Defeat at Ai - Joshua 7

For the study of chapter 7, I listened to the lecture for the last half without realizing that the first half had been covered in a previous lecture, so my first assumption was that God went to Joshua and told him that someone had sinned against Him and taken some of the sacred treasure and had to be dealt with. Imagine my surprise when I read it and realized that I had missed the critical first part of that event. Only knowing the last half, I thought that the punishment for the thief was extreme but once I learned the whole story, I was like “oh yeah that makes sense.” Let’s remember the miraculous defeat against Jericho and that the soldiers were told to go take all the precious metals (gold, silver, brass, etc) and give it to the priests because it was to consecrated to God. This was the extreme opposite end of the spectrum of what was normal for victors at this time, and really since the dawn of human history. The victors get to loot and abuse the defeated enemy and keep any goods that they can take for their own enrichment, in fact that was a serious motivating factor for men who joined the armies that they fought for, personal enrichment through looting after victory. So the concept of taking the stuff and giving it to “God” would have been a difficult sell to contemporary soldiers, and Israel would have known that.

Jericho is defeated so Joshua takes the army to their next objective, a place called Ai, and he sends out some spies to do some recon and figure out what they need to do. The spies come back and say that they should only need about 300 men in order to take the city because it’s not that big. So Joshua sends 300 men to take the city and not only do they not take it, but they are driven away and 36 soldiers are killed. Joshua crashes out, understandably, and prays to God basically “why did you even bring us over the Jordan river to be destroyed by the Amorites.” Interestingly, and this makes sense, Joshua brings up not only this defeat but now all the people in the land will know that the Israelites can be defeated and will fight against them even harder. Form a military stand point, this is a serious concern because if the people are too scared to fight back then they will not fight back as hard but if they think they have a chance, they will fight harder and the Israelites might experience more loses. Of course the answer to this is that God will always enable them to prevail if they are righteous, regardless of how fiercely the enemy fights. From Joshua’s perspective, God promised them victory if they were righteous, and He hadn’t delivered. Joshua probably grew up in Egypt, probably knew a little bit about the concept of Egyptian warfare, etc. He had to abandon that whole military mindset to adopt something that didn’t make sense, or at least went against the military strategy used, again, throughout human history. Again, the Israelite army is putting themselves in positions where they could be easily defeated because of the small numbers that they are using, they are putting themselves into incredibly vulnerable positions because God promised them miraculous victory. It’s understandable that Joshua might think something like “we’re doing what you say, we’re trusting you, why didn’t you hold up your end of the bargain?” I wonder what would have happened if Joshua had prayed before the battle asking if there was anything he needed to know about that would prevent their victory? I wonder if God would have told him beforehand if he would have asked.

God responds to Joshua, “Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” Get up, why are you on the ground? God doesn’t beat around the bush which is nice, and tells him straight up that Israel sinned “for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put in even among their own stuff.” Someone took something they weren’t supposed to, lied about and hid it among their other things. God tells Joshua to sanctify the people, which I don’t know if that means some kind of ritual purity thing because it seems like an abstract concept to me, and that the next morning the men will be brought before him and God will reveal who the thief is.

Verse 16 says that “Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes.” This phrase “Joshua rose up early in the morning” has been seen several times now, mostly when dealing with following God’s commands such as “cross the Jordan tomorrow” or “go defeat Jericho.” TB says that it’s a euphemism that means that he got up eager and ready to go, with purpose. So Joshua again wakes up early, eager to obey God, and the tribes and brought in front of him and first the tribe of Judah was “taken” when the family of Zarhites, then from that family Zabdi was taken, “and he brought his household man by man; and Achan,… was taken.” I don’t see if mentioned here but TB talked about drawing lots and all these men drew lots and Achan drew the lot indicating that he was guilty noting that Achan drawing the guilty lot could only be explained by divine intervention because of the sheer number of men who had to draw “not guilty” lots before getting to him. The drawing of lots might be what the word “taken” meant here. Also interesting that Nephi talks about drawing lots when deciding who’s going to deal with Laban while trying to get the brass plates, so a little nod to Hebrew culture there.

