Joshua 7 Summary and Study Guide

Thirty-six Israelite soldiers died at a small town called Ai because of a robe and some silver buried under one man’s tent floor. This Joshua 7 summary and study guide follows how God brought that tent to light, and why He held a whole nation answerable for what one man did.

Setting the Stage

God promised Abraham that his descendants would be given the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:7), and hundreds of years later the family that came out of slavery in Egypt reached its edge. Moses died, Joshua took over, and the first city standing in their way was Jericho.

Before Jericho fell, Joshua told Israel that the city and everything in it now belonged to God. Nobody was to keep anything.

The silver and gold were to go into God’s treasury, and Joshua warned that anyone who took any of it would bring trouble on the whole camp (Joshua 6:18-19). The walls came down, Israel took the city, and Joshua’s name spread through the land. Joshua 7 opens with the word “But…”.

Comprehensive Joshua 7 Summary

A man of Judah called Achan had taken some of what God had claimed at Jericho. God’s anger was already burning against Israel, and the man who caused it was the only one who knew.

Joshua sends scouts to the next town, Ai. They come back with easy news: the place is small, send two or three thousand men. Joshua sends three thousand and they are driven back down the slope. Thirty-six men are killed, and the nation that had just watched Jericho fall loses its nerve.

Joshua tears his clothes and lies before the ark of the covenant until evening with the elders of Israel, dust on their heads. He asks God why He ever brought them across the Jordan, says they would have done better to stay on the other side, and then reaches past his own people to God’s reputation: what will You do for Your great name?

God answers with a diagnosis instead of comfort. Get up. Israel has sinned, broken the covenant, taken what belonged to God, stolen, lied, and hidden it among their own belongings. That is why they cannot stand, and God will not go with them again until they remove it.

So Israel is called to prepare itself, and in the morning the search narrows. Judah is taken, then the family of the Zarhites, then the household of Zabdi, then Achan himself. Joshua asks him for the truth and Achan gives it. Messengers run to the tent and find everything exactly where he said it was.

Achan, his household, his livestock and the goods he took are brought to a valley. He is put to death there, a heap of stones is raised over him, and God’s anger turns away. Israel calls the place the valley of Achor, which means trouble.

One Word Summary

• Trespass: the chapter’s own charge in verse 1, and a word for broken faith.
• Trouble: what Joshua calls the deed in verse 25, and what the place is named for.
• Removal: God ties the return of His presence to taking the thing away.

In One Sentence

Achan of Judah secretly kept a robe, silver and gold from Jericho that God had claimed for Himself, Israel lost thirty-six men at Ai because of it, and God would not go with the nation again until Joshua found the man and removed what he had taken.

Theme of Joshua 7

Joshua 7 is about a holy God living in the middle of His own people. Israel’s advantage in Canaan was never numbers or courage; it was God among them, and sin inside the camp interrupts that fellowship rather than merely offending a rule, which is why Joshua’s prayer ends on God’s name.

Running alongside it are two more ideas the chapter will not separate: the people of God are bound together, so what one man buried under his tent belonged to all of them, and God deals with what has broken the fellowship before He gives the next victory.

Joshua 7 Outline

• Joshua 7:1: Achan of the tribe of Judah takes some of what God had claimed at Jericho, and God’s anger burns against Israel.
• Joshua 7:2-3: Joshua sends scouts to Ai, who report that a small force will be enough.
• Joshua 7:4-5: Three thousand men are routed, thirty-six are killed, and Israel’s courage fails.
• Joshua 7:6-9: Joshua and the elders lie before the ark until evening, and Joshua pleads with God.
• Joshua 7:10-12: God tells Joshua to get up and names the sin as the reason Israel cannot stand.
• Joshua 7:13-15: God orders the people prepared and lays out how the guilty man will be found and sentenced.
• Joshua 7:16-18: The search narrows from tribe to family to household until Achan is taken.
• Joshua 7:19-21: Joshua urges Achan to confess, and Achan tells him what he took and where it is.
• Joshua 7:22-23: Messengers find the goods under the tent and lay them out before the LORD.
• Joshua 7:24-26: Achan and all he had are brought to the valley of Achor, where he is put to death, a heap of stones is raised, and God’s anger turns away.

Achan’s Confession

Achan gives his confession in full when the search reaches him. It is the only speech he makes in the chapter.

