For nearly forty years the children of Israel are lost to view in the obscurity of the desert. “The space,” says Moses, “in which we came from Kadesh-barnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as the Lord sware unto them. For indeed the hand of the Lord was against them, to destroy them from among the host, until they were consumed.”Deuteronomy 2:14, 15.
(PP 406.1)
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During these years the people were constantly reminded that they were under the divine rebuke. In the rebellion at Kadesh they had rejected God, and God had for the time rejected them. Since they had proved unfaithful to His covenant, they were not to receive the sign of the covenant, the rite of circumcision. Their desire to return to the land of slavery had shown them to be unworthy of freedom, and the ordinance of the Passover, instituted to commemorate the deliverance from bondage, was not to be observed.
(PP 406.2)
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Yet the continuance of the tabernacle service testified that God had not utterly forsaken His people. And His providence still supplied their wants. “The Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand,” said Moses, in rehearsing the history of their wanderings. “He knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness; these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.”Deuteronomy 2:7. And the Levites’ hymn, recorded by Nehemiah, vividly pictures God’s care for Israel, even during these years of rejection and banishment: “Thou in Thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness: the pillar of the cloud departed not from them by day, to lead them in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night, to show them light, and the way wherein they should go. Thou gavest also Thy good Spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not Thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst. Yea, forty years didst Thou sustain them in the wilderness; ... their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not.”Nehemiah 9:19-21.
(PP 406.3)
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This exercise of divine power in behalf of Israel was designed also to increase the fear with which they were regarded by the surrounding nations, and thus prepare the way for their easier and complete triumph. When the tidings that God had stayed the waters of Jordan before the children of Israel, reached the kings of the Amorites and of the Canaanites, their hearts melted with fear. The Hebrews had already slain the five kings of Midian, the powerful Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og of Bashan, and now the passage over the swollen and impetuous Jordan filled all the surrounding nations with terror. To the Canaanites, to all Israel, and to Joshua himself, unmistakable evidence had been given that the living God, the King of heaven and earth, was among His people, and that “He would not fail them nor forsake them.”Deuteronomy 31:6.
(PP 485.1)
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A short distance from Jordan the Hebrews made their first encampment in Canaan. Here Joshua “circumcised the children of Israel;”“and the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the Passover.”Joshua 5:3, 9, 10. The suspension of the rite of circumcision since the rebellion at Kadesh had been a constant witness to Israel that their covenant with God, of which it was the appointed symbol, had been broken. And the discontinuance of the Passover, the memorial of their deliverance from Egypt, had been an evidence of the Lord’s displeasure at their desire to return to the land of bondage. Now, however, the years of rejection were ended. Once more God acknowledged Israel as His people, and the sign of the covenant was restored. The rite of circumcision was performed upon all the people who had been born in the wilderness. And the Lord declared to Joshua, “This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you,”(Joshua 5:9) and in allusion to this the place of their encampment was called Gilgal, “a rolling away,” or “rolling off.”
(PP 485.2)
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Early in the morning, Joshua gathered the people together “by their tribes”(Joshua 7:16), and the solemn and impressive ceremony began. Step by step the investigation went on. Closer and still closer came the fearful test. First the tribe, then the family, then the household, then the man was taken, and Achan the son of Carmi, of the tribe of Judah, was pointed out by the finger of God as the troubler of Israel.
(PP 495.1)
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To establish his guilt beyond all question, leaving no ground for the charge that he had been unjustly condemned, Joshua solemnly adjured Achan to acknowledge the truth. The wretched man made full confession of his crime: “Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel.... When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekel’s weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent.”Joshua 7:20, 21. Messengers were immediately dispatched to the tent, where they removed the earth at the place specified, and “behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it. And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, ... and laid them out before the Lord.”Joshua 7:21, 22, 23.
(PP 495.2)
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Sentence was pronounced and immediately executed. “Why hast thou troubled us?” said Joshua, “the Lord shall trouble thee this day.” As the people had been held responsible for Achan’s sin, and had suffered from its consequences, they were, through their representatives, to take part in its punishment. “All Israel stoned him with stones.”Joshua 7:25.
(PP 495.3)
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Then there was raised over him a great pile of stones—a witness to the sin and its punishment. “Wherefore the name of that place was called, The valley of Achor,” that is, “trouble.”Joshua 7:26. In the book of Chronicles his memorial is written—“Achar, the troubler of Israel.”1 Chronicles 2:7.
(PP 495.4)
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Achan’s sin was committed in defiance of the most direct and solemn warnings and the most mighty manifestations of God’s power. “Keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed,”(Joshua 6:18) had been the proclamation to all Israel. The command was given immediately after the miraculous passage of the Jordan, and the recognition of God’s covenant by the circumcision of the people—after the observance of the Passover, and the appearance of the Angel of the covenant, the Captain of the Lord’s host. It had been followed by the overthrow of Jericho, giving evidence of the destruction which will surely overtake all transgressors of God’s law. The fact that divine power alone had given the victory to Israel, that they had not come into possession of Jericho by their own strength, gave solemn weight to the command prohibiting them from partaking of the spoils. God, by the might of His own word, had overthrown this stronghold; the conquest was His, and to Him alone the city with all that it contained was to be devoted.
(PP 495.5)
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Of the millions of Israel there was but one man who, in that solemn hour of triumph and of judgment, had dared to transgress the command of God. Achan’s covetousness was excited by the sight of that costly robe of Shinar; even when it had brought him face to face with death he called it “a goodly Babylonish garment.”Joshua 7:21. One sin had led to another, and he appropriated the gold and silver devoted to the treasury of the Lord—he robbed God of the first fruits of the land of Canaan.
(PP 496.1)
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The deadly sin that led to Achan’s ruin had its root in covetousness, of all sins one of the most common and the most lightly regarded. While other offenses meet with detection and punishment, how rarely does the violation of the tenth commandment so much as call forth censure. The enormity of this sin, and its terrible results, are the lessons of Achan’s history.
(PP 496.2)
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Covetousness is an evil of gradual development. Achan had cherished greed of gain until it became a habit, binding him in fetters well-nigh impossible to break. While fostering this evil, he would have been filled with horror at the thought of bringing disaster upon Israel; but his perceptions were deadened by sin, and when temptation came, he fell an easy prey.
(PP 496.3)
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Are not similar sins still committed, in the face of warnings as solemn and explicit? We are as directly forbidden to indulge covetousness as was Achan to appropriate the spoils of Jericho. God has declared it to be idolatry. We are warned, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”Matthew 6:24. “Take heed, and beware of covetousness.”Luke 12:15. “Let it not be once named among you.”Ephesians 5:3. We have before us the fearful doom of Achan, of Judas, of Ananias and Sapphira. Back of all these we have that of Lucifer, the “son of the morning,”(Isaiah 14:12) who, coveting a higher state, forfeited forever the brightness and bliss of heaven. And yet, notwithstanding all these warnings, covetousness abounds.
(PP 496.4)
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