Joshua 7:16-23

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Joshua 7:21. A goodly Babylonish garment] Lit. “A cloak of Shinar,” Shinar being the ancient name for the land of Babylon (Genesis 10:10). These garments have the reputation of having been highly wrought works of art. Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. viii., c. 48, says of them, “Colores diverson picturæ vestium intexere Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit.” Josephus (Ant. v. 1. 10), says that the robe hidden by Achan was “a royal garment woven entirely of gold.” A wedge of gold] Mary., “a tongue” of gold. “What we commonly call an ingot of gold, from a corruption of the word lingot, signifying a little tongue” (Clarke). “The value of the silver, reckoned at 5s. per oz., would be nearly £28; and the ingot of gold would, at £4 per oz., be worth rather more than £90. An estimate of this kind must however be very uncertain, because we are unacquainted with the value which precious metals bore in the time of Joshua” (Kitto).

Joshua 7:23. Laid them out before the Lord] Marg. = poured them out. They were thus poured out before Jehovah, in token that they had been made cherem, and belonged unto Him.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 7:16

THE REVELATION OF PARTICULAR SINS

Although God knew the actual offender as fully as He knew that transgression had been committed, He directed Joshua to proceed as if the criminal were altogether unsuspected. God would manifest the guilt in a manner which should bring conviction to every individual in the camp. It is a beautiful feature in Divine justice that the Lord never rests, as He might rest, in His own unerring assurance of right; He is concerned, also, to satisfy every feeling of enquiry and doubt in the minds of those whom He judges. The issues of the Judgment Day will represent not only the mind of Jesus Christ, the Judge; they will express the unwavering conviction of the lost, the undivided feeling of the redeemed, and the confident assent of the universe.

I. The God directed search, for sin. The enquiry was directed to the discovery of a specific act of sin, and to the detection of the individual transgressor. We see the Lord deliberately undertaking to expose some particular act of sin in some particular members of Israel. There is an immense difference between the moral effect of any general exposure of sin, and such revelation of specific and individual guilt as is undertaken here. Men think comparatively little of general acknowledgments of iniquity. Witness the general confessions of sin made in public services and prayer meetings. It would make confession a different thing indeed, if those who acknowledge that they are sinners, at the same time named their sins. The exposure of sin in this form concentrates and focuses the attention. The result in the two cases presents all the difference that there is between a dreamy theory, which all men admit, and a sharply defined and localized fact, at which everybody is alarmed. It is sin in a specific form, and attaching to an individual man, that God here undertakes to reveal. It may be asked, Why did Jehovah concern Himself to reveal actual sin in this form? Why did the Saviour repeatedly draw attention, openly, to particular transgressions among the Apostles? Why in the course of Divine providence, now, does God frequently bring to light instances of guilt in Christian men, which at once shock the feeling of the Church, and afford opportunity for the scorn of enemies? Would not society gain by the concealment of iniquity in instances like these? The late F. W. Robertson, speaking of the case of sin in the Corinthian Church, has thus dealt with the whole question: “There are two views of sin: in one, it is looked upon as a wrong; in the other, as producing loss—loss, for example, of character. In such cases, if character could be preserved before the world, grief would not come; but the paroxysms of misery fall upon our proud spirit when our guilt is made public. The most distinct instance we have of this is in the life of Saul. In the midst of his apparent grief, the thing still uppermost was that he had forfeited his kingly character: almost the only longing was, that Samuel should honour him before his people. And hence it comes to pass, that often remorse and anguish only begin with exposure. Suicide takes place, not when the act of wrong is done, but when the guilt is known, and hence, too, many a one becomes hardened, who would otherwise have remained tolerably happy; in consequence of which we blame the exposure, not the guilt; we say if it had hushed up, all would have been well; that the servant who robbed his master was ruined by taking away his character; and that if the sin had been passed over, repentance might have taken place, and he might have remained a respectable member of society. Do not think so. It is quite true that remorse was produced by exposure, and that the remorse was fatal; the sorrow which worked death arose from that exposure, and so far exposure may be called the cause had it never taken place, respectability, and comparative peace, might have continued; but outward respectability is not change of heart. It is well known that the corpse has been preserved for centuries in the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that when atmospheric air was introduced to the exposed surface it crumbled into dust. Exposure worked dissolution, but it only manifested the death which was already there; so with sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to pieces, or crumbles into dust, when it is revealed. Exposure did not work death in the Corinthian sinner, but life.”

