• This is Joshua 7:24-25. “And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons and daughters and his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they brought them up to the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, “Why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.”
• There’s no way to understand such a moment apart from the holiness of God, meaning not simply that he is morally superior to his creatures (which would make this event more tolerable), but that he is morally absolute (which makes it right and just). We may be troubled by the fact that in killing Achan’s household the image of God is being destroyed, the very image that makes life sacred in the first place. More likely, we are troubled because we value human life above God and, by extension, above God’s holiness. So we unwittingly discard the only thing that would make sense of such a tragedy.
• The death of Achan and his family, along with other difficult passages in the Bible, forces us to reckon with our doctrine of God. Very early in the Church’s life some decided the Bible presented, in effect, two different gods: one of the Old Testament (petty and vengeful), one of the New (forgiving and gracious). Generally speaking, this was the view of Marcion (84-160 AD). Though he was excommunicated by the church in Rome in 144 AD, his views persisted for a couple of centuries. You could argue they’ve persisted, in various theological disguises, for 20 centuries.
• We’d be kidding ourselves if we didn’t admit Marcion’s view has some appeal. It would allow us to keep a great deal of Scripture while explaining away many difficult texts. God would be more understandable, reasonable, presentable in decent company. What it wouldn’t allow us to do is worship a God who is actually worthy of bearing that name, a God whose “greatness no one can fathom” (Ps 145:3), who “kills and brings to life” (1 Sam 2:6), who holds the “keys to death and hell” (Rev 1:18) and “who alone is to be feared” (Ps 76:7).
• Marcion made God human. He wasn’t worthy of worship anymore, but he was likable. You could, metaphorically speaking, leave him on the coffee table and not be embarrassed if somebody saw him.
• Achan’s sin, for which he and his family were killed, was a matter of taking to himself spoils of battle that were supposed to be destroyed (a beautiful cloak and a bunch of gold and silver). On one level the crime was theft. But like all sin, it asserted the word of God was not binding, not relevant to the life Achan was actually living. It also asserted the holiness of God, which undergirds all ethical structures, was negotiable. Achan didn’t understand he was assailing the very thing that gave his life value and meaning. Take away the holiness and image of God and Achan is just an animal. Animals are slaughtered every day. As it is, Achan death disturbs us profoundly: the tragic loss of life, the similarity we bear to him.