440
Patriarchs and Prophets
First the tribe, then the family, then the household, then the man was
taken, and Achan the son of Carmi, of the tribe of Judah, was pointed
out by the finger of God as the troubler of Israel.
To establish his guilt beyond all question, leaving no ground for
the charge that he had been unjustly condemned, Joshua solemnly
adjured Achan to acknowledge the truth. The wretched man made
full confession of his crime: “Indeed I have sinned against the Lord
God of Israel.... When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish
garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of
fifty shekel’s weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold,
they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent.” Messengers were
immediately dispatched to the tent, where they removed the earth at
the place specified, and “behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver
under it. And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought
them unto Joshua, ... and laid them out before the Lord.”
Sentence was pronounced and immediately executed. “Why hast
thou troubled us?” said Joshua, “the Lord shall trouble thee this day.”
As the people had been held responsible for Achan’s sin, and had suf-
fered from its consequences, they were, through their representatives,
to take part in its punishment. “All Israel stoned him with stones.”
Then there was raised over him a great pile of stones—a witness
to the sin and its punishment. “Wherefore the name of that place
was called, The valley of Achor,” that is, “trouble.” In the book of
Chronicles his memorial is written—“Achar, the troubler of Israel.”
1
Chronicles 2:7
.
Achan’s sin was committed in defiance of the most direct and
solemn warnings and the most mighty manifestations of God’s power.
“Keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves
accursed,” had been the proclamation to all Israel. The command was
given immediately after the miraculous passage of the Jordan, and the
recognition of God’s covenant by the circumcision of the people—
after the observance of the Passover, and the appearance of the Angel
[496]
of the covenant, the Captain of the Lord’s host. It had been followed
by the overthrow of Jericho, giving evidence of the destruction which
will surely overtake all transgressors of God’s law. The fact that divine
power alone had given the victory to Israel, that they had not come
into possession of Jericho by their own strength, gave solemn weight
to the command prohibiting them from partaking of the spoils. God,