Joshua 7:1-26

Curious Conjunctions

Joshua 7:0

APART from the main course of this narrative, there are some conjunctions of names which are full of interest, and full also of spiritual instruction and comfort. We have to go in search of some beautiful things: they do not always lie upon the broad and open surface. The loveliest parts of a country are not always seen by travellers who keep on the highway: they lie apart, they have to be sought for; there are little dells, waterfalls, tarns, and natural gardens which only the pedestrian can see, and he only as the result of patient inquiry. It is so with the Scriptures. Almost every verse has its hidden jewel. We read perhaps too rapidly, or we have come under the mischievous operation of a familiarity which supposes it knows all about the Bible. "All about the Bible" it is impossible for any finite intellect to know. The deepest and most continuous readers of the holy record rise from their last perusal to assure us that they have hardly begun to spell out the initial meaning of God's written revelation.

What conjunction, then, strikes us first in reading this exciting narrative? There is a remarkable one in the second verse: "Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai" where is that? "which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Bethel." The striking conjunction is in these two names "Beth-aven" and "Bethel." For a long time they were supposed to be different names of the same place, but the latest and highest authorities have determined them to be two distinct places. Coming before us in these strange syllables, many may not be able to see the contrast or feel its. force. "Beth-aven" means, "house of vanity," "house of idols;" "Bethel" means, "house of God." Now read: "Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, the house of vanity, on the east side of Bethel, the house of God." So we find it all through life. Contrarieties face us every day, and make us wonder why they should be. It is possible to draw two totally different pictures of society, each of which shall be exactly done, and neither of which shall represent the reality of the whole case. There are people so constituted that they can see but in one direction: they can see only that which is good; they multiply the sanctuary into a church which covers the whole earth, and they say, The millennium has come, if not in its fulness of splendour, yet in a dawn about which there can be no mistake; they listen to the reports of gracious charity; they hear the song of the worshipping multitude; they see what is being done on the right hand and on the left all of which is good, beneficent, beautiful; and they say, looking at these things alone, This is the Sabbath of the world, the great rest-period of time; now is the day of God's salvation. There are others who can see only the darkness, the miser, the sin, and the sorrow the fatal wound; and they say, Churches have failed, ministries have come to nothing, evangels have sounded their silver trumpets and delivered their sweet messages, and all their sounding has died upon the air and nothing is left but emptiness. Neither of these statements, taken as a whole statement, is correct; we must put them together if we would really understand the exact position of the world. But there are people who will not look upon Beth-aven the house of vanity, the house of idols. They are singularly constituted at least, in the sense that they will not look upon evil or believe in its existence. When evil is described, they follow the description with the criticism that it is an exaggeration. They are hopeful, buoyant, generous themselves, and most pure, and therefore they will not believe in the so-called revelations of the perdition of modern civilisation. There are others who will only look upon that side. The point to be kept in view is that there are two sides, and they must both be looked at fearlessly in a spirit of righteousness, with an intention to ascertain the truth, abide by righteous consequences, and make lifelong reparation for lifelong unrighteousness. The timid people who will not look upon Beth-aven are often most exasperating. Nothing can persuade them to look into certain cases: they prefer not to be shocked; they pass Beth-aven in haste, and speed to the house of God. We recognise their goodness in a measure, and the sweetness of their disposition generally, but we must not take the key-note of progress and administration from people who are oppressed with such timidity. Beth-aven exists in every age, in every civilised land; it stands next door to the house of God, and we must face the fact and all its consequences. Enter into what city we may, there is the house of wealth, and there is the hovel of poverty just behind. The city has its great thoroughfares aflare with gas, brilliant with decoration, astir with all the signs of modern activity and progress; but, alas! the city has its back streets, its out-of-the-way places; some of us dare not go through such portiors of the city, what wonder if we only see thoroughfare life, and say, Behold the signs of wealth, and splendour, and power; this is the culmination of civilising influence? Who reflects that there are quarters in every metropolis in Europe into which decency dare not enter, and purity itself, except associated with the highest moral strength, shudders to think of? We find also in this city the house of piety and the house of profanity. How we deprive ourselves of many a stimulus to fuller labour by concealing from ourselves that there is a house of profanity! We do not destroy the house by ignoring it. We bless God that there are some brave spirits who do not ignore the existence of the house of profanity, but who go boldly up to it, and ask to walk through it, and leave a message to its owner, and ask its inhabitants to discuss great questions and submit themselves to the influence of new atmospheres. These are the apostles of the time the brave pioneers of heaven's own King; they should be supported, honoured, and sustained by persons who have not their moral nerve or their spiritual dauntlessness. All this we may admit and yet forget that Beth-aven and Bethel are in the same man. Every man would seem to be two men. What contrasts there are in our own personal character! On one side how generous, noble, trustful, philanthropic; almost grand to a heroic point in our impulses and propositions and activities; and yet presently we come upon a vein of the purest selfishness that ever debased a character. We have public benevolence and private self-will: we will do anything for the masses, we begrudge everything expended upon our own family. Or contrariwise: the little personal house may have everything every door-panel a picture, every window a garden, every floor a bed of flowers; but we care nothing for those who are outside, wasting, suffering, dying, hastening, for aught we know, to all the horrors of perdition. Let every man examine his own character, and he will be struck with the contrasts which it presents the singular and instructive conjunctions which come together even in the individual spirit. One self speaks up in the name of right; another self says, Do not speak so loudly. Everything depends upon the self which is uppermost at the time. It is perfectly possible in a moral sense for the same fountain to pour sweet waters and bitter. The apostle asks the question in a sense which was not intended to exclude that possibility. There does not live a Christian man who is not conscious of this dual movement in his own soul: within himself he says, I know not what to do; when I would do good, evil is present with me; when I would pray, the evil spirit will not allow me; when I would sing, I am suddenly choked; when I would give, my hand seems smitten and it falls by my side in helplessness. So everywhere the seeing eye beholds Beth-aven, the house of vanity, Bethel, the house of God; and the Christian teacher wants in some way to bring the influence of the latter to bear upon the action of the former.