Who can say that this was not the effect in Achan’s case? Judging by his free and open confession, so swiftly forced upon him, the opportunity for repentance was sincerely seized; and the low and poor measure of life, which would soon have expired under concealment, was enabled again to shew itself, ere its possessor was hurried into the more manifest presence of his Maker. This is why God so often deliberately exposes guilt: if the guilty have any remaining life, He would free that life from an oppressive and destroying incubus; if there be no life, He would reveal the death that is there, and thus give warning and salvation to the life that is in others.

II. The God-guided process of the lot. Whatever may have been the exact method of the lot, the successive stages of its advance towards the detection of the criminal were marked with terrible certainty. There was no haste, and no hesitation; no faltering even for a moment, as if waiting for light, and no mistake which rendered necessary the retracing of a single step, or the repetition of any one ineffectual movement. Like the hound, which with keen powers of smelling, and a strong scent to guide it, running “breast high” towards its game, never hunting on the “heel,” never pausing to recover scent, and never faltering till its fierce fangs meet in its exhausted victim; so the very lot itself must have seemed, to one man in that great multitude, as if mysteriously instinct with a life unerring in its discernment, and unrelenting in its pursuit. Changing the figure: from the circumference of that vast circle necessary to enclose the camp of Israel, standing where Achan stood, every line drawn to detect the guilty would seem, from the very first, to be pointing directly to himself, and to be coming ever nearer as it was produced successively through the three inscribed circles, the last of which narrowed the examination to his own immediate family: the twelve tribal lines of indication would centre on his tribe, the five lines from the ancestral heads of Judah would join together on his ancestor, Zarah (cf. Genesis 46:12), the lines from the Zarhite ancestry would meet in the family of Zabdi, or Zimri (cf. 1 Chronicles 2:6), while the lines from the family of Zabdi, passing through the apparently thin house of Carmi, would focus themselves on Achan, becoming there, in their silent intensity, almost vocal with an utterance which, later on, rang out from the lips of an indignant prophet down into the conscience of another criminal—“Thou art the man.” So surely was the lot guided to its mark by God.

1. Learn the folly of all the attempts which are made to conceal sin. Exposure, at the farthest, does but await the judgment of the Lord.

2. Admire the glory of Divine omniscience. God saw the acts of every man in the host of Israel, even during the tumult of war. He sees, not less accurately, the thoughts of every mind, and the desires of every heart. As Archbishop Secker quaintly puts it, “God hath a glazed window in the darkest houses of clay: He sees what is done in men, when none other can.”

III. The God-honouring result of discovery.

1. The act of God, in this revelation of sin, carried with it the full concurrence of men. (a) The transgressor himself fully acknowledged his guilt. Achan felt that he had done wickedly, nor could he dispute the justice of his sentence, (b) The spectators must have been equally impressed with the wisdom and justice and love of God. The confession of Achan vindicated Divine wisdom, the solemnity of the offence and the express terms of the covenant assured the people as to Divine justice, while in the stern execution of the sentence they might behold God’s love hedging up as “with thorns” their own way to sin. (c) While the conscience and judgment of men were fully satisfied, the formalities prescribed by the law were also scrupulously met. The law explicitly stated: “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.” Although the lot had pointed out the guilty man, and Achan himself had confessed his sin, Joshua sent messengers to the tent to furnish yet further evidence of the transgression.

2. This act of discovery was not only a revelation in the present, but also light upon the past. The defeat before Ai, the slaughter of the Israelites, and the slowness of the answer to the prayer of Joshua and the elders, were all explained now. Thus does the Divine discovery of human sin still light up the darkness of the past. Thus, too, will the revelation of the final judgment discover the cause of many defeats, shew the reason of much pain, and disclose the grounds of not a few unanswered prayers.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Joshua 7:16.—FAMILY HISTORY AND FAMILY SIN.

Joshua rose up early in the morning

(1) when he was about to lead the people to behold God’s wonderful works (chap. Joshua 3:1;

(2) when he was about to lead them to a great victory (chap. Joshua 6:12; Joshua 6:14);

(3) when he was required to conduct this search for sin. Our vigilance must not be one-sided. He who would serve God indeed, must not only be active in duties which go with great honour and joy, but also in duties which are accompanied with much shame and sorrow.

