Joshua7chapter 7

Joshua 7:1

The accursed thing first occurs at 6:18, in the warning Joshua gave before the city fell, that taking it would make the camp of Israel a curse. Here the sentence opens with the children of Israel committing the trespass, plural, and only afterward names the one man who took anything. Achan is traced four generations back to Zerah of Judah, and the chapter prints the same line again at verse 18, so a reader can place him in the tribe that receives the first and largest portion in chapter 15. The anger is kindled while the camp still knows nothing.

Joshua 7:2-3

sent men from Jericho to: Jericho was taken on instructions given in advance, by a plan no commander would have chosen. Ai is scouted first, and the force is sized by an estimate of the enemy, they are but few, with the added reason that the march is not worth the labour. Nobody asks God anything in these two verses, which is the lapse the book states outright at 9:14, when Israel makes a league with Gibeon and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord. Barnes works the town's fighting strength back from the twelve thousand of 8:25, so the arithmetic of the spies was sound; what it left out was the reason the last wall came down.

Joshua 7:4-5

Thirty and six men is a small loss beside the numbers this book usually reports, and the effect runs far past the figure. The hearts of the people melted and became as water is the wording Rahab used of Canaan at 2:11 and the wording 5:1 used of the Amorite kings, so the sentence written twice about the enemy is now written about Israel. Barnes reads Shebarim as the stone quarries, and the short casualty list points to a line that broke before there was much fighting.

Joshua 7:6-9

Joshua's complaint takes up the wilderness generation's own words, would to God we had been content and dwelt on the other side Jordan, which is the murmur of Exodus 14:12 and Numbers 14:2 pointed back across the river. Then he argues the way Moses argued, what wilt thou do unto thy great name, the plea of Exodus 32:12 and Numbers 14:15-16 and Deuteronomy 9:28 put in fewer words. Clarke observes that no rebuke follows for the prayer itself, and that the answer corrects the posture rather than the words. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown record that many readers hear human weakness in the language, and the chapter neither defends him nor blames him.

Joshua 7:10-12

The answer begins by telling Joshua to get off the ground, and then lays the charge with Israel as its subject rather than Achan. After Israel hath sinned, five more verbs follow: transgressed, taken, stolen, dissembled, and put it even among their own stuff, each one a step further from the first act. Verse 12 suspends what Joshua was given at 1:5, that God would not fail him nor forsake him, and makes its return conditional on destroying the accursed from among them. Clarke draws the mechanism out of the word itself, that whatever touched the devoted thing fell under the same sentence, so Israel stands accursed by contact rather than by consent.

Joshua 7:13-15

The remedy is a public assembly, and the people are told to sanctify themselves before the search starts, the same preparation ordered at Sinai in Exodus 19:10 and at the Jordan in Joshua 3:5. The narrowing runs by tribes, then families, then households, then man by man, and each step says the Lord taketh rather than naming a method; Clarke reports the older Jewish explanations, including the stone of the high priest's breastplate losing its light. He hath wrought folly in Israel uses a phrase Scripture keeps for a short list of acts, Genesis 34:7 over Dinah, Deuteronomy 22:21, and again in Judges 19 and 20.

Joshua 7:16-18

Four rounds of lot, and the tribe taken is Judah, the tribe that receives the first and largest inheritance in chapter 15 and carries the sceptre of Genesis 49:10. Henry weighs what that costs the most honoured name in the census lists. Achan watches the lot come nearer through three rounds and says nothing until it reaches him. Proverbs 16:33 states the principle the whole procedure runs on, that the lot is cast into the lap and the disposing of it belongs to the Lord.

Joshua 7:19-20

Joshua calls him my son, and give glory to the God of Israel is a formula of solemn adjuration, a demand for the truth under oath; the same words are put to the healed man in John 9:24 by men who want an admission out of him. Barnes reads it as summoning a man before God to speak plainly. Achan answers without argument, indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and the older commentators divide over what the confession was worth to him, Clarke holding out hope for the man while others read an admission the lot had already forced.

Joshua 7:21

I saw among the spoils: The confession gives the order, and the order is what the verse is for: I saw, then I coveted, then I took, then I hid. Genesis 3:6 runs the same three steps, saw and desired and took, and 2 Samuel 11:2-4 runs them again. The Babylonish garment is literally a robe of Shinar, the plain named at Genesis 10:10, so the goods themselves say where they came from and how far trade reached into a Canaanite town; Barnes notes that robes of that make were worn by kings and prophets. Two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold at fifty shekels weight is a large sum, and the tenth commandment names the step that came before the taking.

Joshua 7:22-23

The messengers run, and running is the only quick movement in a chapter that otherwise proceeds by assembly and lot. The tent is opened and the ground matches the confession exactly, the garment buried and the silver under it, as verse 21 had said. Then the goods are laid out before the Lord, so the silver and the gold reach the treasury they were devoted to at 6:19, after a defeat and thirty-six graves.

Joshua 7:24-25

Achan's sons and daughters are brought down to the valley with the oxen and the tent, and what happened to them is disputed. Verse 25 carries both pronouns, stoned him with stones and burned them with fire, and readers have taken the them for the family or for the goods and the cattle. Deuteronomy 24:16 forbids putting children to death for a father and 2 Kings 14:6 quotes that law as binding, which is the ground of the narrower reading; those who hold that the household died with him point to verse 24 and read the family as knowing what lay buried under their own floor. Joshua's question uses the verb the valley takes its name from, why hast thou troubled us, and the sentence he pronounces turns that same verb back.

Joshua 7:26

This is the second heap of stones in the book, after the twelve stones set up at Gilgal in chapter 4, and a third goes over the king of Ai at 8:29. The place keeps the name of the trouble, and 1 Chronicles 2:7 calls the man himself Achar, the troubler of Israel, so the name and the deed are held together in the record. Hosea 2:15 takes that same valley and gives it back as a door of hope, and Isaiah 65:10 has it as a place for herds to lie down, which is what later Scripture does with the worst ground in Joshua.