CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 7:24. All that he had] In ordinary matters, touching the national welfare, the law provided that the children should not “be put to death for the fathers” (Deuteronomy 24:16), but this can hardly be used as an argument to prove that the family of Achan could not have been slain. (a) God might well reserve to Himself a right with which human discrimination and mercy were not to be trusted. (b) The awful solemnity with which the ban of devotement was regarded places it in an exceptional position. (c) This was a wrong deliberately done to God, as well as to the nation, and thus had features which might take it out of ordinary law. From Joshua 7:15; Joshua 7:25, with chap. Joshua 22:20, it seems that all the family of Achan were put to death. They may have been privy to Achan’s sin, but this is not stated. Nothing is more solemn and emphatic throughout the whole chapter than the representative character given to the entire transaction. Even the camp of Israel was counted to be devoted till the iniquity was purged from out of their midst, and the thirty-six men who were slain in battle were as much made cherem as Achan himself.
Joshua 7:26. The valley of Achor] This was doubtless so called from Achan’s sin and punishment. Is it not also probable that the man took his name from his sin, and thus is literally known by his deeds? It seems unlikely that Achan would have borne such a name before his transgression, nor would the coincidence, had he been known all his life as “the troubler,” be less singular. Instead of playing on the man’s original name, in Joshua 7:25, does not Joshua bitterly and graphically so describe the act, that the term of description henceforth becomes the appellation by which the man is known in Israel, and thus also the name under which the historian refers back to so much of his life as is noticed? From Isaiah 65:10 and Hosea 2:15, it is evident that this solemn judgment made a deep impression, and took a lasting hold of the national mind.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 7:24-26
THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN
When the Israelites were beaten back from Ai, and some of them slain, Joshua rent his clothes, and fell upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and fasted and prayed till the evening. He seems to have had some suspicion of evil among the people; his bearing and words have about them more of the tone of enquiry than of the spirit of complaint. Yet if Joshua suspected the people, he did not charge them with sin, or, apparently, so much as name it to them, until he knew from the lips of God that they were guilty. In the defeats and sufferings of men now, there may sometimes be cause to suspect that they are connected with transgression. But while defeat and suffering should lead us to examine ourselves, they should not lead us to make accusations against others. Let this course of treatment be recognised, and there would be no end to the recriminations of men against one another. It is related that Charles II. once said to John Milton, “Do not you think that your blindness is a judgment upon you for having written in defence of my father’s murder?” “Sir,” answered the poet, “it is true I have lost my eyes; but if all calamitous providences are to be considered as judgments, your majesty should remember that your royal father lost his head.” Every man who heedlessly charges a fellow-creature to find in his afflictions a proof of his wickedness, is open to some retort, although his family history may not furnish occasion for a rebuke so severe as that which was deservedly administered by Milton.
The affliction of Israel in the repulse at Ai is clearly seen, at this stage of the history, to stand connected with the transgression of Achan. The sin has been traced home to the sinner, and he who has brought shame and death upon others, is here called to suffer in like manner himself.
I. Achan’s punishment as the expression of a deep abhorrence of sin. Every man in the camp may not actually have felt this abhorrence. Where one man was found willing to commit such wickedness, it may be that there were others found to sympathise with it. By the severity and manner of punishing Achan, God would teach all the people that sin was to be hated exceedingly. Everything which the transgressor had stolen was to be destroyed; the Babylonish garment, and even the silver and gold, were to be utterly put away. All the goods which Achan had possessed before his theft were likewise to be devoted; the very tent which had sheltered him and his, and the oxen and asses and sheep which he had accumulated, were to be burnt with fire. Even his sons and his daughters seem to have been stoned with him, and then in like manner to have been consumed.
1. Iniquity is on no account to be passed over, but to be solemnly put away. Men may be forgiven, but sin never; that is to say, sin may be forgiven unto men, but it must never be forgiven in itself. Sin must be put away (a) irrespective of temporal loss, (b) irrespective of social affections, (c) and irrespective of pain in its severest forms.
2. The gains of iniquity are all to be esteemed unholy. To retain the things which Achan had stolen would be to retain the sin.
