Homilies on Joshua 7.1–7.7

Jericho is brought down by the trumpets of the priests. As soon as the blare of the trumpets sounded, the circuit of the walls was thrown down. We said before too that Jericho bears the form of the present age, whose strength and defenses we see destroyed by the priestly trumpets. For the strength and defenses on which this world relied as on walls were the worship of idols, the deceit of divinations managed by the art of demons, the inventions of augurs, soothsayers, and magicians; by all these, as by the strongest walls, this world was surrounded. Besides this, it was fortified too by the various doctrines of the philosophers and their most eminent assertions and disputations, as by lofty and strong towers. But our Lord Jesus Christ, whose coming that earlier son of Nun signified, came and sent his priests, the apostles, carrying hammered trumpets, the magnificent and heavenly doctrine of the preaching. Matthew first sounded the priestly trumpet in his Gospel. Mark too, Luke, and John each sounded their own priestly trumpets. Peter also sounds with the two trumpets of his epistles; James too and Jude. John still adds to these, sounding the trumpet through his epistles and Apocalypse, and Luke, describing the acts of the apostles. But last of all came he who said, “For I think that God has displayed us apostles last,” and thundering with the trumpets of his fourteen epistles, he threw down to their foundations the walls of Jericho, all the engines of idolatry, and the doctrines of the philosophers.

I am moved too by what the account relates, that not only did the priests sound the trumpets so that the walls of Jericho might fall, but also, when the sound of the trumpet was heard, the whole people is said to have howled with a great howl, or, as other copies have it, to have shouted with a great jubilation. And although this word seems to have been translated improperly — for what is written in the Greek properly means neither jubilation nor howling, but rather indicates that cry with which, in time of war, an army raising a united shout is accustomed to urge itself on to battle with one mind — yet in the Scriptures this word has more usually been rendered “jubilation” than “howling,” as there: “Shout with jubilation to the Lord, all the earth.” And again: “Blessed is the people that knows jubilation.” This too has long moved me: what so great a work this is that makes a people blessed. He did not say, “Blessed is the people that knows mysteries,” or “that knows the reckoning of heaven and earth and stars,” but “Blessed,” he says, “is the people that knows jubilation.” In other places the fear of God makes one blessed, but it makes only one man blessed. For so it says: “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord.” Elsewhere several are made blessed, such as the poor in spirit, or the meek, or the peacemakers, or the pure in heart. But here blessedness is poured out, and some cause of blessedness so great is indicated here that it makes the whole people equally blessed — provided that it knows jubilation. Hence this jubilation seems to me to indicate a certain disposition of concord and unanimity. If it falls upon two or three disciples of Christ, the heavenly Father grants them whatever they ask in the name of the Saviour. But if the blessedness is so great that the whole people remains of one heart and one mind, so that all say the same thing, remaining in the same mind and the same judgment, then, when such a people raises its voice with one accord, there will happen what is written in the Acts of the Apostles, that there was a great earthquake where the apostles were praying with one accord with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus; and when the earthquake has come, all earthly things will be destroyed and fall, and the world itself will be overturned. Hear, then, our Lord and Saviour encouraging his soldiers to this very thing, as he says: “Take courage, I have conquered the world.” Under his leadership, then, the world has already been conquered for us, and its walls, on which the men of this age relied, have collapsed. But each of us too must fulfill these things in himself. You have Jesus as your leader within you by faith; make yourself hammered trumpets, if you are a priest — or rather, because you are a priest (for you have been made a royal nation and a holy priesthood; it is of you that this is written) — make yourself hammered trumpets from the holy Scriptures; draw out meanings from them, draw out words from them, for that is why they are called drawn trumpets. Sound with them, that is, sound in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, sound in the prophetic mysteries, in the mysteries of the law, in the teachings of the apostles. And if you sound with such trumpets and carry the ark of the covenant around seven times, that is, if you do not separate the mystical precepts of the law from the trumpets of the Gospel; if you also demand of yourself the harmony of jubilation, that is, that the people of your thoughts and senses that is within you should always utter a voice in concord and harmony, and that you do not sometimes speak the truth and at other times, flattering a powerful person, stain yourself with a lie; if laxity does not sometimes make you fawning and anger at other times savage; if you are not found arrogant toward the lowly and humble before the proud; finally, if no battle is being waged within you, while the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh — if these things now stand firm and agree within you, send forth the voice of jubilation, because the world has been destroyed and thrown down for you. Such, I think, was he who said with confidence: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Yet something in this passage still moves me; I seem to have perceived too little about jubilation, and to have spoken in a lowly way of great things. At the coming of Jesus the walls of Jericho were overthrown; at the coming of my Lord Jesus the world is conquered. Yet how the world is conquered I would like to know more plainly and to understand more clearly what is said. I, then, who teach you, wish to learn together with you. Let us take Paul as our common teacher. For he is the fellow initiate of Christ, who can show us how Christ conquered the world. Hear him, then, saying: “What was contrary to us he took out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and stripping the principalities and powers he made a public example of them, triumphing over them boldly on the wood of the cross.” From these words, then, I understand this: that the heavenly powers, seeing the battle of Jesus, the contrary principalities and powers stripped of their power, the strong man bound and his goods plundered, sounded their heavenly trumpets, because when the prince of this world was bound the world was conquered; and the heavenly army raised the shout of jubilation at Christ’s triumph. Truly blessed, then, is the people of the Gentiles that knows this jubilation of the heavenly army, and that recognizes and believes the mysteries.