I. The insufficiency of family name and greatness to shield men from sin. “The tribe of Judah was taken.” The tribe of Judah was considered the chief in Israel. This was the most numerous and powerful of all the tribes, and had assigned to it the place of honour in the general encampment around the tabernacle (cf. Numbers 2:3). To this tribe, too, had come the richest blessing from their father Jacob; they were to be the royal family among all the families of Israel; in their inheritance should stand both the metropolis of the kingdom and the temple of the Lord, or, as the patriarch prophesied, “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” Not all the prestige which came from past history, from present dignity, or from future prospects, saved Judah from this disgrace.

1. There is no family name which stands sufficiently high to make pride allowable in any man.

2. No family dignity is great enough to furnish to any of its members securities against sin.

II. The connection between a bad life and a bad antecedent history. “He took the family of the Zarhites.” It is sufficient merely to remind ourselves that Zarah, or Zerah, was one of the children of Judah’s transgression. A fact like this might have weakened the moral force of Zerah through all his life, and have enfeebled the character of his descendants. One sin in a family often repeats itself in that family’s subsequent history. He who sins, sins not only to himself, but to his children after him.

III. The wide intervening space which is sometimes seen between the conspicuous transgressions which mar the glory of a family name. Judah sinned, but we hear little for good or evil about Zerah, or Zabdi, or Carmi. Their names never come into prominence in connection with either virtue or vice. Through the three intervening generations the family life went, for the most part, smoothly and quietly. Then Achan came, and another blot was made upon the family history. There may be a much closer connection between these prominent acts of wickedness in a family than we are accustomed to think. No one can assert that it is out of Judah’s weakened life that sin, in another form, presently appears in the life of Achan; it is equally true that no one can prove the contrary. Speaking of the powers of memory, MacLaren has said, “The fragmentary remembrances which we have now, lift themselves above the ocean of forgetfulness like islands in some Archipelago, the summits of sister hills, though separated by the estranging sea that covers their converging sides and the valleys where their roots unite. The solid land is there, though hidden. Drain off the sea, and there will be no more isolated peaks, but continuous land. In this life we have but the island memories heaving themselves into sight, but in the next the Lord shall ‘cause the sea to go back’ by the breath of His mouth, and the channels of the great deep of a human heart’s experiences and actions shall be laid bare.” As it is with our memories of sin, so is it with the sins themselves. Conspicuous transgressions stand island-like above the ocean of ordinary life and history, and succeeding generations, seeing one sin here and another there, treat them as separate and disconnected; but in the life to come, when there is “no more sea,” and when we “know even as also we are known,” it may appear that the huger evils which force themselves up above the common level of the family history are all connected by a chain of lesser transgressions which now lie hidden from our view.

“At the casting of the lots, we are not of course to suppose that all the male members of the tribes were present; but that the heads of the people attended, and the lots were cast on them in the following order: first, upon the heads of the twelve tribes; then upon the heads of all the clans of Judah; thirdly, upon the heads of the father-houses of the clan of Zerah; and lastly, upon the individual members of the father-house of Zabdi.”—[Keil.]

Joshua 7:19.—

I. The tenderness of Joshua towards the sinner. “My son.” “I pray thee.”

II. The severity of Joshua toward the sin. While Joshua speaks in accents of the utmost gentleness to Achan, he holds out no hope of pardon; he does but require the criminal to confess, that the glory of God may be made manifest before all Israel, and that Achan’s hope for another life, if any, may not be destroyed by his obstinacy in this. Thus we are taught

“To hate the sin with all our heart,

And yet the sinner love.”

THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE CONFESSION OF SIN
I. To confess sin to be sinful, is a tribute to the glory of God as the upholder of the majesty of truth and the beauty of holiness. II. To confess sin, even when it is already detected, is to acknowledge God’s glory in His omniscience. III. To confess sin which brings disgrace on the Lord’s people, is to display the glory of God as consisting in light and truth, and not in concealment. IV. To confess sin at the Divine bidding, is to confess that the glory of God is independent of men. V. To confess sin, is to “give glory to the Lord God,” not as adding to His glory, but as admitting and manifesting that glory. VI. To confess sin when the judgment of death will certainly follow, may be to hope in Divine mercy for the life to come, and thus to honour God’s glory in forgiveness.

