Joshua 7:13 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Sanctify yourselves Not only wash your clothes and give yourselves up to religious exercises, meditation, and prayer, as you were required to do formerly, when called to meet the Lord at Sinai, (see Exodus 19:10,) and lately, when you were about to be led over Jordan, (Joshua 3:5,) but purify yourselves from that defilement which you have all in some sort contracted by this accursed fact, and prepare yourselves to appear before the Lord, expecting his sentence for the discovery and punishment of the sin. This was enjoined that the guilty person might be awakened, and brought to a free confession of his fault. And it is a marvellous thing that he did not on this occasion acknowledge his crime. But this is to be imputed to the heart-hardening power of sin, which makes men grow worse and worse; to his pride, which made him loath to take to himself the shame of such a mischievous and infamous action; and to his vain conceit, whereby he might think others were guilty as well as he, and that some of them might be taken, and he escape.