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CHAPTER VIII

The punishment of Achan. Ai taken, and destroyed.

Joshua immediately sent messengers to the tent of Achan, who found the articles hid in it, as he had described. The Babylonish garment was very splendid and costly, and is spoken of by Josephus as "woven entirely of gold." It was such an one as princes wore at that time, on great, public occasions, and probably had belonged, if not to the king of Jericho, to some noble of his court. This, and the two hundred shekels of silver, and the wedge of gold, were brought to Joshua, and laid down before the ark of the covenant, in the presence of the Lord.

The guilt of Achan was thus publicly made manifest, beyond the possibility of a doubt. It only remained to inflict the punishment which divine justice had denounced. He was taken by the proper officers, under the direction of Joshua -the latter, with the whole body of the Israelites accompanying them-to a valley not far distant, which was afterwards called, from what took place there, the valley of Achor, that is, of trouble. The rich garment, too; the silver and the gold; his sons and his daughters; his oxen, his

asses, and his sheep; his tent, and all that Achan had, were carried with him.

An awful exhibition of the displeasure of God against sin was to take place. It was marked, indeed, with tremendous severity, but this was necessary to teach the Israelites, who were just commencing their career of conquest in taking possession of the promised land, to establish them there, under the guidance and protection of Jehovah, as a distinct people, that his commands could not be violated with impunity.

It is very probable that Joshua addressed the assembled Israelites on this occasion, explaining to them the nature of the punishment that was to be inflicted upon Achan, and exhorting them to regard it as a warning, never to be forgotten, against their commission of a similar offence. He, also, addressed the wretched culprit; showing him the aggravation of his guilt, and the evil which it had brought upon the Israelites. "Why hast thou troubled us?" said he; "the Lord shall trouble thee this day."

At the command, then, of Joshua, and by a portion of the people, as the representatives of the whole, Achan and his children were stoned to death; and their bodies, and all that belonged to him, including the spoils of Jericho which he had stolen, were consumed by fire. This being done, a great heap of stones was raised over the

ashes, an enduring monument of the transaction, and of the awful justice of the Almighty.

How this justice is to be reconciled with the involving in the fate of their father the sons and daughters of Achan, is an inquiry which may, at first, appear to be attended with some difficulty. But we often see children, in the providence of God, and in the natural course, as we term it, of events, suffering severely on account of the errors and sins of their parents. And this takes place under the divine direction. So that there is no more difficulty in the one case than in the other. Besides, sin has brought death into our world. The sons and daughters of Achan were subject to this universal token of the displeasure of God against our guilty race. Whether they were called to die by disease, or a stroke of lightning, or the opening of the earth by an earthquake, or in the manner in which they suffered, is alike consistent with the divine justice. For God has the right to take away the life of his creatures in any way that he pleases, and we may be sure that the peculiar mode of his doing it, although we may not always see the reasons of it, is the result of his infinite wisdom and goodness. In this particular case, the destruction of the whole family of Achan, with all that he had, was designed to manifest the more forcibly the displeasure of God against him, and to

affect, with an abiding and salutary awe, not only those who witnessed it, but all who should, afterwards, learn the history of the event.

Had we been on the spot, and acquainted with the peculiar circumstances of the transaction, we should doubtless have understood more fully than we now can, the reasons of it. It is quite possible, that either the general character of Achan's children may have been so notoriously wicked, or their participation in the guilt of their father, in some way, so well understood, that their doom appeared to the Israelites to be in accordance with their deserts. The Scriptures do not always give us the full account of the events which they record. The facts which they contain, are just such as God saw would be best adapted, if received with a proper spirit, for our instruction in duty. In not drawing out the minuter shades and colors of these facts, or explaining the particular reasons, in the course of his moral government over the world, on which their existence depended, he tries the teachableness of our disposition, our filial confidence in him, and our humility and candor in judging of the conduct of the Infinite and Omniscient Mind. And we should do well never to forget these truths in reading the Sacred Oracles, whenever they present to our view matters of obscure or incomprehensible import.

Achan having suffered the penalty due to his guilt, and the accursed thing being destroyed from among the Israelites, the anger of the Lord was appeased, and he addressed Joshua in these encouraging words: "Fear not, neither be thou dismayed: take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land." He then directed Joshua completely to destroy the city and its king, as Jericho had been destroyed; permitting the Israelites, however, to take the spoils for their own use; and enjoining the employment of an ambush to effect the conquest. Such a measure God had a right to prescribe; and the simple justification of those who employed it is, that they acted in accordance with the divine direction.

By "all the people of war," we are not to understand, as the subsequent part of the narrative clearly shows, the whole number of the soldiery, six hundred thousand; but such a portion as was needed to ensure success, and probably, the choicest and most effective men, thirty thousand in all. Five thousand of these Joshua sent, in the darkness of the night, secretly to post themselves on the west side of Ai, between it and Bethel. There he directed them to remain till himself and the residue approaching the place,

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