Achan's Secret

It is night in the camp. One man kneels inside his tent and digs a hole in the earth floor. Into it go a beautiful robe, a pile of silver, and a bar of gold. He smooths the dirt flat. Nobody saw. Or so he thinks.

Israel has just seen the impossible. The walls of Jericho have fallen flat, and the first city of the promised land is theirs. But before the battle, Joshua gave a clear command from God. Everything in Jericho was to be devoted to the Lord. The silver and gold, the bronze and iron, were holy. They belonged in the Lord's treasury, not in anyone's pocket. Nobody was to take anything for himself. Everyone obeyed. Well, almost everyone.

The next target is a small town called Ai. Joshua's scouts come back confident. “Don't send the whole army. Two or three thousand men will do it. There are only a few of them.” So about three thousand soldiers march up the hill. And it all goes wrong. The men of Ai burst out of their gate and chase the Israelites back down the slope. Thirty-six Israelites are killed. The army that watched Jericho fall runs for home, and the Bible says the hearts of the people melted and became like water.

Joshua tears his clothes. He falls face down before the ark of the Lord and stays there until evening, with dust on his head. “Lord, why did you bring us across the Jordan just for this? What will happen to your great name now?” And God answers him plainly. “Get up. Why are you lying on your face? Israel has sinned. They have taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen, and lied, and hidden it among their own belongings.” The battle of Ai was not lost on that hillside. It was lost in a tent, the night after Jericho.

Early the next morning, Joshua gathers all Israel. Tribe by tribe they come forward. The tribe of Judah is chosen. Then one clan in Judah. Then one family in that clan. Then, man by man, the household comes forward, until only one is left standing. Achan, son of Carmi. Every eye turns to him. Joshua's voice is surprisingly gentle. “My son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and confess to him. Tell me what you have done. Don't hide it from me.”

“It is true. I have sinned against the Lord. Among the spoil I saw a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold. I wanted them, and I took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”

Messengers run to the tent. They dig, and there it all is, just as he said. They lay it out before the Lord. Notice the order of Achan's words: I saw, I wanted, I took, I hid. That is how so much wrongdoing grows. Then Joshua and all Israel took Achan to a valley outside the camp, with the silver, the robe and the gold, and with his sons and daughters, his oxen, his donkeys and his sheep, his tent and everything he had. There all Israel stoned them, and burned them with fire, and raised a great heap of stones over the place. It is one of the hardest pages in the Bible. What Achan did in secret did not stay his alone; it fell on his whole house. They called it the Valley of Achor, which means the Valley of Trouble. The Lord turned from his anger, and Israel could go forward again.

The word behind devoted things is the Hebrew herem. It means something set apart completely for God, taken out of ordinary human use. At Jericho, Joshua chapter 6 says the precious metals were to go into the treasury of the Lord. So Achan's theft wasn't just shoplifting. He took what had been given to God. And the robe he coveted came from Shinar, the Bible's name for Babylonia, far to the east. It was an expensive import, the kind of thing a desert traveller might never have owned.

Achan's Secret. You'll find it in Joshua chapter 7. The Valley of Trouble isn't the end of the story, though. Centuries later the prophet Hosea promised that God would make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. So here's the question to carry with you. Is there something you've buried, hoping nobody will see, that you need to bring into the light?