And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done: When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it. (Joshua 7:20-21)

Achan admits he sinned against Israel’s God, then tells Joshua what he did. Among the plunder he saw a fine imported robe, about five pounds of silver and a bar of gold. He wanted them, he took them, and he buried them in the ground inside his tent with the silver underneath.

He names four beats in order:

• I saw. The King James calls the robe Babylonish, and the Hebrew names it a mantle of Shinar, a region long associated with brightly coloured patterned cloth. It would have been among the finest things in the pile.
• I coveted. Wanting came second, after looking, and no one else could have seen it happen.
• I took. The hand followed the heart.
• I hid. He can still name the exact spot in his own tent, down to the silver lying under the rest.

The first three of those beats run through the first sin in Scripture: the woman “saw” the tree, found it “to be desired”, and “took” of its fruit (Genesis 3:6). James states the same pattern as doctrine, that desire conceives and gives birth to sin (James 1:14-15).

Observations from Joshua 7

God Names the Whole Nation Before He Names the Man (7:1, 7:11)

The chapter opens by saying that the children of Israel committed a trespass, and only then names Achan. When God speaks, He does the same thing: “Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them” (Joshua 7:11). God says Israel broke faith and broke the agreement He had given them, though one man did the taking.

Israel still reasoned this way years later. When the eastern tribes were suspected of a covenant breach, the delegation sent to them named this chapter: Achan “perished not alone in his iniquity” (Joshua 22:20). The man took others down with him. God had bound this people to Himself as one people, so what Achan buried under his tent was theirs before anyone found it.

Paul reasons the same way about a church, warning that “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6). A small amount of yeast works through a whole batch of dough. That is why removing what Achan took, rather than fighting harder, was the way back to God’s presence.

The Word “Accursed” Fills the First Half of the Chapter and Then Stops (7:1, 11, 12, 13, 15)

“Accursed” appears eight times in Joshua 7, and every one of them falls in verses 1 through 15. It is the word for something God has claimed and set apart under His ban, so that taking it makes the taker liable to the same fate. Moses had already warned Israel about it: do not bring a cursed thing into your house, or you may become a cursed thing like it (Deuteronomy 7:26).

After verse 15 the word never returns. Once the man is named the chapter stops talking about a thing and starts dealing with a person, which is where the whole search had been heading.

Rahab Kept the Spies and Lived; Achan Kept the Plunder and Did Not (2:9-11; 7:5, 7:24-25)

Rahab was a Canaanite inside Jericho who hid Israel’s two spies, and she told them her people’s hearts had melted at what God had done (Joshua 2:11). She and her household came out of the city alive when it fell (Joshua 6:25). Achan was an Israelite of Judah, and he ended in a valley away from the camp with everything he owned.

Melting hearts had belonged to Canaanites until now (Joshua 2:11; Joshua 5:1). In this chapter it is Israel whose “hearts of the people melted, and became as water” (Joshua 7:5). Israel’s own courage drained away like water. Achan’s birth inside Israel did not hold him there once he broke faith, and Rahab’s birth outside it did not keep her out once she trusted the God of Israel.

Judah Is the Tribe That Is Taken (7:1, 7:16-18)

Judah is named four times in this chapter, at the beginning and at the exposure. Judah’s inheritance would be so large that Simeon’s portion had to be taken out of it (Joshua 19:9), and Israel’s rulers would come from Judah (Genesis 49:10). The lot reaches it first.

Nothing in the chapter treats that as an excuse or an aggravation; it simply happens. The lot did not step around the leading tribe, and Israel watched a household inside it exposed in front of everyone. God was not protecting the nation’s reputation. He was clearing its camp, which is the one thing He had said had to happen before He would go with them again.

The Search Was Slow, and Achan Had Time (7:13-18)

God did not point at the man. He had the nation prepare itself overnight, then had Joshua bring Israel forward by tribes, then families, then households, then one man at a time. Achan stood through the whole process and said nothing until it reached him.

The procedure ran from one evening through to the next morning. Joshua’s first words when the search reached Achan were an appeal to tell the truth rather than an accusation (Joshua 7:19). The chapter never says what an earlier confession would have won him. It does show that the time and the invitation were both there.

Difficult Verses Explained

Was God Rebuking Joshua for Praying?

He did not. God’s words in Joshua 7:10 are “Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” Get up; why are you lying face down?

