Catholic Commentary
Achan's Secret Sin and Israel's Corporate Guilt
1But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the devoted things; for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. Therefore Yahweh’s anger burned against the children of Israel.
Joshua 7:1 records that the Israelites violated God's command by taking items from the devoted things of Jericho that were consecrated solely to the Lord, specifically through Achan's hidden theft, which provoked God's anger against the entire nation. The passage establishes the theological principle that one person's secret breach of covenant affects the whole community's standing before God.
One man's hidden sin becomes the whole nation's wound — God's anger falls on all Israel because the covenant is corporate, not individual.
"Therefore Yahweh's anger burned against the children of Israel"
The divine response is expressed through the anthropomorphism wayyiḥar-'ap YHWH — literally, "the nose of Yahweh burned hot." This idiom for anger in Hebrew is visceral and immediate. God is not indifferent; the covenant is a living relationship, and its breach provokes genuine divine displeasure. Importantly, the anger is directed at all Israel, not yet at Achan by name. The community is implicated before the sinner is even confronted. This structures the entire drama of Joshua 7: the community must discern, expose, and deal with the sin within itself before it can be restored to divine favor.
Typological Sense
The Church Fathers read Achan as a figure of the hidden sinner within the Body of Christ — the one whose private transgression weakens the entire Church's spiritual vitality. Origen (Homilies on Joshua VIII) saw in Achan a type of the unrepentant sinner who, while outwardly remaining within the community, saps its power. The ḥērem itself prefigures the sacred things of the New Covenant — the Eucharist, the sacraments — which demand reverence and cannot be profaned without consequence to the whole Body.
Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to bear on this verse.
The Dogma of Original Sin and Social Sin: The attribution of Achan's individual act to all Israel anticipates the Church's teaching on social sin — the way personal transgression wounds the entire Body. The Catechism teaches: "Sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence, and injustice to reign among them" (CCC 1869). John Paul II's Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (1984) directly addresses this, noting that while sin is always personal, "every sin has a social echo" (§16). Joshua 7:1 is the Old Testament's starkest dramatization of this truth.
The Holiness of Sacred Things: The ḥērem connects theologically to the Catholic teaching on the sacrilegious misuse of what is consecrated to God (CCC 2120). Achan's sin is not simply avarice but sacrilege — treating the holy as common. This resonates with Paul's warning that eating the Eucharist unworthily brings judgment upon oneself and the community (1 Cor 11:29–30).
Origen and the Body Analogy: Origen (Homilies on Joshua VIII.6) writes that "just as one limb of the body, if infected, spreads corruption through the whole," so one sinner concealed in the Church endangers the community's spiritual health. Ambrose similarly applied this passage to the need for ecclesiastical discipline.
The Necessity of Confession and Exposure: The narrative arc of Joshua 7 — from concealment to forced disclosure to restoration — mirrors the structure of the Sacrament of Penance: hidden sin must be brought to light, named, and confessed before healing of the community can begin. The ḥērem itself is reestablished only after Achan's full confession (v. 20).
Contemporary Catholics are culturally conditioned to think of sin as strictly private — "between me and God." Joshua 7:1 challenges this with shattering directness. The verse insists that secret sin has a communal cost. When a Catholic receives Holy Communion unworthily, conceals serious wrongdoing, or lives a double life, the spiritual vitality of the parish, the family, and the broader Church is genuinely diminished — not metaphorically, but really.
This passage calls for an honest examination of what we may have "hidden in our tent" (v. 21) — the private compromise, the undisclosed betrayal, the sin we have normalized because it remains unseen. The remedy the text eventually models is not self-destruction but the courageous act of naming sin in confession. As John Paul II wrote, the Sacrament of Penance is not only personal reconciliation but "ecclesial reconciliation" — the healing of the community wounded by hidden sin. Ask: what am I concealing that may be costing my family, my parish, my community more than I know?
Commentary
Joshua 7:1 — Literal and Narrative Analysis
The opening adversative conjunction — "But" — is the hinge of the entire passage. Chapter 6 closed with Jericho in ruins and Rahab preserved, the victory complete and the God of Israel glorified. The single word "but" signals catastrophic rupture. The narrative refuses to let triumph linger unexamined.
"The children of Israel committed a trespass in the devoted things"
The Hebrew verb used here is ma'al (מָעַל), a term carrying the specific sense of breach of faith or sacrilegious misappropriation — most often used for violations of what belongs exclusively to God (cf. Lev 5:15; Num 5:6). This is not mere theft; it is a theological crime. The ḥērem (חֵרֶם), translated "devoted things" or "the ban," was the sacred consecration of the spoils of Jericho entirely to the LORD (Josh 6:17–19). Every object, every person, every animal within Jericho's walls had been declared holy — set apart for destruction or for the treasury of the LORD. To take from the ḥērem was to poach from God's own portion.
Critically, the text says "the children of Israel committed a trespass" before it names Achan. This is not careless writing. It is a theological statement about the nature of the covenant community: Israel is one body before God. One member's hidden sin becomes the corporate possession of the whole. This reality will bear out devastatingly at Ai (vv. 4–5), where soldiers die for a sin they did not personally commit.
"For Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things"
The genealogy is dense and purposeful. By listing four generations — Achan, Carmi, Zabdi, Zerah — the narrator traces the offender to Zerah, one of the twin sons of Judah and Tamar (Gen 38:30). This lineage connects Achan to a tribe of great dignity (Judah is the tribe of kingship and, ultimately, of the Messiah), making the betrayal all the more striking. No tribe is exempt from the capacity for covenant-breaking. The genealogy also functions as a judicial record: this is how biblical narrative "names and shames," not to humiliate but to instruct. Sin hidden from human eyes is fully visible to God and will be brought to light.
The phrase "took some of the devoted things" (Hebrew: lāqaḥ min-haḥērem) is deliberately understated. We do not yet know what was taken, how much, or how it was hidden. That account comes in vv. 20–21, where Achan confesses to a Babylonian garment, silver, and gold. But the narrative holds that detail back here — because the matters less than the : the boundary between creature and Creator, between Israel's portion and God's portion, has been violated.