“’Go, consecrate the people. Tell them, ‘Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow; for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: There are devoted things among you, Israel. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove them.”-Joshua 7:13
Way back when we were immersed in the Book of Leviticus, we learned a principle concerning God’s holiness that Christianity knows absolutely nothing about.
And that principle is that both God’s holiness and uncleanliness are contagious.
These things can spread from one human being to another, or from one person to an object, or even from object to object.
Both holiness and impurity are that potent.
A lot of folks mistakenly assume that when the expression “Holy Property” is used, the phrase is just being used as a nice-sounding metaphor to make the story more dramatic.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
When we talk about God’s holy property, we’re not talking about theory here.
“Holy property” is literally something that has become holified (for lack of a better word)…
…and as a result, has become a dangerous object.
Why is it a dangerous object?
Because as I just said, it can transfer its holiness to other things whether living or non-living.
An item that has become holy property is like a ticking hand grenade in many ways.
One false move and BOOM it could explode and cause irreversible damage.
Therefore, God has put certain rules in place on how to deal with His holy property.
In some cases, the Levitical priests were allowed to handle certain holy objects.
But the common folk were ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN FROM COMING INTO CONTACT WITH THE HOLY.
And the opposite was true.
It was forbidden for holy things to come into contact with them.
So what happened if such a thing happened?
There is only one possible result.
If something holy comes into contact with something common, the holy object becomes defiled.
However, now we’re speaking theory, because Hashem would NEVER allow such a thing to happen.
If the common comes into contact with the holy, it must be destroyed.
Why?
Because God will absolutely NOT allow any unauthorized transmission of His Holiness from one object to another.
It just cannot be.
So after this explanation, I think it’s pretty clear now why the person who had stolen banned war booty at Jericho had to be found and brought to justice.
Apparently at the time, it was only Hashem (from whom nothing can be hidden) Who knew who committed the crime.
Since no one else had called the criminal out and the criminal himself hadn’t come forward to confess his crime, a process would have to be established to identify the lawbreaker.
We’re given the specifics of this process from verse 13.
The first step was that Israel had to consecrate themselves to prepare to face their most awesome and holy God.
We’re not really told what the consecration involved but I imagine they did the same thing they did when they crossed over from Moab to Canaan which was to wash their garments and themselves in water.
This act gave them a degree of righteousness that would allow them to stand before Hashem as preparation for the divine judgement that was about to follow.
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