Achan (biblical figure)

Achan (/ˈeɪkæn/; Hebrew: עָכָן, romanized: ‘Āḵān), the son of Carmi, a descendant of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, is a figure who appears in the Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible in connection with the fall of Jericho and conquest of Ai.

The Israelites used cleromancy (the sacred Lots Urim and Thummim)[1] to decide who was to blame, and having identified Achan, they stoned him, along with his children and livestock, to death.

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 was under foreign rule.

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.

They thus brought death upon more than half the members of the high court (see Pirḳe R. El.

Another view expressed by the rabbis is that Achan committed incest, or violatedthe Sabbath, or was otherwise guilty of a five-fold crime.

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.

That his avowal saved him from eternal doom may be learned from Joshua's words to Achan: "Why hast thou troubled us?