Joshua 7:20.—ACHAN’S CONFESSION OF HIS CRIME.

I. The confession as a revelation of human weakness.

1. Man as too weak to see the beautiful. The goodly garment was too attractive; it drew Achan into theft, and thus into forgetfulness of the rights of God. The beauties of Nature, and the beauties of Art, as leading men to forget God, merely appropriating pleasure, instead of also rendering praise.

2. Man as too weak to behold the means of easily obtaining life’s comforts. Achan found the gold and silver too attractive also. Whatever might have been the difficulty of using these in the present, the day would doubtless come, he thought, when they would be a power. They would stand, then, for so much ease from labour, for so many of the necessaries and comforts of life, for so much social influence. Thus does the unlawful pursuit of wealth often lead men, still, to forget the claims of God.

3. Man as too weak to be grateful. In the very hour when victory had been given, that victory itself, if rightly used, leading on to a peaceful inheritance, Achan ungratefully forgat God. The mercies of the wilderness, the mercies of victory over Sihon and Og, the mercies of the passage of the Jordan, and the mercies of a renewed covenant at Gilgal, were all forgotten, and this in the very midst of new mercies at Jericho. A single coin, held close enough to the eye, will shut out the glory of the sun; so a little spoil, held too close to the heart in a spirit of covetousness, shut out from this man’s soul the sight and remembrance of Jehovah’s manifold goodness. And still this weakness repeats itself—worse than repeats itself. Less valuable spoils than these are not seldom permitted to shut out the cradle of the incarnation, the ministry of humiliation, the cross of suffering, and thus, too, the present love of a living Christ.

4. Man as too weak for faith. God had said, “Lest ye make yourselves to be devoted.” It may be that Achan had believed that, and felt its solemnity; with the glittering prize well before him, like many another in the hour of temptation, he was too feeble to believe then.

5. Man as too weak to understand that the future will soon be the present. Achan’s lack of faith must surely have been unbelief, not disbelief. With so many assurances of God’s power to see, and power to work, lying, as they did, close about him, he could not deliberately disbelieve that God saw, and that God would punish. The gold and the garment did but shut out the future; present pleasure and present possessions, just then, made up the whole vision of the man’s life. So with many, to-day still obscures to-morrow, life hides death, and time shuts out eternity.

II. The confession as reiterating a needful warning.

1. It warns us to avoid temptation. Here we may learn again to pray as Christ taught His disciples, “Lead us not into temptation.”

2. It teaches us to resist the beginnings of evil. These beginnings of evil were, probably, long before Achan saw the spoil which tempted him to sin. It may be that an hour before he took the devoted things he would not have thought himself capable of the transgression; yet we are not therefore to think that the point where he began to go astray was in the actual sin. The very act of guilt supposes a previous life in which there had been low thoughts of sin, cold considerations of Divine goodness, and poor views of God Himself. It is here that the preparation for the reception of temptation constantly begins, and here that it can best be resisted.

3. It warns us that repentance deferred is repentance embittered. At no place would confession and restitution have been so easy as immediately after the sin. Every step, after the spoil was taken, made repentance harder: the defeat at Ai, the deaths of the slain, the grief of Joshua, and even the solemnities attending the lot, were all so many obstacles in the path backward.

4. It shews us that confession at last is infinitely better than no confession at all. This confession is the one and only softening feature of the wretched man’s story; it is the one oasis in this moral desert, and even that is small. If there be any bow whatever in the cloud, it is that which is faintly reflected to us from these forced tears of penitence.

III. The confession as affording room for hope. Are we to take the solemn judgment on Achan in this life as shutting out all hope for him in the life to come?