What a curious conjunction is found in Joshua 7:24 : "Achan the son of Zerah." This does not strike us as a conjunction or contrast in English reading. "Achan" means "trouble;" "Zerah" means "the rising of light." "Achan the son of Zerah" not immediately, for Achan was "the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah." But the division is most startling as seen in this twenty-fourth verse: Achan trouble; Zerah the rising of light! How family histories vary! A praying father has a blaspheming son. The honestest man in the city lives to see his firstborn expatriated as a felon. Heredity in virtue is exploded. Good men have not good sons by necessity. It is easy and pleasant talking to say, Given a good stock, and the branches will all be right; given an excellent father and mother, and the children need not be much looked after; they will come up in the way of righteousness and be ornaments in society. That sophism has been exploded in countless tragical instances. Zerah, representing the rising of light quite a poetical name; the horizon widens as he gazes upon it, all heaven heightens as he looks the prayerful look towards its sublimity; how little he thinks that presently there will arise in his family a man who will be stoned to death as a thief! He could not help that. Abel is not responsible for Cain. We do not understand the working of many a mystery in Providence. Things are not to be explained by one reference, or two: the explanation lies far back in history. The dead live. Reproduction accompanies development. We cannot tell what virus stained our blood. But, on the other hand, heredity in vice is not fated. The blaspheming father has a praying son. The man who was never known for his goodness has a child who is a philanthropist, a missionary, who dies with Christ upon the cross, and counts the crucifixion coronation. So the law does not operate in one direction only: it is an impartial and comprehensive law. Let no man say, I am fated to do thus, and so. It would be a wicked criticism upon Providence. The answer is in every man's soul; and who does not know that he could if he chose be a better man, a larger man altogether? Let the soul itself answer the question in its own identity and in the solemnity of its own oath.