But let us see what is indicated in what follows. For Jesus says: “Keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest perhaps you covet and take of the accursed thing and make the camp of the sons of Israel accursed, and destroy us and the whole congregation of the Lord.” What is indicated in these words is this: See that you have nothing worldly in you, that you do not bring worldly habits, vices, or evasions from the world with you into the church. But let all worldly conduct be accursed to you. Do not mix worldly things with divine ones; do not bring the affairs of the world into the secrets of the church. This is what John too sounds with the trumpet of his epistle, saying: “Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world.” And Paul likewise: “Do not,” he says, “be conformed to this world.” For those who do these things take of the accursed thing. But those too who, for example, though they are Christians, celebrate the festivals of the Gentiles bring the accursed thing into the churches. Those who seek out men’s lives and deeds from the courses of the stars, who inquire into the flights of birds and the other things of this kind that were formerly observed in the world, bring the accursed thing from Jericho into the church, pollute the camp of the Lord, and cause the people of God to be conquered. And there are many other sins too by which the accursed thing from Jericho is brought into the church, by which the people of God is conquered and laid low by its enemies. Or does not the Apostle too command these same things, when he says: “A little leaven corrupts the whole lump”?

But let us see now what follows. When Jericho was overthrown, Rahab the harlot alone was saved. For so it is written of her: “And Rahab the harlot and all her father’s house Jesus kept alive, and she was added to Israel until this day.” I would like to ask the Jews, and those who are indeed called Christians but still keep a Jewish sense in the Scriptures, how they explain that Rahab the harlot was added to the house of Israel until this day. How is Rahab said to have been added until this day? For it is the custom of holy Scripture to say this of things that last until the end either of life or of the age. For example, it says: “He is the father of the Moabites until this day,” which means until the end of the age. And again it is said in the Gospel that “this saying has been spread abroad among the Jews until this day,” that is, as long as the age stands. But how is Rahab the harlot said to have been added to the house of Israel until this day? Is the succession of descendants credited to the mother, so that she seems to be preserved in the renewal of her offspring? Or is it rather to be understood that she has been joined and united to the true Israel until this day? And if you want to see more clearly how Rahab is joined to Israel, look at how a branch of the wild olive is grafted into the root of the good olive, and you will understand how those who have been grafted into the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are rightly said to have been joined and added to Israel until this day: because we, branches of the wild olive taken from the Gentiles, who once played the harlot, worshipping wood and stone in place of God, have been grafted into their root until this day; and through faith in Christ we have been made the upper, while that people which remained in unbelief has been made the lower, according to the prophecy of Deuteronomy. If anyone, then, has Christ in himself, who is the head of all, he is made the head; for they denied Christ Jesus and were made the tail, and those who were first have become last.

