Defeat at Ai; the ban in the camp; Achan’s confession

men went up, and they fled from the face of Ai’s men, and Ai’s men killed from them unto thirty-six men, and pursued them from the gate, and crushed them from the descent; and the people’s heart was terrified, and came to be as water.’ Those who had taken cities, and ravaged countries, and conquered the fiercest of the nations without toil, meet those from Ai as unconquerable, and were barely being saved, and were withdrawing not without loss, not having wished at the beginnings that the whole multitude of the fight-ready be in arms, yet having expressly confessed that the city would be altogether easy to conquer even for few. For ‘Let not all the people go up,’ they were saying, ‘but about two thousand men.’ And toward the unexpected suffering, and the disaster beyond hope, Joshua being very heavy-hearted, and tearing the garment, and falling toward God, and astonished what ever the matter is, God said: ‘Rise; why have you fallen thus upon your face? The people has sinned and transgressed my covenant which I covenanted toward them, and having stolen from the ban they cast into their vessels. The sons of Israel will not be able to stand against the face of their enemies; they will turn neck opposite their enemies, because they have become a ban; I will not add still to be with you, unless you lift out the ban from yourselves.’ And Joshua asked Achan who had been pointed out, saying: ‘Give glory today to the Lord the God of Israel, and give the confession and announce to me what you did, and do not hide from me. And Achan answered Joshua, and said: Truly I have sinned opposite the Lord God of Israel; thus and thus I did. I saw in the plunder a variegated robe and two hundred didrachms of silver, and one golden tongue of fifty didrachms, and having thought of them I took, and behold these have been hidden in the earth, in my tent, and the silver has been hidden underneath them.’ You understand that even the thief himself says he has seen in the plunder a variegated robe, and two hundred didrachms of silver, and a golden tongue of fifty didrachms, and to have thought of them—that is, to have come unto a lawless desire of them. The robe then they think a soldier’s garment, and say it is a cloak woven variegatedly; and the clothing is soldierly, and a symbol of greed. For somehow always greed as most sweet has grown beside the military race. And again a type of worldly brightness is the silver; and of the sweet-speaking Hellenic wisdom, the tongue. Some such is also the tongue and education of the wise among Greeks, as it were golden and most honorable, because of the conspicuousness in diction. And the sin already having been unveiled, Joshua was subjecting Achan to penalties—not only having wronged himself, but having stretched the harm from his own unrestrained desire unto the whole synagogue. And perhaps this is what has been said to us most excellently and clearly through Paul’s voice: ‘Lift out the evil one from yourselves;