Joshua 6:18

6:17-27 Jericho was to be a solemn and awful sacrifice to the justice of God, upon those who had filled up the measure of their sins. So He appoints, from whom, as creatures, they received their lives, and to whom, as sinners, they had forfeited them. Rahab perished not with them that believed not, Heb 11:31. All her kindred were saved with her; thus faith in Christ brings salvation to the house, Ac 14:31. She, and they with her, were plucked as brands from the burning. With Rahab, or with the men of Jericho; our portion must be assigned, as we posses or disregard the sign of salvation; even faith in Christ, which worketh by love. Let us remember what depends upon our choice, and let us choose accordingly. God shows the weight of a Divine curse; where it rests there is no getting from under it; for it brings ruin without remedy.

And you in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing,.... From laying hold on, secreting, and enjoying as their own, what was devoted to another use: lest ye make yourselves accursed; or a "cherem", also devoted to destruction: when ye take of the accursed thing; any part of it, be it what it will, gold or any other metal, or raiment, and the like: and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it; for being done secretly, and not known who did it, the whole body of the people would be chargeable with it, and suffer on account of it, unless discovered and punished, and as more fully appears by an after instance.

Joshua 6:18 . Keep yourselves from the accursed thing — It should rather be rendered, the devoted thing, meaning the spoils devoted to the Lord. These they were not to touch, on pain of being themselves devoted to death. Lest ye make yourselves accursed — Lest you draw upon yourselves the immediate curse of God, and so bring yourselves under the same sentence of destruction as the inhabitants and things of Jericho are under. And make the camp of Israel a curse — By provoking God to punish them for your sin, in which they may be one way or other involved; for the whole camp having sins of their own, God might take what occasion he saw fit to inflict this punishment.

Make the camp of Israel a curse, by provoking God to punish them for your sin, in which they may be one way or other involved; or at least upon the occasion of your sin: for, to speak properly God will not (the case of Adam’s sin only excepted) punish one man for the sin of another, as he hath oft declared; but the whole camp having sins of their own, God might take what occasion he saw fit to inflict this punishment.

18. and ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing—Generally they were at liberty to take the spoil of other cities that were captured (De 2:35; 3:7; Jos 8:27). But this, as the first fruits of Canaan, was made an exception; nothing was to be spared but Rahab and those in her house [Jos 6:17]. A violation of these stringent orders would not only render the guilty persons obnoxious to the curse, but entail distress and adversity upon all Israel, by provoking the divine displeasure. These were the instructions given, or repeated (De 13:17; 7:26), previous to the last act of the siege.

Accursed - Better as in margin, ("devoted" ( Leviticus 27:28 note). In other cases the inhabitants only of the towns were slain; their cattle and property became the booty of the victors. But Jericho, as the first Canaanite city that was captured, was devoted by Israel as first-fruits to God, as a token that Israel received all the land from Him. Every living thing was put to death (Rahab and her household excepted) as a sacrifice to God, and the indestructible goods were Joshua 6:19 brought into the treasury of the sanctuary.

Verse 18. - Accursed thing. Better," thing devoted," as this keeps up the idea of something solemnly set apart to God, to be dealt with as He thinks fit. Lest ye make yourselves accursed when ye take of the accursed thing. Rather, with Keil and Rosenmuller, lest ye devote the city to destruction, and then take of what has been thus devoted. And make the camp of Israel a curse. Literally, and put the camp of Israel in the position of a thing devoted. And trouble it (cf. Joshua 7:25, 26 ; also Genesis 34:30 ). Joshua 6:18

On the seventh day the marching round the town commenced very early, at the dawning of the day, that they might go round seven times. כּמּשׁפּט, in the manner prescribed and carried out on the previous days, which had become a right through precept and practice. On the seventh circuit, when the priests had blown the trumpet, Joshua commanded the fighting men to raise a war-cry, announcing to them at the same time that the town, with all that was in it, was to be a ban to the Lord, with the exception of Rahab and the persons in her house, and warning them not to take of that which was laid under the ban, that they might not bring a ban upon the camp of Israel. The construction in v. 16, "it came to pass at the seventh time the priests had blown the trumpets, then Joshua said, ... " is more spirited than if the conjunction כּאשׁר had been used before תּקעוּ, or בּתקוע had been used. Because the Lord had given Jericho into the hands of the Israelites, they were to consecrate it to Him as a ban (cherem), i.e., as a holy thing belonging to Jehovah, which was not to be touched by man, as being the first-fruits of the land of Canaan. (On cherem, see the remarks at Leviticus 27:28-29 .) Rahab alone was excepted from this ban, along with all that belonged to her, because she had hidden the spies.

The inhabitants of an idolatrous town laid under the ban were to be put to death, together with their cattle, and all the property in the town to be burned, as Moses himself had enjoined on the basis of the law in Leviticus 27:29 . The only exceptions were metals, gold, silver, and the vessels of brass and iron; these were to be brought into the treasury of the Lord, i.e., the treasury of the tabernacle, as being holy to the Lord ( Joshua 6:19 ; vid., Numbers 31:54 ). Whoever took to himself anything that had been laid under the ban, exposed himself to the ban, not only because he had brought an abomination into his house, as Moses observes in Deuteronomy 7:25 , in relation to the gold and silver of idols, but because he had wickedly invaded the rights of the Lord, by appropriating that which had been laid under the ban, and had wantonly violated the ban itself. The words, "beware of the ban, that ye do not ban and take of the ban" ( Joshua 6:18 ), point to this. As Lud. de Dieu observes, "the two things were altogether incompatible, to devote everything to God, and yet to apply a portion to their own private use; either the thing should not have been devoted, or having been devoted, it was their duty to abstain from it." Any such appropriation of what had been laid under the ban would make the camp of Israel itself a ban, and trouble it, i.e., bring it into trouble (conturbare, cf. Genesis 34:30 ).