Joshua 7 (by Bobby Thompson)

Consider Joshua 7 for your Scripture reading today. I have written a short article about some background to this passage that I pray will enhance your understanding and application of this chapter as you travel through it.

Joshua 7 opens like a great novel or drama in which the narrator or opening scene reveals something significant about the conclusion of the story. The importance of the story is then placed on the events and circumstances that lead up to that climax or conclusion. The first word in most of our English texts is “but”; this causes us to appropriately want to relate the following statement with some previous knowledge. In this case the information referred to is in the previous chapter in which the children of Israel secured a great victory over the city of Jericho by trusting the Lord and precisely obeying his commands. Israel’s military campaign over the Caananites was to be like none other that the world had ever seen. Because Yahweh promised to fight for Israel, sometimes the military strategy took on some rather unconventional forms at times. God’s purposes in this was that Israel might be a nation whose trust was fully in their God, and that the name of Yahweh might be known and feared among the heathen nations. This was certainly the case in Joshua 6 as the Bible records the victory over Jericho. The chapter ends with a statement that summarizes the testimony of the nation of Israel in the land at this time: “So the Lord was with Joshua and his fame was noised throughout all the country.” What a contrast to the opening of chapter 7! The Bible says in 7:1, “But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing…” This statement is all too reminiscent of similar statements of failure on the part of the children of Israel to be the Kingdom of Priests and the example to the nations that God wanted them to be. Time after time Israel failed to trust the Lord and obey his commands and time after time the Lord lovingly pursued and chastened them. God is a holy God and demands a holy people. He will not allow his name to be dishonored and misrepresented by sin and rebellion among his people, his representatives in the world. The account of the failure of Israel and the judgement of Achan in Joshua 7 is not an account of wrathful retribution, but is an account of a holy God in pursuit of a holy people. This was a crucial point in Israel’s history. As they entered the land of Caanan they were on the threshold of blessing or compromise; Blessing, in that it was God’s will for them to dwell in the land as his people, and compromise, in that they were entering a land that was filled with every imaginable corruption. Their mission was to destroy all the elements of corruption that God commanded, that they might not be defiled by them. The danger was that the close proximity to these elements might cause corruption to spring up in the camp and thus defile the Nation. This is why the timing and severity of the Judgement of Achan was so important and necessary at the outset of the conquest. This was to be a reminder tattooed to the memories of the people in order that they might not again experience the tragedy of compromise and that they might experience the full blessing of God in the land.