When I saw among the spoil a goodly Babylonish mantle, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.- Jos_7:21.
1. The Israelites were filled with despondency. “The hearts of the people melted, and became as water.” Joshua and the elders remained all day prostrate before the Ark with rent garments and dust on their heads, and were told, “There is a devoted thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the devoted thing from among you.” To ascertain the guilty person each tribe was brought before Jehovah. By the casting of lots, or some other similar method, the tribe of Judah was taken. The clans of the tribe next presented themselves, and the Zerahites were indicated. Of the Zerahites the guilt was declared to be in the family of Zabdi. Finally, when the house of Zabdi were put to the ordeal, Achan, the son of Carmi, was pronounced to be the culprit. Joshua begged the unhappy man to “give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel,” by confessing his sin, and Achan admitted that he had stolen from the spoils of Jericho a mantle from Shinar, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels.
Everybody who reads the best books will have long had by heart Thomas à Kempis's famous description of the successive steps of a successful temptation. There is first the bare thought of the sin. Then, upon that, there is a picture of the sin formed and hung up on the secret screen of the imagination. A strange sweetness from that picture is then let down drop by drop into the heart; and then that secret sweetness soon secures the consent of the whole soul, and the thing is done. That is true, and it is powerful enough. But Achan's confession to Joshua is much simpler, and much closer to the truth. “I saw the goodly Babylonish mantle, I coveted it, I took it, and I hid it in my tent.”1 [Note: A. Whyte.]
2. In Achan's confession we see the four steps of his transgression-“I saw, I coveted, I took them, and, behold, they are hid.”
(1) “I saw.”-This implies something outside, or objective, as the philosophers would say-the garment, the silver, the gold. Not in me, but outside me. That is temptation-objective temptation-allurement. Achan saw before him, wholly within his reach, the glorious rich robes, the Babylonish garment, and the silver and the gold. He kept looking at them. Perhaps he said, within his heart, “It can do no harm to look at them.” But it was an evil heart that spoke in this way, and the evil heart deceived him. It said to him, “No, there is no harm in a look, or in a second, or in a third look.” And by and by he could do nothing else but look. He forgot his task as a soldier. He saw the rich spoils. He stood still where they lay and still he looked. He saw and continued looking until the sight inflamed his soul. It was like the steady holding of a lens to catch the rays of the sun, and, by collecting and concentrating them, giving them a burning power: such was Achan's evil eye fixed on the glitter of garment and gold.
(2) “I coveted.”-This is not outside me, it is inside; not objective, but subjective. We call this appetite-a something within me set in motion by something without me. Written in my nature is a law that when certain things are seen outside me, they quicken the desire inside. And if I do not bring my will to bear upon my desire so as to control it, the desire passes into action. When once Achan's eyes lighted on that rich garment he never could get his eyes off it again. As Thomas à Kempis says, the seductive thing got into Achan's imagination, and the devil's work was done. Achan was in a fever now lest he should lose that goodly garment. He was terrified lest any of his companions should have seen that glittering piece. He was sure some of them had seen it and were making off with it.
He coveted the silver and the gold that belonged to God, and the Babylonish garment, which he ought to have destroyed. Up till this moment he was innocent, or nearly innocent. But now he was reaching out his heart to things that did not belong to him. He coveted them. For the moment the silver and the gold and the Babylonish garment, as they lay together in one heap, were his god. He hungered after them. All that was good and brave and upright in him bowed down before them. His evil thought was hastening to become an evil deed.
(3) “I took.”-This is the fateful step. When I stride out to respond to temptation, when I close with its offer, that is the fatal step, and for that step I must render an account to God. To that step, to that choice, my will consents. Then my responsibility begins. At last the evil thought became the evil deed. Achan shut the eyes of his soul to God and honour and duty, and reached out his hands for the spoils. He took them. He was a thief now. It was no longer a look, a thought, a wish; it was a deed. He had done the evil. He took the goodly things-the things that were not his own, but God's.
(4) “They are hid.”-The whole progress of his crime is singularly plain to us. The taking might have been a hasty impulse before consequences had been well weighed. Not so the hiding in the earth in the midst of the tent; then we have to deal with design and cunning. That is a deliberate adoption and defence of the evil deed. And mark how that adoption was approved, and the defence vigorously maintained, every hour during which the treasure lay hid, especially as, day by day, and hour by hour, events were happening which bore close relation to the secret of Achan's tent and heart. Had he no misgiving when he saw the increase by others of the contents of the treasury of the Lord? Had he no misgiving when Ai was to be attacked-none when the attack had failed-none when the six-and-thirty men were slain-none when it was proclaimed that an accursed thing was in the midst of Israel-none when search was being made, when his own tribe was suspect, when through family and household the suspicion glided nearer and nearer? And when it pointed to him alone of all Israel, why did he not at once confess? why wait for the solemn adjuration of Joshua? Was it a lingering hope of escape? He did not care though the lot should fall on another to suffer innocently, did not care for shame on God's cause, did not care for future hindrance. Every stage was an opportunity to repent, but every opportunity was passed by. The confession, when it came at last, had not one fragment of voluntariness about it, it was extorted by a divinely-framed line of circumstances; there was the very highest moral pressure exerted on his evil conscience, until like an instant cold sweat there burst forth this-“Of a truth I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and thus have I done.” He made confession soon enough to glorify God, but too late to avert God's judgment.
The entire body of the remaining texts [which speak of the confession of our sins] is summed in Jos_7:19 and Ezr_10:11, in which, whether it be Achan, with his Babylonish garment, or the people of Israel, with their Babylonish lusts, the meaning of confession is simply what it is to every brave boy, girl, man, and woman, who knows the meaning of the word “honour” before God or man-namely, to say what they have done wrong, and to take the punishment of it (not to get it blanched over by any means), and to do it no more. “Without courage,” said Sir Walter Scott, “there is no truth; and without truth there is no virtue.” The sentence would have been itself more true if Sir Walter had written “candour” for “truth,” for it is possible to be true in insolence, or true in cruelty. But in looking back from the ridges of the Hill Difficulty in my own past life, and in all the vision that has been given me of the wanderings in the ways of others-this, or all principles, has become to me surest-that the first virtue to be required of man is frankness of heart and lip: and I believe that every youth of sense and honour, putting himself to faithful question, would feel that he had the devil for confessor, if he had not his father or his friend.1 [Note: Ruskin, The Lord's Prayer and the Church, § 13 (Works, xxxiv. 226).]