Achan is identified as the guilty party, and Joshua tells him to confess “tell me now what thou hast done.” Achan confesses that he took for his personal use “a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight… and they are his in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.” What’s interesting about this is that the Babylonian garment, TB suggests that this would have been a royal robe, something very fancy and easily identifiable as being from a different culture so it’s not like he could have warn it functionally like to keep warm in the winter, or even to show off because it would have been immediately flagged as illicitly taken, so he couldn’t have worn it like ever. And the gold and silver that he stole, at this point, as far as I know, the only gold or silver in Israel was held by the priests for use in religious functions. Israel had been eating manna, drinking from the rocks, and wearing clothes that didn’t wear out from use, what could they have possibly been buying with gold and silver at that point. Again, the point is, Achan using this gold and silver for his own benefit would have almost certainly been flagged immediately as having been illicitly procured, so he couldn’t have even used it, it was no benefit to him, but he took it anyway. The only explanation he gave was that he “coveted them.”

Joshua sends messengers to verify his story and sure enough the goods are exactly where he said they were, so they bring the goods back to Joshua “and laid them out before the Lord.” Then Joshua and all the people grab not only Achan but also all his family, “his sons, and his daughters,” his wife if she’s alive, and all his livestock, animals, his tent, the goods he stole, all his belongings, took them outside the camp and stoned them all to death. After everyone was dead, them and all the stuff was burned up, and “they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day” as a reminder of what happens when you disobey God.

There are several very interesting points to this story. First is why kill everyone, not just Achan alone? TB suggests that one reason might be that the family was complicit, though he says that’s just speculation. This is also similar to what happened to Korah who wanted Aaron’s job and him and all who were supportive of him died as well as all their families. It’s possible Achan’s children would have grown up with a sense of “avenging their father’s death,” and that would have caused a rift in the community. TB notes that this is a lesson that one single person’s sin effects the whole community and can lead the whole community astray. It’s hard enough to be righteous as a society when everyone is just trying their best, but when there are some people who are actively working against righteousness, their actions become a corrosive factor working against the people spiritually. Also why kill everyone, this is where my missing the first part of the chapter comes into the play because at first I thought it was too much but then afterward when I learned that 36 soldiers had been killed, well that’s all bets off at that point. I’ve been listening to a lot of books about GWOT recently and one theme is clear throughout, how much soldiers hate indiscriminately after losing a comrade. This isn’t universal not is it reasonable. Ask most service members about Beau Bergdahl, their own countryman, and see if soldiers are capable to hating their own and wishing ill toward them. After losing 36 brothers in arms and guaranteeing more difficult battles later, it would not be surprising if the other soldiers thought that family annihilation was acceptable (with the caveat that this was a different time, place, and culture, they all lived together and death as punishment was more widely accepted). I don’t think that’s how it would go today like people wanting the kids to be killed, but for the situation we’re talking about, it makes more sense.

