the fortunes of Israel is an illustration (a) of the penalty of solidarity—the inevitable spread of the results of sin and pollution from a single member to the whole body; (b) of the conditional nature of God's promises of success. In contrast to the many previous assurances, it is announced that the presence of God is to be withdrawn absolutely (Jos_7:12) unless the 'accursed thing' be removed. Further, at the very beginning of the Holy War, Israel is taught—and we through Israel—that exceptional temptations do not excuse a lowering of the standard of conduct on the part of God's soldiers.
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6f. Joshua's extreme despondency is really a mark of his soldiery capacity. He was general enough to know the immense moral effect of even a slight success or reverse at the beginning of a war. Moreover, no one who had Joshua's sense of divine mission and vocation, as represented e.g. by the message of Jos_1:2-9 and the vision of Jos_5:13, could fail to interpret the reverse as implying some mysterious cause of divine displeasure. And though Joshua is chidden for the faithlessness of his despondency (Jos_7:10), his uneasiness is at the same moment (Jos_7:11) justified and explained.
20. There is a special interest about this confession of Achan's, because its wording is practically identical with that of the traditional form of confession which seems to have been used by those who brought sin and trespass offerings. A particular confession is enjoined in such passages as Lev_5:6; Num_5:6, Num_5:7. The form was as follows: 'I have sinned, I have done perversely, I have rebelled, and thus' (here follows detailed confession) 'have I done, but I return in penitence before Thee, and let this victim be my expiation.'
21. This verse throws an interesting light on the wealth of Jericho, and the extent of her commerce.
25. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire] This inclusion of Achan's household in the punishment is one of the moral problems of the book. Edersheim ('Bib. Hist.' art. 'Joshua,' p. 69 note) interprets the use of the singular number in Jos_7:25; as showing that Achan was the only person stoned; the plural number following (Jos_7:25) referring to his cattle and property only. Others emphasise the fact (not brought out in the narrative) that his family must have been privy to the crime; or dwell on the 'entail' of divine visitation pronounced in the second commandment (Exo_20:5). The last view agrees best with the passage as it stands, which suggests in a very striking way the sufferings people bring upon their children by their sins.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v11 The sin of Achan and its results teach the…
Israel
The sin of Achan and its results teach the great truth of the oneness of the people of God, Jos 7:11. "Israel hath sinned." See in illustration; 1Co 5:1-7; 1Co 12:12-14; 1Co 12:26. The whole cause of Christ is injured by the sin, neglect, or unspirituality of one believer.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 7. Achan’s Sin and Israel’s Defeat
7. Achan’s Sin and Israel’s Defeat
CHAPTER 7
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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 Achan’s 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. Achan’s 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 God’s 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. Joshua’s prayer and Jehovah’s answer; Achan’s 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 Israel’s 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.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 10 Israel’s defeat at Ai
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.
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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.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 19, 22, 24, 25 the things that were set apart for destruction
the things that were set apart for destruction
"the things that God had said they must set apart to him by destroying them"
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Achan ... Karmi ... Zabdi ... Zerah
These are names of men. (See: How to Translate Names)
Yahweh's anger burned
"anger" and "burned" indicates intensity, not that fire is present. AT: "Yahweh's anger burned like a fire" or "Yahweh was very angry" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
Israel
faithful
son
tribe
Judah
Yahweh
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26 7:1-26 Now that Jericho belonged to Israel, Joshua’s first…
7:1-26 Now that Jericho belonged to Israel, Joshua’s first military problem involved securing a foothold in the hill country. The conquest of Jericho inspired Israel’s confidence and consigned the people of Canaan to discouragement and despair. Yet everything hinged on Israel’s obedience to God. One man’s sin and its consequences demonstrate how serious was the command to destroy Jericho (see “Complete Dedication” Theme Note).
7:1 things set apart for the Lord: See Lev 27:28-29; 1 Sam 15:3. • son of Zerah: Achan belonged to a prominent family (Num 26:19-20) and was a leader or a potential leader, so his actions would be influential.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.