And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.
The city shall be accursed - (see the note at Leviticus 27:28-29.) The cherem or auathema was a devotion to the Lord of idolatrous persons or objects, as His inalienable right, which involved their utter destruction or their consecration to religious uses (Deuteronomy 7:2; Deuteronomy 20:17; 1 Samuel 15:3). When such a ban was pronounced against a hostile city, the men and animals were killed; no booty was allowed to be taken; the idols and all the precious ornaments on them were to be burned (Deuteronomy 7:25: cf. 1 Chronicles 14:12); everything was either to be destroyed or consecrated to the sanctuary. Joshua pronounced this ban on Jericho, a great and wealthy city, evidently by divine direction; and the severity of the doom, accordant with the requirements of a law which was holy, just, and good, was justified, not only by the fact of its inhabitants being part of a race who had filled up their iniquities, but by their resisting the light of the recent astonishing miracles at the Jordan. Besides, as Jericho seems to have been defended by reinforcements from all the country (Joshua 24:11), its destruction would paralyze all the rest of the devoted people, and thus tend to facilitate the conquest of the land showing, as so astounding a military miracle did, that it was done, not by man, but by the power and through the anger of God.