God is answering what Joshua was asking for, not prayer itself. Joshua was pleading with God about a defeat whose cause was still buried in the camp.

Joshua 7:2-3 records Joshua sending scouts and taking their advice, and it records no word to God at all. At Jericho he had been given his orders (Joshua 6:2-5). At Ai he prays after the defeat rather than before the attack.

Some readers hear the prayer of verses 7 to 9 as faithless, and it does echo the complaints Israel made in the desert (compare Exodus 14:11). Others read it as a leader who trusted God so completely that he could not imagine any other explanation, and verse 9 supports them, because Joshua ends the prayer on God’s name rather than on Israel’s survival. Either way, God answers him, and He answers by telling Joshua exactly what to do next.

Why Were Achan’s Sons and Daughters Taken to the Valley?

This is the hardest question in the chapter and Scripture does not fully answer it. Joshua 7:24 lists who was brought out: Achan, the goods, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and everything he owned.

Verse 25 then shifts between singular and plural, saying that all Israel “stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones”. Some readers take the plural to mean the household died with him. Others, including Adam Clarke, hold that Achan alone was stoned and that the plural covers his goods, and that the family were brought out to watch.

Israel’s own law says the opposite in ordinary cases: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers” (Deuteronomy 24:16).

Fathers and children were not to be executed for each other’s crimes. Ezekiel 18:20 presses the same point. Two things are usually offered in reply. The goods were buried inside the family tent (Joshua 7:21), so the household would have had to know.

And God’s sentence in verse 15 covers “he and all that he hath”. That is the wording used for a town that had gone over to other gods, where everything in it was to be destroyed and its ruin left as a heap (Deuteronomy 13:15-17). That law ends by saying the LORD will then “turn from the fierceness of his anger”, which is the wording Joshua 7:26 uses to close this chapter.

Read that way, the law being applied to Achan is the law for a place that had gone over to Canaan, which may be the point the chapter is making about what he had done. That is a reading which fits the wording, and Scripture stops short of stating it as a verdict. Where the text stops, we stop. It tells us nothing about whether Achan’s children shared his guilt, and we are in no position to say more than it does.

Common Misunderstandings

• God named the cause of this defeat, and no reader is in a position to name the cause of someone else’s. The chapter is often used to argue that every setback points to a hidden sin somewhere. Job’s three friends reasoned this way about his losses, and God told them they had not spoken rightly of Him (Job 42:7). When the disciples asked whose sin had made a man blind, Jesus answered that neither the man nor his parents had sinned (John 9:1-3).
• Israel was a nation carrying out a sentence God had named, and the church has been handed no such sword. This chapter is sometimes read as a model for church discipline. Paul tells a church to put an unrepentant member out of its fellowship (1 Corinthians 5:13), and Galatians 6:1 tells believers to restore such a person gently. Neither passage goes further than that.
• Achan took a garment and money, not idols. Joshua 7:21 names a Babylonish garment, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold, and the chapter mentions no idol anywhere. Retellings that make the goods idolatrous miss the point of the offence, which was not what the objects were but Whose they were.
• The chapter names Achan’s sons and daughters, and no wife. Joshua 7:24 gives the list, and retellings that add a wife to it are adding to the text.

Christ Connection

Achan was taken away from the camp to a valley and put to death there, and only then did God’s anger turn away from Israel. Hebrews puts Jesus in the same place for the opposite reason: “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate” (Hebrews 13:12).

Jesus was executed outside the city so that His own blood could make His people holy. One man was carried out of the camp because he had made himself liable to the ban. One was carried out of the city though He never had.

The chapter’s other connections stand on that one:

• Made a curse for us. Achan took what was under God’s ban and fell under it himself, much as Moses had warned (Deuteronomy 7:26). Paul says of Jesus that He “hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). Jesus took the curse the law pronounced and carried it in our place.
• The other man of Judah. Achan of the tribe of Judah brought trouble on a nation and bore it himself. Jesus came from the same tribe (Hebrews 7:14), had no sin of His own (Hebrews 4:15), and bore trouble that was never His. The chapter sets up the contrast; it does not make Achan a picture of Christ, but his opposite.
• The valley of trouble became a door of hope. Centuries later God said of a people who had turned away from Him that He would give them back their vineyards “and the valley of Achor for a door of hope” (Hosea 2:15). He would make the valley of trouble a doorway into hope. Isaiah names the same valley as “a place for the herds to lie down in, for my people that have sought me” (Isaiah 65:10), a field where flocks rest.

