Joshua 7:1

Joshua ACHAN’S SIN, ISRAEL’S DEFEATJoshua 7:1 - Joshua 7:12 . This passage naturally parts itself into- 1 . The hidden sin { Joshua 7:1 }; 2 . The repulse by which it is punished { Joshua 7:2 - Joshua 7:5 }; 3. The prayer of remonstrance { Joshua 7:6 - Joshua 7:9 }; and 4. The answer revealing the cause { Joshua 7:10 - Joshua 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 Joshua 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.

Joshua 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 ( Matthew 26:8 ) we find that to be ascribed to all the disciples which was done by Judas alone: see John 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, ( 1 Chronicles 2:7 ,) a word that signifies, He troubled. It is probable that as he had troubled Israel, ( Joshua 7:25 ,) they changed his name thus in after-times. Zabdi — Called also Zimri, 1 Chronicles 2:6 . Zerah — Or Zarah, who was Judah’s immediate son, ( Genesis 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?