p. 101Ladies and Gentlemen,—
Earnestly commending to your consideration the suggestions thrown out the last time we were together on the subject of the parting gift of Moses to Israel in the shape of a national song impeaching the national character, I now draw your attention to a military incident that occurred shortly afterwards, as affording confirmatory evidence of the conclusion I am aiming to establish. It may not at first sight seem to bear much promise in this respect, but second thoughts may throw a different light on it.
Moses having died, and Israel having crossed the Jordan, and successfully commenced the invasion of the land at Jericho, Joshua sent spies to reconnoitre the position at Ai, and to report. The men came back and said the place was of no great size or strength, and that it would be unnecessary for the whole army to be employed in its capture—that a p. 102 comparatively small force would be sufficient. “Let not all the people labour thither; let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai.” So three thousand men were told out for the work, and marched to the attack. Ai was about fourteen miles distant from the camp. In no great space of time, the 3,000 men rushed back pell-mell into the camp in a state of consternation. They had been repulsed by the defenders of Ai, and pursued, with a loss of thirty-six men. Their arrival in the camp caused a panic. “The hearts of the people melted and became as water.” They had just crossed the Jordan and commenced the invasion of the land, and they now apprehended that the effect of this defeat would so inspirit the Canaanites that they would assemble en masse and overwhelm the feeble host of the Israelites.
Ladies and Gentlemen,—This is the simple and ungarnished narrative as it stands in the 7th chapter of Joshua. What would have caused the writing of it, except its truth? Do men chronicle reverses against themselves that never happened? Do they not rather try to suppress them or at least make them out to have been victorious? But here is acknowledged defeat in the course of a Divinely-conducted campaign, which the account, if a legendary one, would have represented as an unbroken tide of triumph, as a matter of course. I ask you whether the account of this defeat, written by those who were defeated, is not positive proof of its having occurred?
If so, you must take it in its completeness, and see what it involves. Joshua shares the consternation of the people on the return of the defeated three thousand. He throws himself on his face before God, who had said to him at the start, “There shall p. 103 not be any man able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, so will I be with thee.” He laments in view of this defeat that they had not been content to remain on the eastern side of the Jordan, “O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs to their enemies?” Consider the answer: “Get thee up, wherefore liest thou thus on thy face? Israel hath sinned. They have taken of the accursed thing, and stolen and dissembled also, and have put it among their own stuff. . . . . Up, sanctify the people and say, . . . . Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. In the morning, therefore, ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be that the tribe the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof: and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households: and the households shall come man by man.
This process is gone through with the result that the final lot falls on Achan, whom Joshua abjures to disclose the crime of which he has been guilty: “Tell me now what thou hast done.” Achan confesses that from the consecrated spoils of Jericho, he had abstracted a costly garment, a wedge of gold, and a quantity of silver—all of which he had hidden under his tent. Joshua sends messengers to Achan’s tent, who find the hidden goods and bring them to Joshua. Achan’s confession thus confirmed, Joshua chides him: “Why hast thou troubled us? God shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones.”
Ladies and Gentlemen,—You must take this along p. 104 with the acknowledgment of defeat. What does it prove? It proves the Divine presence and oversight in the camp, for how otherwise the explanation of the defeat, and the discovery of its cause? But it proves more than this; it looks back upon Jericho, and proves what happened there; for if truth is at work with the Ai defeat, truth would be at work with the Jericho victory as well; or, to put it conversely, if the Jericho victory were legend, we should have had legend at work with Ai also, representing onward and miraculous victory at every step, of course. Achan’s crime originated in the Jericho incident. Under ordinary circumstances, it would not have been criminal to have appropriated part of the spoils, but in this case the people were forbidden to touch anything, because the capture of the city was not their work: “All the silver and gold, and vessels of brass and iron are consecrated to the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord.”
Thus Ai proves Jericho: and what is the record of the work at Jericho? Why, that the people by command marched round the place once a day for six days, and on the seventh day, the priests blew rams’ horns seven times, when the massive walls fell down by Divine power, and Israel had nothing to do but to march forward and slaughter the wicked inhabitants. You cannot dissociate this account from the record of the Ai defeat. If the one is true, the other must be; and if you are tempted to say neither is true, then, Ladies and Gentlemen, you have to explain the writing of the history of the Ai defeat. Because there it is on the page before you. And it has been there ever since the Bible was written. And whoever wrote it there, must have had an object in writing it. If he was a true writer, employed by the p. 105 Spirit of God, there is no difficulty, of course: but if he was not a true writer, but a writer with a false motive, then, Ladies and Gentlemen, you have to explain how he came to invent the story of a defeat that never happened. Think it out. You will find the knot will only untwist in one way.