The IM gives a good explanation, saying, “It may appear that the action taken against Achan for taking the booty of Jericho was too severe, but the death of the mortal body may often be a merciful act both to other people and to the offender. Some offenses of men are of such consequence that the payment of the life of the offender is required for the expiation of the sin. Achan’s disobedience cost the lives of thirty-six man. But even more important, Israel’s spiritual death would be more serious than the physical death of individuals.” Again, this goes back to God seeing the whole, eternal picture. God is the one under obligation to fulfill the law of compensation, He’s the one who has to balance what’s best for the person, what’s best for the community, and what’s best for the plan of salvation to play out. He holds the responsibility of maintaining balance between all those factors while still making everything work for everyone else. He’s the one who designed the next life, He knows what it’s like, He’s the one who orchestrate the atonement and the resurrection. Even the longest mortal life is a blip in time for Him (and us) so if he deems that a group of people are best served by exiting mortality, then He’s the one who has to make all that ok for them in the long run. The next life is amazing, I’ll never be mad at anyone for getting there before me. Who knows, maybe Achan’s children would have been shunned by the community because of their association with him and therefore been outcasts and cut off anyway and they would have had a miserable life. A final reason why it’s possible God had the whole household destroyed is because He wanted everyone in Israel to fully embrace the extremely high stakes that they were dealing with in these situations. Achan wasn’t snitched on by a family member, or a neighbor, God Himself let them suffer a defeat, then God Himself pointed the finger at Achan. People think they can get away with a lot of things but when the God of the universe is wiling to call out your sins in front of the whole community and punish everyone for them, there if nothing that you can get away with. God wanted them to know that nothing can be hidden, and if you try anyway, the consequences are so severe that your entire bloodline will be wiped out. This is Joshua’s first incident like this and God is setting the stage brazenly. There’s no hiding and it is absolute destruction.

A second interesting thing about this story is something that I had been thinking about for several years now and it had to do with God’s favor during warfare, who’s righteousness did it depend on. The Nephites were promised victory by God in defending themselves if they were righteous, but I always wondered if that meant just the soldier’s righteousness or the people’s righteousness or both. Initially I thought that it was dependent on the righteousness of the soldiers only with an example being the stripling warriors. They were young, full of faith and trust that “if we do not doubt, God will deliver us,” and they were delivered, repeatedly. But then the Nephites as a whole army suffered defeats even though the soldiers seemed to be righteous enough, because the people back home were wicked. Case in point, the kingmen driving Pahoran out of the capital city, usurping his judgment seat and taking over the government. There were still some righteous Nephite back home to support the war effort, but a significant portion had corrupted the government so the armies suffered losses. Now with the example of Achan, one single guy disobeying the “covenant” made with God made the entire Israelite army suffer a loss against a pagan enemy and have 36 of their soldiers killed. So it appears from these examples that both the people back him have to be righteous and the individual soldiers as well have to be obedient to the covenants made with God. It also brings up a good point that Achan himself probably didn’t make those covenants with God, Moses and Joshua did. It’s not like today where we each make individual covenants with God, this was more of a blanket acceptance, maybe the people as a whole accepted it, but I don’t think that each individual went to the tabernacle and accepted these covenants with God. Although that might be what the sacrifices were meant to do, each person doing them or at least taking the animals or grain to the tabernacle so that the priests could do it.

Thirdly, again, because I missed the first half of the chapter, initially I thought that God told Joshua about Achan’s theft of sacred property and that it was treated like a “hey this isn’t great kind of thing,” or more specifically like I thought the initial message to Joshua was a generic “Israel isn’t obedient enough,” and that was kind of a hard pill to swallow because most people are just out here trying their best and it kind of came off as a non-descript “do better” and then a whole family died. I was kind of irritated because the whole “you’re not doing enough” wasn’t specific enough for me because I’m not perfect, I’m wildly imperfect and I’m willing to be called out on it, but it has to be more constructive than “do better” because that’s not concrete enough for me to make specific changes or behavioral adjustments so fulfill the criticism worthy of mention. I can’t get better if I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and that was the impression I got when I first read it. After going back through I realized that God had accepted Israel’s general “trying my best” as righteous enough for His promises and victories, but it was one man’s specific sin that caused all this trouble. I also appreciated that God was quickly very specific in what the problem was, He wasn’t generic about it, He was very specific. That was important for me because I know that I am hard on myself in a very generic way “you’re not doing enough,” “you’re bad”, “you’re worthless,” etc but in this case, trying their best was acceptable, and individual sins were called out specifically, and that’s what I need, to know that I’m trying my best and that’s sufficient and then shown specific improvements that I can make. I realize and accept that I need a lot of work, and it’s very overwhelming to think about all my flaws at once, I can’t fix them all at once, and even one at a time is difficult, but at my best is acceptable. I appreciate that.