The punishment of Achan and his household

This is the third straight week that our neighbor has mowed our front lawn without our having asked him to. The lawn hadn’t even gotten very scraggly.

It’s kind of him, but it’s making me nervous.

I’ve begun taking Samuel to the library for longish periods – something I only can do if Karin is with Daniel. (I couldn’t attend to Daniel and let Samuel loose in a public place; he’d get into trouble.) The main attraction of the library, for Samuel, is the huge variety of crayons and markers in the children’s play area. There are some cool toys there, too, but Samuel colors the whole while.

The attraction, for me, is that going to the library uses up a little more of Samuel’s day. I’ll say it again. A lot of parenting is just running out the clock.

Our pastor has been preaching through the book of Joshua. This week’s sermon was about Achan’s sin and how he and his household were punished for it. Why were Achan’s sons, daughters, oxen, donkeys, and sheep put to death along with Achan? Because they knew about the sin and didn’t do anything about it, said the pastor. They, too, were responsible. I’ve been told this quite a few times, but I can’t accept it. Achan’s sons and daughters may have been complicit in his sin. But his oxen, donkeys, and sheep? Naaaaah. Well, one might say, they’re just livestock; they don’t matter. But animals do matter, at least according to the last verse of the book of Jonah. They matter very much, and they’re blameless, yet they’re liable to be destroyed. Also, why do the Israelites bother to burn up Achan’s tents? Apparently, some sort of literal or symbolic cleansing is taking place; and if this is true concerning Achan’s household within Israel, why shouldn’t it also be true of the destruction of non-Israelites – and of beasts, tents, garments, and other goods – during the wars of conquest? But the idea of large-scale violent purging doesn’t sit well with us twenty-first century folk. Which is good; but it makes Joshua hard for us to understand.

The pale horse

First, my skin-spot. Is it a malignant cancer?

I don’t know. The doctor never looked at it. When I went in for my checkup, I was told that my health insurance was not acceptable.

“But when I made my appointment,” I told the receptionist, “I said that I had insurance from _____, and I asked if there was any way that it might not be accepted, and you assured me that it would be accepted since it was _____ insurance.”

“What you have,” she blandly replied, “is not _____ insurance but _____ _____ insurance” (the extra blank doesn’t denote a different insurance company; rather, it indicates that the coverage is funded by the state). “And although we do take _____ insurance, we don’t accept _____ _____ insurance. Did you not know this?”

No, I hadn’t known it, though I’d tried to ask her about it when I made the appointment.

Long story short, I’ll have to make an appointment to be seen by a different doctor. (I feel obliged to continue trying not to die, so young, of cancer.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m re-reading Agatha Christie’s novel The Pale Horse, in which the victims sicken and die – apparently because of the cultivation, in them, of a “death wish” – while, miles away, their murderers safely wait. This will be the first Christie novel I’ve read three times. While its gloom is most appealing, it also tosses out such light barbs as this one:

We all went to church, and listened respectfully to Mr. Dane Calthrop’s scholarly sermon on a text taken from Isaiah which seemed to deal less with religion than with Persian history. …

Indeed, this morning, Karin & I hear such a sermon. (Our pastor has resigned, and, while the Search Committee deliberates, we are preached to by volunteers.) The text is from the book of Joshua. The story is the crossing of the River Jordan. What were the four difficulties of crossing the Jordan?

• First, the river’s width: one mile.
• Second, its depth. How deep was it? (“One mile!” Karin whispers.) Twelve feet.
• Third, the mud. Even if the Israelites had been able to touch the bottom, twelve feet down, they would’ve sunk knee-deep into the mud. (My brother David would’ve liked this sermon.)
• Fourth, the current. (Behold a photo of our visiting preacher, leading a church tour at the River Jordan. Look at that awful current.)

All of this, on PowerPoint. We also are given a handout with blanks to fill in and biblical text to underline. “I want you to underline every time the word ‘ark’ is printed!” says the visiting preacher. There are five iterations on the handout; and elsewhere in Joshua, the word ‘ark’ is written sixteen times. Doubtless it’s an important word.

The lesson: However impossible your own situation appears to be, God is able to lead you through it, as he was able to lead the Israelites across the River Jordan.

I want to cry out: Yes, yes, we know this; we knew it when Moses crossed the Red Sea. But when are we going to talk about the genocide? Isn’t that what’s at the troubling heart of the book of Joshua? Isn’t that what we believers must come to terms with? That, and the Israelites’ constant betrayal of God – even as, with his help, they triumph?