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Messengers were sent to his tent, who brought what Achan had hidden; and he, with his sons and daughters, his cattle, and all that he had, and the garment, silver, and gold, were taken to a valley near by, where the people stoned them, and burned them with fire; and then raised over all a great heap of stones, which remained as a memorial to warn others against sinning as Achan had done.
The Covenanters defeated! How! Why! Ah, there was an Achan in the camp. The king was already perfidious in the Covenant. His perfidy had blighted the nation, and smitten the army. Hitherto God had led the armies of the Covenanters; they had won easy victories, and sometimes bloodless triumphs. But now the Lord turns His back upon the banner unfurled for His Crown and Covenant.
'Follow the golden wedge of Achan, and the silver of Iscariot, thou root of all evil! And he rushed on, yelling, 'Down with the circumcision! Down with the blasphemers! while the poor girl vanished among the crowd. Raphael watched him with a quaint thoughtful smile, while Miriam shrieked aloud at the destruction of the precious trumpery. 'The monk is right, mother.
Meantime, the Judeans, the tribesmen of Achan, rallied about him, and throwing themselves upon the other tribes, they wrought fearful havoc and bloodshed. This determined Achan to confess his sins. The confession cost him his life, but it saved him from losing his share in the world to come. In spite of the reverses at Ai, the terror inspired by the Israelites grew among the Canaanitish peoples.
And is it not enough for you, senors, to load yourselves with the wedge of Achan, and partake his doom, but you must make these hapless heathens the victims of your greed and cruelty, and forestall for them on earth those torments which may await their unbaptized souls hereafter?"
One minister somewhat doubtfully urged that "although a precept in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids killing the child for the father's sin," yet after all "the children of Saul and Achan perished with their parents, though too young to have shared their guilt."
In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs; in vain is individual sacrifice, or sectional concession. The accursed thing is with us, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence remains. Drag, then, the Achan into light; and let national repentance atone for national sin.
In early popular religion the only examples of a deity's deliberately inflicting on innocent persons the punishment of another's wrongdoing are connected with the old conception of tribal and national solidarity OEdipus, Achan, David, and others, by their crimes, bring misfortune on their peoples; when the guilty have received their punishment the innocent are relieved.
In our story the combination of individual and united responsibility is very solemn. The individual: as we find it in the expression, "man for man"; each man felt himself under the eye of God, to be dealt with. And when Achan had been taken, he had to make confession.
Readers of the Old Testament will not need to be reminded that in the earlier stages of Israel's existence as a people the whole nation was repeatedly said to be punished for the behaviour of individuals, and families perished for the transgression of a father, as in the case of Achan. No particular attention was ever paid to the individual as such.
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