Israel’s way back to God’s presence ran through a death, and the nation had to carry it out. Our way back also runs through a death, and God carried it out Himself while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). That is why the valley of trouble could be promised as a door at all: God chose that place, of all places, to make the promise.

When, Where, and Why

• When: Early in Israel’s conquest of Canaan, immediately after the fall of Jericho and before the second attempt on Ai. The date of the conquest is debated, with proposals ranging across the fifteenth to the thirteenth centuries BC, so the chapter is better placed by its events than by a year.
• Where: Jericho, just taken; Ai, a smaller town near Beth-aven and east of Bethel in the hill country, whose name is generally taken to mean a ruin; and the valley of Achor, which the chapter names at its close and which Scripture is still using as a landmark generations later.
• Why: Joshua records this because the conquest turns on covenant faithfulness before it turns on military strength. The reader has just watched a walled city fall to a shout, and needs to know at the outset that the advantage was God’s presence and nothing else.

Key Verses

Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. (Joshua 7:11)

Israel has broken faith and broken the agreement God gave them; they took what God had claimed, stole it, lied about it, and stored it with their own possessions. God stacks six charges here where a reader might have expected one, and they escalate. What began as a hand reaching for a robe ends as a covenant broken, a lie kept, and stolen goods living in a family’s belongings as though they had been earned.

Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you. (Joshua 7:12)

Israel gave way before its enemies because they had come under the same ban as the thing they took, and God will go with them again only when they remove it. Everything before this verse is the problem and everything after it is the remedy. God does not say Israel needs a better plan or a larger army; He says the trouble is His absence, and He names the one condition on which it ends.

And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me. (Joshua 7:19)

Joshua calls Achan son, begs him to honour God by owning what he did, and asks him not to keep hiding it. The man about to pass sentence speaks to the condemned man gently and calls him family. Nothing in God’s instructions required that of Joshua. The words are his own.

Key Lessons from Joshua 7

• A victory God gave yesterday does not carry today’s obedience, as Israel found between Jericho and Ai (Joshua 6:20; 7:4-5).
• What Achan buried in his own tent cost thirty-six men who had no part in taking it (Joshua 7:1, 7:5).
• God answered Joshua’s grief with an instruction rather than comfort, telling him to get up and deal with what was in the camp (Joshua 7:10-13).
• Joshua treats confession as a way of giving God glory, which makes honesty about our sin an act of worship (Joshua 7:19).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: 20 Powerful Lessons from Joshua 7.

Bible Study Questions

1. Joshua 7:1 tells the reader about Achan’s theft before anyone in Israel knows about it. What difference does that make to how you read the defeat in verses 2 to 5?
2. In Joshua 7:2-3 the scouts give advice and Joshua acts on it. What is missing from those two verses that had been present at Jericho?
3. God says “Israel hath sinned” in verse 11 when one man took the goods. What does that tell you about how God saw the covenant He had made with this people?
4. Joshua’s prayer in verses 7 to 9 ends with “what wilt thou do unto thy great name?” What does that last line show about what Joshua cared about most?
5. Achan describes his sin in four steps in verse 21. Where in that sequence was the last point he could have stopped, and what would stopping have required of him?
6. God told Israel He would not go with them until the thing was removed (verse 12). What does that verse teach about the difference between belonging to God and walking with Him?

Joshua 7, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.

2 And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai.

3 And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither; for they are but few.

4 So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai.

5 And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water.

6 And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the LORD until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.

7 And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord GOD, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan!

8 O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies!

9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?

10 And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?

11 Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff.

12 Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you.

13 Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against to morrow: for 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.

14 In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which the LORD taketh shall come according to the families thereof; and the family which the LORD shall take shall come by households; and the household which the LORD shall take shall come man by man.

15 And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.

16 So Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes; and the tribe of Judah was taken:

17 And he brought the family of Judah; and he took the family of the Zarhites: and he brought the family of the Zarhites man by man; and Zabdi was taken:

18 And he brought his household man by man; and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.

19 And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.

20 And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:

21 When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

22 So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran unto the tent; and, behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it.

23 And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and unto all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the LORD.

24 And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of Achor.

25 And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the LORD shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.

26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the LORD turned from the fierceness of his anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day.

Frequently Asked Questions