Joshua Chapter 7: Achan and the Accursed Thing
Dec 17th, 2009 | By admin | Category: Joshua, Verse by Verse --Studies led by Br. Frank Shallieu (Click on Book name)The nation would be accursed and alienated from God if they did not find and punish with death the one(s) responsible for the sin. (The guilty party would be stoned and the corpse afterward burned.) This incident is a reminder of Ananias and Sapphira in the New Testament. Their sin was professing to give all to the Lord and then holding some back. It was not necessary to give all of their property to a communal arrangement, but when they said they did and were hypocritically keeping some, they sinned—and willfully. They were stealing from God because the property was promised to Him. The principle is stated in the fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians: “Put out from among yourselves that wicked person.” After a brother had intimacy with his father’s wife, the Corinthian ecclesia tolerated his presence in their midst. Not only did they fail to act, but they gloried in their false charity. The comparable punishment for stoning in the Old Testament is excommunication in the New Testament.