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These words reminded an Israelite of a great failure, and, as the word "Achor" means, of a great trouble — nay, of a great tragedy. It implied to him that history was repeating itself, that old sins were to be followed by old punishments, and that beyond those punishments, as of old, there was hope. Israel, in Hosea's days, was largely apostate and idolatrous. Here it is addressed as the unfaithful bride of Jehovah. Achor is Hebrew for "trouble," and it was chosen for its likeness to Achan, the "troubler." Achan's sin was not an open scandal which brought dishonour on the cause of God by its publicity. Secret sins are more common than public ones. They satisfy the sinful instinct more economically, and those who commit them are tempted to persuade themselves that because they do not corrupt others by the taint of bad example they are really much more venial. Achan had persuaded no one to join him in his act of sacrilege. We often wonder why great causes flag and fail, why so little comes of schemes for doing good into which much heart has been thrown, and for which great sacrifices have been made. We count up, we measure, we lay stress on the difficulties of the undertaking itself, and we satisfy ourselves that these difficulties furnish the real reason of the failure. May it not be that the true cause of failure lies nearer home, that something is hidden away in the tent of the soul? And moral weakness is contagious; it radiates from soul to soul just as does moral force. We feel its presence by a sure though inexplicable instinct, when we cannot give an account of it to our selves or to others. As the strength of the Church of Christ lies not in her external circumstances, but in the secret prayers and deeds of souls whose names are unknown, so the weakness of the Church lies not in the number or fierceness of her enemies, but in the secret unbelief and sins of her children. Achan, Judas, Diotrephes, these had a fearful power of traversing God's purposes of mercy. If we knew more, we should see how God acts at times even now by His providence as He acted of old by Joshua: how men are removed with swift decisions from this earthly scene because they bring to the cause of truth and goodness that moral paralysis and collapse which comes with cherished wrong-doing. None of us are too high or too low to promote or to weaken the cause of Christ in the world. The well-being of God's Israel from age to age is the law of God's constant government, and the valley of trouble for the individual wrong-doer is the door of hope for the Church, for the nation, for the race. The fate of the family of Achan has been an occasion of difficulty. No doubt he and his family were regarded as forming, in some sense, a moral whole, not merely as a set of individuals. Scripture does take these two views of human beings. On the individual aspect the Gospel, no doubt, specially insists, but it does not by any means ignore or dispease with the corporate aspect. A common human nature we all share. This principle of the reality of a common human nature which we all share explains our loss of righteousness in Adam; but it tells to our advantage even more decisively, for it explains our recovery of righteousness in Christ. How can this be unless Christ is the head of a family which He endows with His saving righteousness, just as Adam endowed his descendants with a legacy of sin and death? The principle of the solidarity of human beings tells for good as it tells for evil. We see the operation of this law in the physical and social life of man written in characters too plain to be mistaken. Achan's children were involved in their father's guilt on a somewhat like principle. But the truth is, that we see here a deeper sense in which the valley of Achor is a door of hope. In order to explain the tragedy we must resort to that larger ,conception of the destiny of man which was affirmed with varying degrees of distinctness by the Jewish revelation. If all ended with this life it would be very difficult if not impossible to explain occurrences of this sort consistently with the belief that the world is governed by an absolute and unerring justice. Those who do not believe in a future after death are perfectly, right in taking as their do, the very gloomiest view of our present existence; while, on the other hand, faith in such a future enables us to understand how the tragedies of human life and history are strictly consistent with the moral attributes of God. In later ages than Joshua's the separate relation of each individual soul with God was more distinctly marked by revelation. And Christ our Lord, if I may say so, yet further extricated the individual soul from the mass of human nature, and placed it face to face, in an awful and a blessed solitude, with the mercy and with the justice of God. Each Christian is redeemed as though redemption had been wrought for him alone. The general truth, which is independent of the cases of Israel and Achan, is that the punishment which God sends may open the way to life's choicest blessings, or to blessings which lie far away beyond it. What is of most importance is that when trouble comes to each one of us it should be recognised as coming from God, and accepted as His will, as due certainly to our sins, and therefore as the best thing possible that could happen. Trial is from God, and there is therefore a hope beyond it.

(H. P. Liddon, D. D.)

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KJV: Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

WEB: "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.