But this too is not to be passed over idly, that when one man sinned, wrath came upon the whole people. When does this happen? When the priests who preside over the people wish to seem kind toward offenders, and, fearing the tongues of sinners lest perhaps they speak ill of them, forget priestly severity and are unwilling to fulfill what is written: “Rebuke the sinner before all, so that the rest may have fear”; and again: “Remove the evil from among yourselves.” Nor, kindled with zeal for God, do they imitate the Apostle, who says: “I have delivered such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved.” Nor are they eager to fulfill that command of the Gospel, that if they see someone sinning, they should first meet him privately, and then also before two or three witnesses; and if he despises this and is not corrected after the rebuke of the church, they should hold him, expelled from the church, as a Gentile and a tax collector. And while they spare one, they bring about the ruin of the whole church. What kind of kindness is this? What kind of mercy is this, to spare one and bring all into danger? For the people is polluted by one sinner. As the whole flock is infected by one diseased sheep, so too when one person commits sexual immorality or any other crime, the whole congregation is polluted. And therefore let us watch over one another, and let the conduct of each be known, above all to the priests and ministers. Nor let them think they are right to say: What concern is it of mine if another does wrong? That is as if the head should say to the feet: What concern is it of mine if they hurt? If my feet are in a bad way, it is no business of mine, so long as the head stays healthy. Or as if the eye should say to the hand: I do not need your work; what concern is it of mine if you hurt? If you are wounded, shall I, the eye, be troubled by the sickness of the hand? Such, then, is what those do who preside over churches, not considering that all of us who believe are one body, having one God who binds and holds us together in unity, Christ, of whose body you who preside over the church are the eye, surely so that you may look around at everything, survey everything, and foresee even what is to come. You are a shepherd; you see the little sheep of the Lord, unaware of danger, carried toward cliffs and hanging over steep places: do you not run to meet them? Do you not call them back? Do you not at least restrain them with your voice and deter them with the cry of rebuke? Are you so forgetful of the Lord’s sacrament that, while he left the ninety-nine in heaven and came down to earth for the one little sheep that had strayed, and when he had found it carried it on his shoulders to heaven, we should in nothing at all follow the example of the master shepherd in caring for the little sheep? We do not say this so that anyone should be cut off for a slight fault; but if perhaps someone, warned and rebuked for an offence once, twice, and a third time, shows no amendment, let us use the discipline of the physician. If we have anointed with oil, if we have soothed with plasters, if we have softened with poultices, and yet the hardness of the swelling does not yield to the medicines, the only remedy left is to cut it away. For so the Lord says: “If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away from you.” Does a hand of our body ever cause us to stumble, so that the Gospel should say of this bodily hand: “Cut it off and throw it away from you”? But this is what it means: that if I, who seem to be your right hand, and am called a presbyter, and seem to preach the word of God, do anything against the discipline of the church and the rule of the Gospel, so as to cause scandal to you and to the church, then let the whole church, agreeing with one consent, cut me off, its right hand, and throw me away from itself. For it is better for you, the church, to enter the kingdom of heaven without me, your hand, who by doing evil caused scandal, than to go with me into Gehenna. We have said these things because we see it related in the holy Scriptures that on account of one sinner the sons of Israel became accursed, so that they were conquered by their enemies.

But let us see what his sin itself was like: “He stole,” it says, “a tongue of gold and put it in his tent.” I do not think there was such force of sin in that theft of a little gold that it stained so numerous a church of the Lord. But let us see whether perhaps the great and grievous bitterness of this sin is a matter for the inner understanding. There is much charm in words, and much beauty in the discourses of philosophers and rhetoricians, who are all of the city of Jericho, that is, men of this world. If, then, you find among the philosophers perverse doctrines adorned with the assertions of splendid speech, that is the tongue of gold. But see that the brilliance of the work does not deceive you, that the beauty of the golden speech does not carry you away: remember that Jesus commanded that all the gold found in Jericho should be accursed. If you read a poet weaving gods and goddesses in measured verses and a very splendid song, do not take delight in the sweetness of the eloquence: it is a tongue of gold. If you take it up and put it in your tent, if you bring into your heart the things asserted by them, you will pollute the whole church of the Lord. This the unhappy Valentinus did, and Basilides; this Marcion the heretic did too. These men stole tongues of gold from Jericho and tried to bring into the churches the sects of the philosophers, which are not right for us, and to pollute the whole church of the Lord. But let us follow the example of the Fathers who went before us; let us examine more carefully lest anyone have a tongue from Jericho hidden in his tent, and let us cast out the evil from among ourselves; for even if we leave off, God will convict him, so that he himself will confess of his own accord and say: “I stole a tongue of gold and pure bracelets.” You see what kind of theft he committed? He steals a tongue and pure bracelets. Pure bracelets are works in which nothing divine is mixed, but the whole is done according to man. Indeed, it is our custom too in our disputations to say that we do not call Christ a pure man, but confess him to be God and man. But what is stolen from Jericho is said to be pure, that is, without God, and this was indeed the cause of sin for the thief. And therefore let us think nothing pure and merely human of Christ, but confess him equally God and man, because the wisdom of God too is called manifold; so that through this we may be found worthy to receive a share in the wisdom of God, who is Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is glory and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.