Joshua 6 & 7: A "Troubler" of Israel

Image: Tumbling Down Stream, 2009, Vicinity of Smuggler's Gap, Vt.

Joshua 7:13 (NKJV) ¹³ Get up, sanctify the people, and say, ‘Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord God of Israel: “There is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel; you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you.”

Joshua 7:25–26 (NKJV) ²⁵ And Joshua said, “Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day.” So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.  ²⁶ Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day.

Sometimes the plot is so transparent that you know what is going to happen next well before it actually transpires.   As we read Joshua 6 & 7 the same sense of deja vu comes over us if we have been paying attention to the previous narratives in the Pentateuch.  We can almost envision our God shaking His head in disgust.  "There they go again.  When will they ever learn?"  The sordid truth is: "We never do."  Not in this life anyway.  If there is anything on which we can rely it is that our sinful desires will overtake us at various points in our journey and we will all not only stumble and fall, but we will, on occasion wallow in the mud where we have fallen.

Only a God of infinite grace would put up with us.  Thank God that He is just that.

Things start out pretty well in Joshua 6.  Joshua is given explicit instructions about what to do.  I cannot help but think that Moses' example when he let his passions get the better of him in bringing water from the rock, was clearly present in Joshua's mind.   To a hardened military commander it didn't sound like much of a strategy.  Jericho's walls were strong... the people were heavily armed... there was no element of surprise... common sense would say that the only way to take the city was by a direct assault on the walls and you might as well stand by for heavy casualties. But Joshua learned from Moses' example and listened carefully.

God said to march around the city of seven days, have the people shout on the seventh lap of the seventh day and those walls would "come tumbling down."  The story is well known and countless generations of children have delighted in it during their Sunday School or VBS classes.  The wall "fell down flat" (6:20) and the Israelites charged into the city.  "Every man straight before him" it says.  

I image a significant number of defenders were killed when those walls collapsed.  Any man of war that survived that fall probably was incapacitated by terror.  What we know is that "every man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey" was killed.  As with Sodom and Gomorrah when God's judgment finally falls on the evil of the world then it is fierce indeed.

Rahab was saved as I wrote about in the last meditation.  I found it interesting that in 6:25 it says that "she dwells in Israel to this day."  That would imply that this book was written during her lifetime though it is possible that her continued "life" means her "house".  

But it's what happens next that saddens and humbles us.  The Israelites send out a token force to take the weak city of Ai and they came scurrying back to the camp with their tails between their legs.  The fickleness of the people of God is apparent in 7:5 - "the hearts of the people melted and became like water."  These Israelites lost all their nerve.  One little battle... only thirty-six men dead... and even in the shadow of the ruins of Jericho, the Israelites were about to give it all up.

The sad truth is that if God is not fighting with us in our battles then we might as well be in terror because our chances of winning are nil.  This truth is pressed home by the Lord when He spoke to Joshua.  "Israel has sinned" He said.  We notice right away that the sin of one man and his family defiled the entire assembly.  The Church of God is so tightly bound together, like any strong family, that we are to feel each others pain and... share in each other's shame.  When one person falls into egregious sin it is generally the case that prior to his sin he was not experiencing the grace of fellowship.  We need to walk with each other and help each other guard against sin.  If we don't do that then the blunt truth is that we also share in his sin.

God tells Joshua to identify the man and his family through an elaborate exercise that involved the Lord "taking" first the tribe and then the family and then finally the man who sinned.  We don't know exactly how that worked, it probably involved the mysterious use of the Urim and Thummin, but it produced results.  Achen was identified, confessed, produced the goods that he had stolen from Jericho and was duly executed along with his household and wealth.  Again, we have to accept, that each of his family shared in his guilt even as they intended to share in his ill-gotten goods.

The story of Achen is fixed on the idea of a "troubler of Israel."  The name of the place in which he and his family was buried is called the "Valley of Achor" - literally - the "valley of trouble" and here we find an overarching teaching:  No matter how many victories we as the people of God win yet we can never be complacent.  Sin will come in and cause "trouble" and that trouble can so infect the entire congregation that its effectiveness as a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ can be completely lost.  We must seek our our Lord's grace but we must ensure that we use the means of grace, accountable fellowship, in our desire to "seek out the purity and peace" of our congregations.