By the seventh chapter of Joshua, Israel is well on its way to the capture of Canaan, God’s promised land.  Jericho has fallen to the soldier’s trumpets and the war machine marched on to what should have been a relatively easy victory in the land of Ai. But here we find a kink in the game plan as the lop sided battle ended up being a blood bath for Israel. A little lamenting from Joshua reveals God’s anger toward Israel over the stealing of plunder from a previous battle.

God’s anger here seems simple and straight forward. We already know how God feels about disobedience at this point. We know that the sin of an individual has an affect on the entire community. But what can be easily missed is the nature of this specific disobedience within the context of the narrative. This single act threw a wrench into the cogs of the entire nation and eventually ended in the brutal death of Achan at the hands of his own people. God said don’t “touch it.” He “touched it.” We find a lot of people in the Old and New Testaments “touching it” and they don’t fall to the same fate.

Something within the context to note is that God was in the midst of delivering the promised land to his people. They had finally left their wandering in the wilderness and were actively making their way into “the destination.” This was the complete fulfillment of God’s promise and Achan was settling for precious rocks. A nation was finally coming into their physical home and Achan was more concerned with what he could have in the moment.

Why settle?

I can relate. I think we all can. It’s easy to settle for what is easy (not as redundant as it sounds), even when we are on our way to the greater. On our way to the fulness of the promise we settle for the prize. I’m not sure that this merits being stoned and burned alive with the things we settled for, but it at least calls for examination of our priorities. The easy isn’t always evil but it does diminish or take away from the weight of our own promised land; regardless of how close or far away we are from it.

Colossians 3:1-5 correlates well:

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your[a] life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly”

It gets even more serious in light of Hebrews 10:13 “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”