1. There is no word uttered to tell us that Achan was eternally lost. (a) The silence of the Bible on this point. Perhaps the darkest case mentioned in Scripture, excepting the parable of Dives, is that of Judas. Even here, the indication of the eternal state is dim, although very terrible: “It were good for that man if he had never been born” … “That he might go to his own place.” And this seems to be the only instance in which the Bible indicates positively the eternal perdition of any one of its characters. True, to reverse a familiar line, there are many names, like those of Saul, Jeroboam, Ahab, and Ananias, which seem light with insufferable darkness, and yet even on the eternal state of these men the Scriptures are silent. (b) The mercy of this silence. Had the eternal state of wicked individuals been positively shewn, how many of the desponding living would have read their likeness in the character of some one known to be lost, and then have despairingly pronounced their own doom. (c) The hope that comes of this silence in cases like Achan’s. Where God has not shut out all hope, and penitence leaves some room for hope, let us hope, even though we have to fear.

2. The character of Achan’s confession furnishes some slight ground for hope. That it had been made earlier, every one must desire; yet even the confession of the penitent thief seems to have been made later. (a) Achan’s confession has no apparent reservation. “I came, I saw, I coveted, I took, I hid,” he says. (b) The confession has no attempt to implicate others. There is nothing here which corresponds with the word of the first man,—“The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree;” or with the similar utterance of the first woman,—“The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” (c) The confession has no attempt at excuse. The only word that looks towards anything else than Achan’s own weakness, is that which names the “goodly” character of the Babylonish garment, and even this can hardly be said to plead the stress of the temptation. The acknowledgment throughout has a simple regard to the man’s own wicked weakness, (d) The confession bears marks of sincerity. The first words of it almost anticipate the deep anguish in which David cried, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.” “Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel,” says Achan. Let us hope that the contrition was not in vain; let us also fear to stand at last where hope needs so many words to reveal it, and where, even then, it has to be left so faintly discernible.

Joshua 7:21.—THE PROGRESS OF SIN.

“I. It enters by the eye. II. It sinks into the heart. III. It actuates the hand. IV. It leads to secresy and dissimulation. ‘I saw,’ etc. ‘I coveted,’ etc. ‘I took and hid them in the earth.’ Thus saith James: ‘When lust (evil desire) is conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and when sin is finished, it bringeth forth death.’ ” [Clarke.]

Joshua 7:22.—THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF TRANSGRESSION.

I. The wretched issue of dissembling. “Behold, it was hid,” etc. The hidden had become the revealed. That which had been so carefully and industriously concealed, the messengers now “behold,” and it would soon be exposed before the eyes of all Israel. When God questions in the judgment, the things done in the body will be fully revealed. Not only will every person be present, but “we must all appear (be made manifest: Alf.) before the judgment seat of Christ.”

II. The humiliating and impoverishing act of restitution. “They took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua.” Achan’s labour had been all in vain. He was as poor, outwardly, as before the theft; and, in heart, his theft had left him bankrupt indeed. The gains of sin will all have presently to be returned.

1. God will have every sinner, not only to repent, but, as far as is possible, to make restitution.

2. He who makes restitution too late, may have also to suffer retribution. Anne of Austria, the Queen of France, when suffering from the repeated cruelties of her implacable enemy, Cardinal Richelieu, is said to have remarked: “My lord cardinal, there is one fact which you seem entirely to have forgotten. God is a sure paymaster. He may not pay at the end of every week, or month, or year; but I charge you, remember that He pays in the end.”

III. The only place in which men can effectually deal with sin. “They brought them unto Joshua … and poured them out before the Lord.”

1. We shall best discover sin as we search for it before the Lord. Joshua had evidently conducted the inquisition for the offender immediately before the Ark of the Divine presence. Those who “walk in the light” of fellowship with God, will most readily detect iniquity. “Sin doth like itself appear” nowhere so much as beneath the cross of the Saviour.

2. We can only rightly confess sin as we confess it before the Lord. Thus, standing before the Ark, Joshua said unto Achan, “Give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto Him. Although the sin was to be told to Joshua, Achan was to feel and to acknowledge it as in the presence of Jehovah, and as sin against Him.

3. We shall most effectually condemn sin as we judge it before the Lord. Remembering the presence of Him who is merciful and gracious, and who will by no means clear the guilty, Joshua was very tender to the man, and very severe with the offence itself. There was a moral majesty about the bearing of Joshua, which must have very deeply impressed itself upon the people around him. We shall never condemn sin effectually, unless we bear ourselves towards men in “the meekness and gentleness of Christ,” and towards sin in the spirit of Him who chose to suffer for it unto death, rather than to suffer it in others.