Joshua, reflecting on the stoning of Achan

Joshua 7:25
Joshua said, "Why have you brought this trouble on us? The LORD will bring trouble on you today." Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them.

I see my world on three levels, O Lord, three rings of purging, three arenas devoted to you, in which you must and will reign. First, the world of our promised territory, a land flooded with immorality and idolatry. Second, in our midst, among the people of Israel, so tenuous in their obedience. Third, O Lord, the world of my own heart and life, the arena into which you spoke after Moses died, promising and purging by the word of your power, banishing fear and forgetfulness from it.

O Lord, we are fighting for this land. Here is our ancient inheritance, the land you instructed Abram to walk long ago, in the days of his sojourn, him walking the length and breadth of it, knowing its dimensions in anticipation of this day, the day when you would fulfill in his body (for we spring from him) the promise. Now we have made our approach, possessing it step-by-step, sensing in the land its hope, seeing broken desperation in the opposition of your enemies. They will be destroyed.

If I could meditate on the pathways of idolatry, the proclivity of the heart towards it, springing from our ancient sin and the perversion of our nature, I would see here its full flowering, all the depravities of the flesh at work in them, a god as a license to sin and lust, stamping approval on the violence of our natural condition, and darkening the mind in the worship of that which is opposed to the truth. This is the foulness of the land, a place that must be seized by force, taken, purged, freed from its slavery to the foreigners under which it groans. O Men, the earth does not support you willingly! This land was not made for you, and your torturing of it sets you at odds with one who made it, who made us as he made it for harmony together, not as equal partners but according to the great pattern, it serving and submitting to us as we care for it. This land, this promised land, is the great return, the great resting place of men, resting not in a cease from work, but a return to work in its fulfillment, the joining of men and their created purposes.

But O God, we must look on the land and admit that it is land like every other place, no more renewed than Egypt from which we came. We see these things in shadows, for the greater promise speaks of blessing, a blessing that ends, not momentarily allays, the pains of this fallen world.

But Lord, here we are, now, looking down upon this land, the slaughter of a city behind us, and deaths innumerable calling out to us. For we must, by the strength of strengthened hands, consume this land in an orgy of killing. We must, with myself as the spark, sweep like wildfire through this land, burning the chaff of mankind, threshing him beneath our feet, destroying the wickedness from it, making it fit for your sanctuary. This is the work of our hands, this great killing, already started, continuing soon against the men of Ai. Pour out your wrath through us, for we must be merciless!

The cries of the men and women as we killed them, the hate in their eyes! The blood and dust mingled in the fall of those walls, the wailing of the women, the quaking of the men! The sword in my hand thoughtful, considering, not blind in the war-madness of the pagan armies, strengthened by a recourse to temporary insanity, a suspension of the rational mind. No, this is not our path, we who fight for God fight from the conscious mind, from the reason, measuring what comes, listening. Thus our eyes and ears are open to the horrors of war, our reasons take them in to their fullness, and we know the pain of those we kill. But we kill them nonetheless.

O Jericho, I mourn not for you, though I saw with my own eyes the death of your masses, though I myself ran my sword through your women and children. Lord, the fierceness of your anger burns in your people, and we purge and purify for your glory. Before your anger, there are no innocents, even the infants whom we seized and dashed against the rocks were not blameless, conceived as they were in the sin of Adam, rebels by nature, offensive and unclean in their very selves, and unless God shows mercy they too must be purged. What is death in the natural world but a sudden suspension of his mercy? When infants are born dead do we consider God cruel? Our God bears under the sin of most men to show his compassion to his chosen ones, but have no doubt that all the pain and suffering this world can offer to men is a mercy compared to the terror of his burning presence. There is enough evil in the heart of every infant we kill to fill every kingdom of the earth with violence and hatred, born as we are, hating and hated, a people cursed and restrained from unending violence only by fear.

Violence against violence, such is the way, not in our hands to mete out towards their own ends, or at their own command, but in our hands as controlled and used, our hands as set to this task by God. Vengeance belongs to him, anger is his, the wrath that our swords deliver is his wrath, and if he is with us, then his enemies will perish. God is our master, our controller, our spear is his spear, and if he sets us against his enemies, he must destroy them until every living thing is dead. This is God, it is how he has revealed himself, it is how is made himself known, and praise him for it, for his revelation of this holy hatred, unearned (meaning, that he could have let us fill our lives with such violence until we perished, ignorant), is the great kindness that leads us to repentance, we who walk in the ways of God know that it is fear that he honors.

O Israel, look upon this and learn! Respond not with the confidence of these surrounding tribes, who glory in themselves in victory, rejoicing and celebrating the violence as good in itself. No, Israel, see your heart, that hidden realm, where a world of violence also lurks. There you will see the compassion of God, when you look upon those you kill and see a man like you, deserving death like you, but not favored, not chosen. Should this make you proud, O worm Israel? Should this make you proud, O worm Joshua? Forbid it Lord, you who look upon all men alike with the pitilessness of your law, speaking death without favoritism.

Look at the idolatry around us now, O Israel, O Joshua, and see not a foreign condition, but the pathways of your own heart! Look upon the unmastered appetites of these men and humble yourselves! Our God is a consuming fire, a God who even in shadow filled me with fear, the sword from his mouth convicting all alike.

Thus the second world, for in this battle we must keep ourselves pure, and demonstrate the fear of God among us! Achan, O blind man, who thought that God could not see, or that he would not act! Unbeliever, atheist, apostate, unclean! If God shows mercy upon such a man, that is his right, but here and now he did not. We stoned him, him and his household, all who sheltered him in his sin, so that there may be fear of God among us, that we may know that is the mercy of God alone that places the sword in our hand, his mercy alone separating this chosen tribe from the other tribes whom we come against.

Can you say that God is unjust? When Achan died was he not punished for his sin? And when the men of Jericho were slaughtered, did they not deserve death? God is not unjust, forbid your heart to even consider such a thing! He will show mercy, though, without consulting the feeble minds of men, and if he withholds it, that too is his right, for he is God, and he reigns. Fear him.

O Lord, in all things, we must praise your mercy! As your wrath is poured out, we who can see know that this is the end that the world is prepared for. This great purging is but a shadow and preparation for a greater one, and these external things show us the internal. There can be no unclean thing in your presence, the law declares this to us, and though our hearts are unclean, we know that your power can remake us, the sprinkling of the blood upon the people a great sign of it (for we know, we know, even Moses instructed us, the law is not the end, there is a promise yet), and the very fear we have of you is preparing us for it, that those who come in a poverty of spirit are favored. Lord, these things show me the way, the way of things, the pathways of your fourth world, that invisible one, populated by a spiritual people, the land which this land speaks of, the land Abraham waited for and longed for, O Lord, I long for it too.

Lord, I know the opposition of men, this mastered opposition present in my own heart, this obstinate rebellion which your future world cannot bear. I know you will destroy your enemies, that even now you endure them so that you can bring us forth, so that the third world of our hearts can be cleansed and prepared, fitted and made ready, this great purging our victory, a victory in our hearts, our hands, our swords, our spirits, cleansed and made ready for the one who made them, able to endure this wrath that we pour out, somewhere in the mystery of the promises.