3. The gains of iniquity are not only accursed in themselves, they pollute also that which they touch. Zacchæus restored not only that in which he had wronged his fellows, but fourfold. Such a restitution acknowledges that all the estate of a man is corrupted by its corrupt part. “The eagle, in the fable, that stole flesh from the altar, brought a coal of fire with it, which burnt her nest (Habakkuk 2:9-10; Zechariah 5:4). They lose their own that grasp at more than their own.” [Henry.] This expression of abhorrence against sin must not be held to relate merely to material possessions. The outward picture, given in such terrible colours to Israel, portrays also God’s law for the inner life. The sins of the heart are to be equally hated, and similarly put away. As Arnot has written, “To cover the sin which lies on the conscience with a layer of earnest efforts to do right will not take the sin away; the underlying sin will assimilate all the dead works that may be heaped upon it, and the result will be a greater mass of sin.
II. Achan’s punishment as a vindication of God’s law and covenant.
1. The punishment was to be carried out under the express provisions of the law. The law held (a) that Achan had made himself and his people to be devoted by taking of the devoted thing (chap. Joshua 6:18; Deuteronomy 7:26); (b) that those who were thus sentenced to die should, as for other capital offences, be stoned (Deuteronomy 13:10); (c) that such individual persons as were put to death should be stoned without the camp (Leviticus 24:14); (d) that all the possessions of devoted persons, including the bodies of their slaughtered cattle, should be burnt, and that their own bodies should thus be consumed with their goods (Deuteronomy 13:15-17). Thus in the destruction of Achan the formalities of the law were emphatically carried into execution. God would have the Israelites trace Achan’s punishment, not to any sudden impulse of anger, but to that deliberate wrath against idolatry which stood as a perpetual record embodied in His covenant.
2. The punishment was to be carried out in the true spirit and interests of law. The one impression left on the thousands of Israel must have been that God would have His commandments honoured, no matter what the cost; yet the tenderness of Joshua and the merciful deliberateness of Jehovah must have assured the people that love to them, no less than hatred of sin, was moving slowly round and forward the wheels of this solemn judgment.
III. Achan’s punishment as a memorial for future guidance and help. Modern monuments are almost invariably, perhaps always, the records of triumphant personal career, or the memorials of national victory. Wisely or unwisely, men and nations now never celebrate their shame. History, more and more, gets to be one-sided; and while it presents much to animate, it has little to warn. The Israelites erected memorials of their great events, and not merely of their great victories. The passage of the Jordan has its cairn, but so has the grave of Achan; the stone of Ebenezer is set up between Mizpeh and Shen to tell the glory of victory, so also is the “very great heap of stones” piled over the body of Absalom, to perpetuate the shame of rebellion. This heap on the grave in the valley of Achor would be interpreted in Israel’s after history:—
1. As a memorial of solemn warning. Men should read there: “So speedily may sin be committed, so certainly does God behold it, so unerringly may it be revealed, and so bitter and shameful is its end.
2. As a memorial of national purification and reconciliation with God. If all Israel was held guilty in Achan’s sin, not less is all Israel held purified in his punishment; the purification is judicial, rather than personal—it lies immediately in the direction of justification, and only indirectly in that of sanctification; but the purification is held by God to be real, and not fictitious. “The Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger,” just as He had some time before declared that He would (Deuteronomy 13:17). Nor is this turning from anger any less real than the anger itself. As under the Divine anger Israel had been defeated, so under the Divine forgiveness Israel proceeded directly to victory. Sin had been put away in God’s method, and every person in the camp, not long since held to be “accursed,” or “devoted,” might now proceed to say, “There is therefore now no condemnation.” It should be noticed that in this revelation of God’s mind on the question of forgiving sin, there is absolutely no room for the commercial theory of an equivalent in atonement. All Israel was solemnly held to be worthy of death in Achan’s sin, but it cannot be pretended that the lives of Achan and his family were an equivalent for the lives of all the people. Atonement is here proclaimed to be, not so much value in blood for so much sin, but an adequate expression of a general abhorrence of sin so great that God who forgives, and man who is forgiven, alike are seen determining that, whatever the cost, sin shall not be tolerated even for a moment. Thus is law “magnified and made honourable;” thus, too, does Divine love proclaim itself in the one and only direction in which God could speak, or man be benefited—the direction of right, and truth, and purity.
3. As a memorial for guidance into hope in times of future darkness. The remembrance of Divine mercy which followed human penitence should long abide with Israel. In times when the national sin would lead to God’s departure, and to the consequent darkness of succeeding defeat, this vision of Achor should become a bow in the cloud, teaching the godly not to despair. It should be even more than this; it should become as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and victory shall take the place of defeat; Repent ye, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Thus more than six centuries later the Lord stirred again the pulse of the national feeling by crying through Hosea, “I will give her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope.” Still later, Isaiah was taught to sing: “And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor a place to lie down in, for my people that have sought me.” So careful is Divine mercy ever to leave a place to which sinful men may return in tears, and from which they may presently sing in joy, “We are saved by hope.” Let who will teach himself to despair, God ever leaves the fastenings of the “door of hope” well within reach of the hand of penitence.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 7:24-26.—THE DOOR OF HOPE.
