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Achan (; ), the son of Carmi, a descendant of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the
tribe of Judah According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah (, ''Shevet Yehudah'') was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel, named after Judah (son of Jacob), Judah, the son of Jacob. Judah was one of the tribes to take its place in Canaan, occupying it ...
, is a figure who appears in the
Book of Joshua The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian captivity, Babylonian exile. It tells of the ...
in the
Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Jericho Jericho ( ; , ) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and the capital of the Jericho Governorate. Jericho is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. It had a population of 20,907 in 2017. F ...
and conquest of Ai. His name is given as Achar (עָכָר֙ ''‘Āḵār'') in .


Account in the Book of Joshua

According to the narrative of Joshua
chapter 7 Chapter Seven refers to a seventh Chapter (books), chapter in a book. Chapter Seven, Chapter 7, or Chapter VII may also refer to: Albums * Chapter Seven (album), ''Chapter Seven'' (album), a 2013 album by Damien Leith. * Chapter VII (album), ''Ch ...
, Achan pillaged an ingot of gold, a quantity of silver, and a "beautiful Babylonian garment" from Jericho, in contravention of Joshua's directive that "all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord" (). The Book of Joshua claims that this act resulted in the Israelites being collectively punished by God, in that they failed in their first attempt to capture Ai, with about 36 Israelites lost (). The Israelites used
cleromancy Cleromancy is a form of sortition (casting of lots) in which an outcome is determined by means that normally would be considered random, such as the rolling of dice ( astragalomancy), but that are sometimes believed to reveal the will of a deit ...
(the sacred Lots Urim and Thummim) to decide who was to blame, and having identified Achan, they stoned him to death. The consecrated goods were burnt by the Israelites, according to the text, and stones piled on top. Yahweh's anger against Israel later subsided.


Interpretation

The narrative states that the location for this punishment of Achan, which lies between Jericho and Ai, became known as the ''vale of Achor'' in memory of him. This narrative is probably an etiological myth providing a
folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...
for ''Achor'', at the point in the narrative where the vale of Achor is necessarily crossed. One item to note however is that the text describes the garment that Achor stole as ''Babylonish''; (from Shinar) the time of the Israelite invasion is usually dated to the 15th or 12th century BC, but between 1595 BCE and 627 BCE
Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...
was under foreign rule. For this reason, a few textual scholars believe that this part of the Achor narrative was written during the 7th century BC or later, but many
Biblical scholars Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse academic discipline, disciplines to the study of the Bible, with ''Bible'' referring to the books of the Biblical canon#Jewish canons, canonical Hebrew Bible in mainstream Judais ...
believe the judge Samuel may have put together this account from historical books from that time. It is not certain, however, that the whole Achor narrative dates from this time, as textual critics believe that the Achor narrative may have been spliced together from two earlier source texts; the words in the first part of Joshua 7:25, "all Israel stoned him with stones" (וירגמו אתו) show a different style and tradition from those at the end of the verse: "and they burned them in fire, and they stoned them with stones" (וישרפו אתם באש ויסקלו אתם באבנים). The repetition, the switching from "him" to "them", and switching of the Hebrew verb for "to stone", indicate that this story may be an amalgam from two different sources.


Rabbinic

The Jewish exegetes,
Rashi Shlomo Yitzchaki (; ; ; 13 July 1105) was a French rabbi who authored comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Hebrew Bible. He is commonly known by the List of rabbis known by acronyms, Rabbinic acronym Rashi (). Born in Troyes, Rashi stud ...
,
Gersonides Levi ben Gershon (1288 – 20 April 1344), better known by his Graecized name as Gersonides, or by his Latinized name Magister Leo Hebraeus, or in Hebrew by the abbreviation of first letters as ''RaLBaG'', was a medieval French Jewish philosoph ...
, and others, maintain that the stoning (Josh. vii. 25) was inflicted only on the beasts, and that the sons and daughters were brought there merely to witness and be warned. This seems to be the opinion also of the rabbis in the Talmud (see Rashi on Sanh. 44a), although they say that the wife and the children were accessories to the crime, in so far as they knew of it and kept silent. According to another and apparently much older rabbinical tradition, Achan's crime had many aggravating features. He had seen in Jericho an idol endowed with magic powers, with a tongue of gold, the costly mantle spread upon it, the silver presents before it. By taking this idol he caused the death, before the city of Ai, of thirty-six righteous men of Israel, members of the high court. When Joshua, through the twelve precious stones of the high priest's breastplate, learned who was the culprit, he resorted to the severest measures of punishment, inflicting death by stoning and by fire both on him and his children, in spite of Deut. xxiv. 16; for these had known of the crime and had not at once told the chiefs of the hidden idol. They thus brought death upon more than half the members of the high court (see Pirḳe R. El. xxxviii.; Tan., Wa-yesheb, ed. 1863, p. 43). Another view expressed by the rabbis is that Achan committed incest, or violatedthe Sabbath, or was otherwise guilty of a five-fold crime. This view is based upon the fivefold use of the word ("also," "even") in Josh. vii. 11 ("They have also transgressed my covenant," etc.), as well as upon his own confession: "Thus and thus have I done" (Josh. vii. 20). Achan is held up by the rabbis as a model of the penitent sinner; because his public confession and subsequent punishment saved him from eternal doom in
Gehenna Gehenna ( ; ) or Gehinnom ( or ) is a Biblical toponym that has acquired various theological connotations, including as a place of divine punishment, in Jewish eschatology. The place is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as part of the border ...
. "Every culprit before he is to meet his penalty of death," says the Mishnah Sanh. vi. 2, "is told to make a public confession, in order to be saved from Gehenna's doom." Thus Achan confessed to all his sins when he said: "Of a truth I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and thus and thus I have done." That his avowal saved him from eternal doom may be learned from Joshua's words to Achan: "Why hast thou troubled us? So may the Lord trouble you this day," which are taken to mean "in the life that now is, so that thou mayest be released in the life to come" (Sanh. 43b-44; see also Ḳimḥi on Josh. v. 25).'Jewish Encyclopedia


Family tree


Notes


References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Achan People executed by stoning Book of Joshua people Tribe of Judah