What a beautiful conjunction is found in Joshua 7:26 , when connected with another passage of Scripture in a later book! In the twenty-sixth verse are these words: "Wherefore the name of that place was called, the valley of Achor, unto this day" that is, the "valley of trouble." The valley of Achor is said to be a pass leading from Gilgal towards the centre of the country, or, as it might be represented, from Jericho to Jerusalem, that is, from the city of destruction to the city of God. Remember that "Achor" means what Achan also means, namely, trouble. Now read Hosea 2:15 , and see what is meant by the beauty of the conjunction: "And I will give her... the valley of Achor for a door of hope" I will make the valley of trouble the door of hope. See the great power of God! He can accomplish even this miracle. "Thy dead men shall live." The desert shall blossom as the rose, and the wilderness shall become as a fruitful field. Where thou didst weep, thou shalt laugh in godly triumph; where thou didst fall, thou shalt rise: affliction shall become an altar; tears shall be turned into telescopes through which thou shalt see still further into the heights of God's astronomy the mystery of heaven's blazing glories. God will not have valleys of trouble left in his earth. It is the purpose of Heaven to cleanse out all the stains and taints of sin and all the footprints of misery, and to grow a flower where poison grew before. "I will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope;" she will hope the more when she remembers the trouble. Our afflictions add to our enjoyments when sanctified and turned to their highest uses. Chastening lifts up victory to higher, if soberer, triumph. It is the contrast that arrests the soul. Had all been garden-land flowers, singing birds, summer air, we should not have known want or pain, nor should we have been surprised by new revelations of God's goodness. We see the stars in the darkness. We know where home is, and think of it as the evening closes in. We left the house in the morning, it may have been thoughtlessly or carelessly, without highly-accented recognition of its security and plentifulness; but as the shadows gathered, and the wind grew colder, and people rose from labour and went away from the field, we too thought of home. The light scattered us, the darkness brought us together! "I will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope;" the background shall be adapted to the picture: she shall see the light thrown upon the darkness, and be astonished with great amazement when she beholds what can be done in unexpected or forsaken places. Our own experience confirms this. We know this sweet passage to be quite true. We are the better for the visit to the churchyard. We are the richer for the grave; it is to us a freehold worth more than a thousand acres, nay, it consecrates all other acres: it touches the whole land with religious suggestiveness and solemnity. Now we are the better and richer for the loss. Now we feel that we would not forego the advantages of the great sorrow. Let us find in our own experience a commentary upon Holy Scripture. If the Bible is a book far outside of us, without any vital relation to what we know and feel and handle, what wonder if it should fall into desuetude or become almost contemptuously neglected? But finding in the Bible our own history, a mirror in which we can see ourselves, reading in the Bible the universal language and not a provincial dialect, feeling that it touches life at every point, who can wonder if it should be the man of our counsel, the chief book in the house, our chart at sea, our confidence on land? Let us say again and again to ourselves, as if reciting heaven's own poetry, "I will make the valley of Achor a door of hope." The very repetition of such words discovers their music Say it in your distresses, repeat it in the snowy winter-time, rehearse it when the fig tree doth not blossom, whisper it to your souls on the way to the graveyard; and in the time of personal despondency, of which you can only speak with reluctance even to your dearest friend, hold this soliloquy, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God." The utterance of that word will break the spell of misery. To speak such a sentence to the soul will be to break the fetters which bind it in unholy and humiliating bondage. I will make the valley of Achor a door of hope. So though today we be in trouble and darkness and distress, wait awhile, and the valley shall be a door, and the door when it springs back will open heaven.

Selected Notes

" The valley of Achor for a door of hope" ( Hos 2:15 )- The Easterns prefer a figure that is suggestive but at the same time hazy and indistinct, and this passage belongs to such a class. The Valley of Achor runs up from Gilgal towards Bethel. There Achan was stoned, and the divine indignation removed. The word Achor means trouble, affliction; and it is just possible that from it we get our word ache. Thus the valley of affliction was the door through which Israel first entered the land of Canaan. And so again, by Hosea, the Lord promised to lead Israel to peace and rest through the valley of trouble. The very indistinctness makes this mode of speaking the more suggestive.