Read in connection with Hosea’s obvious reference to this solemn incident, some such thoughts as the following might be expanded to profit:—
I. The unconscious beginnings of hope in the place of human sin and trouble.
II. The silent growth of hope under Divine chastisement.
III. Hope becoming visible through the putting away of iniquity.
IV. Hope fully revealed through words of Divine pardon and the witness of succeeding victories.
THE JUDGMENT IN THE VALLEY OF ACHOR
From the foregoing narrative we may learn:
I. The deceitfulness of sin.
II. The certainty of its exposure.
III. The awfulness of its reward.” [Bush.]
THE CERTAINTY AND SEVERITY OF SIN’S PUNISHMENT
“Punishment is the recoil of crime; and the strength of the back stroke is in proportion to the original blow.” [French.]
“The thought of the future punishment for the wicked which the Bible reveals is enough to make an earthquake of terror in every man’s soul. I do not accept the doctrine of eternal punishment because I delight in it. I would cast in doubts, if I could, till I had filled hell up to the brim; I would destroy all faith in it; but that would do me no good: I could not destroy the thing. Nor does it help me to take the word ‘everlasting,’ and put it into a rack, like an inquisitor, until I make it shriek out some other meaning: I cannot alter the stern fact.” [Beecher.]
“Day and night follow each other not more surely than punishment comes upon sin. Whether the sin be great or little, momentary or habitual, wilful or through infirmity, its own peculiar punishment seems, according to the law of nature, to follow, as far as our experience of that law carries us, sooner or later, lighter or heavier, as the case may be.… Who can pretend to estimate the effect of apparently slight transgression upon the spiritual state of any one of us? Who can pretend to say what the effect of it is in God’s sight? What do the angels think of it? What does our own guardian angel, if one be vouchsafed us, who has watched over us, and been intimate with us from our youth up; who joyed to see how we once grew together with God’s grace, but who now is in fear for us? Alas! what is the real condition of our heart itself? Dead bodies keep their warmth a short time; and who can tell but a soul so circumstanced may be severed from the grace of the ordinances, though he partakes them outwardly, and is but existing upon and exhausting the small treasure of strength and life which is laid up within him? Nay, we know that so it really is, if the sin be deliberate and wilful; for the word of Scripture assures us that such sin shuts us out from God’s presence, and obstructs the channels by which He gives us grace.” [J. H. Newman.]
“Let us suppose, that at the time when Britain was peopled by half-savage tribes, before the period of the Roman sway, some gifted seer among the Druids had engraven upon a rock a minute prediction of a portion of the future history of the island. Suppose he had declared that it should, ere long, be conquered by a warrior people from the south; that he should name the Cæsar himself, describe his eagle standard, and all the circumstances of the conquest. Suppose he should portray the Saxon invasion centuries after, the sevenfold division of the monarchy, the Danish inroad, the arrival and victory of the Normans. Our imagined prophet pauses here, or at whatever other precise period you please to suppose; and his next prediction, overleaping a vast undescribed interval, suddenly represents the England of the present day. Now conceive the forefathers of existing England to have studied this wondrous record, and to find, to their amazement, that every one of its predictions was accurately verified; that, as their generations succeeded, they but walked in the traces assigned for them by the prophetic inscription, and all it spoke progressively became fact. Can we suppose, that however far away in futurity was the one remaining event, and however impossible to them, at their early stage, to conceive the means by which all the present wonders of this mighty empire could ever be realised, they would permit themselves to doubt its absolute certainty after such overwhelming proofs of the supernatural powers of the seer who guaranteed it? Would they not shape their course as confidently in view of the unquestionable future as in reference to the unquestionable past? It should be thus with regard to the coming judgment.” [Archer Butler.]
THE SPIRIT IN WHICH SIN IS TO BE CONFRONTED
“Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the further on we go, the more we have to come back.” [Barrow.]
“Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world; use it therefore as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you; and though it kill your bodies, it shall not be able to kill your souls; and though it bring you to the grave, as it did your Head, it shall not be able to keep you there. If the thoughts of death and the grave be not pleasant to you, hearken to every temptation to sin as you would hearken to a temptation to self-murder. You love not death; love not the cause of death.” [Baxter.]