"Achan... was taken" ( Jos 7:18 ). When Jericho was taken and devoted to destruction, Achan fell under the temptation of secreting an ingot of gold, a quantity of silver, and a costly Babylonish garment, which he buried in his tent, deeming that his sin was hid. For this which, as a violation of a vow made by the nation as one body, had involved the whole nation in his guilt, the Israelites were defeated with serious loss, in their first attack upon Ai; and as Joshua was well assured that this humiliation was designed as the punishment of a crime which had inculpated the whole people, he took immediate measures to discover the criminal. As in other cases, the matter was referred to the Lord by the lot, and the lot ultimately indicated the actual criminal. The conscience-stricken offender then confessed his crime to Joshua; and his confession being verified by the production of his ill-gotten treasure, the people, actuated by the strong impulse with which men tear up, root and branch, a polluted thing, hurried away not only Achan but his tent, his goods, his spoil, his cattle, his children, to the valley (afterwards called) of Achor, north of Jericho, where they stoned him, and all that belonged to him; after which the whole was consumed with fire, and a cairn of stones raised over the ashes. The severity of this act, as regards the family of Achan, has provoked some remark. Instead of vindicating it, as is generally done, by the allegation that the members of Achan's family were probably accessories to his crime after the fact, we prefer the supposition that they were included in the doom by one of those sudden impulses of indiscriminate popular vengeance to which the Jewish people were exceedingly prone, and which, in this case, it would not have been in the power of Joshua to control by any authority which he could under such circumstances exercise. It is admitted that this is no more than a conjecture: but as such it is at least worth as much as, and assumes considerably less than, the conjectures which have been offered by others.

Prayer

Almighty God, we ask for a clean heart and a right spirit, an obedient will, an unquestioning, restful faith. "We would say the Lord's prayer, Not my will, but thine, be done. Who but the Lord could say this to thee? We can repeat the words; we can feel after the sentiment as blind men grope for what they want, but we cannot pray the prayer in all the fulness of its meaning, because of the infirmities which disable us, and because of the temptations which assail and weaken the soul. What we do not understand is God's will. If we knew that, we should wish it to be done. But we do not know it; we misunderstand it; we make it narrow, and empty it of all divinest thought and meaning: so how can we pray that it should be done? But even this miracle thou canst' work within us; thou canst reveal thy will to our hearts, and make us know how good it is, how necessarily wise and beneficent, righteous and pitiful. Lord, do this great thing for us, and so deliver us from ourselves, and lead us into thy personality, that we may live and move and have our being in God, and be conscious of no other life, but have all the triumph and sense of security rising from the sure consciousness that we are in the Living One. We are blind, and would see afar off. Thou seest the end from the beginning. We mistake all things; we misplace them; we cannot follow all the drift of their meaning, or appreciate all the colour of their suggestion; we are poor, inapt scholars in the great school. Give us rest from ourselves by giving us deeper peace in God. Thus would we come to the Lord's prayer, which lay so near the Lord's Cross. If we can pray this prayer, the bitterness of death will be past, and the Cross we shall despise as to its shame. Help us to carry life's burdens with some measure of cheerfulness, and enable us to say, This also cometh forth from the Lord, even this great cross, this dark cloud, this large loss, this weakening infirmity. Thus we shall count the stones upon the road as jewels; the Cross will be a way to the crown; and all the discipline of life will have as its promise an exceeding great reward. As for our sin, we remember it only to mourn it, and we bring it to the Cross, and we nail it there: there it is borne away by the Lamb of God, in whom is our heart's trust, and from whom is our daily expectation. Love us every one, throw thine arms more closely and tenderly around us, give us a feeling of security, work within us a godly discontent with everything that is less than ourselves, and create in us that fierce hunger which only the infinite can satisfy. Pity us in our weaknesses and reckon not our infirmities against us until they aggravate thy righteousness and provoke thy law, and come over the mountain of our sin as one who travelleth in haste, and destroy the mountain as thou dost touch it in the passage. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray. Until he came, our prayers were poor, and narrow, and selfish; but he being in our hearts, by the Spirit, we can pray to have no will: we can say, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.