This question is understood [as compounded] of three, as it were, propositions. The first is: with one [person] sinning somewhat gravely, the whole people and community is reckoned to sin. The second: with one thus sinning, God is angry also against some whole people and community, and by him it is punished. The third: with that one [person], who thus sinned, being punished through [i.e. in] the people and community, God ceases from [his] anger and from the punishment of the people. But I speak not of the first and original sin of all men — in which the first and second proposition [is] most clear — but of an actual [sin]. The first indeed is shown at the beginning of this chapter (v. 1): “the sons,” it says, “of Israel transgressed the commandment, and usurped [something] of the anathema.” But this one Achan [alone] had done, as has hitherto appeared; and [at] v. 11: “Israel has sinned, and transgressed my covenant, and they have taken of the anathema, and have stolen and lied”; (v. 12): “Israel is polluted with the anathema.” Nevertheless that contagion of sin is not of such a kind that there is truly sin in the individuals, but only that there is truly [sin] in one alone, [while] in the others [it is reckoned] through a certain moral estimation, the cause of which will afterward be given. But falsely do Junius and Tremellius here charge the Israelites [as] if they truly sinned — “because they neither” (to retain their words) “kept Achan from sin, nor from the contagion and guilt, which God had foretold above (ch. 6:21).” For how ought they, or could they, have kept Achan from sin? They sinned, therefore, synecdochically, and as to a certain moral imputation. The other [proposition] is also plain from this same [passage], v. 1: “The Lord was angry against the sons of Israel.” And [those] who had been sent against Ai [as] warriors, at once turning [their] backs, were struck, and there fell of them 36 men
(col. 893)
at verse fifth. And afterward, when Joshua seeks the cause of this disaster (v. 7), he understands (v. 11) [that] it was Achan’s sacrilege. St. Chrysostom (homily 6 on Ephesians): “That you may know,” he says, “to how great a punishment they are liable who are caught in such sins, consider those things which are ancient. One had stolen sacred moneys, though he was a military man: and all perished. Do you know the history? I speak of [the son] of Carmi, who had stolen the anathema.” And a little after: “God knows [how] to punish even the just together with the impious — of which kind it happened in [the case of] Daniel, in the three boys, of which kind in innumerable others, of which kind in wars, which happen even at this time.” St. Augustine (bk. 6 Against Julian, ch. 7): “Concerning the anathema [that was] forbidden, because one usurped [it], vengeance proceeded against those who had not done this, nor known that it was done.” Salvian (bk. 7 On Providence), when he had recounted the softness of Carthage, [its] lust, and [its] other companion impurity, and the disasters and miseries proceeding from it, subjoins: “But this,” he says, “was the disgrace of a few: and [that] which was not perpetrated by the many could not harm all.” Now indeed I have said above very often that in the people of God the crime even of one was a plague of many — as, from the theft of Achar, the people fled; as, from Saul’s zeal, a pestilence arose; as, from David’s numbering, a mortality: for so the Church of God is, as it were, an eye. For as into an eye, even if a small speck of dirt fall, it blinds the whole light; so in the Ecclesiastical body, even if a few do filthy [things], nearly the whole light of the Ecclesiastical splendor is darkened. And therefore the Savior himself named the principal part of the Church an “eye,” saying: “The lamp of thy body is thine eye. If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be lucid. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body will be dark.” Whence the Apostle: “Know ye not,” he says, “that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?” The sacred scripture is full of other examples, as 1 Sam. 14; 2 Sam. 21 and 24. Whence that adage of the Hebrews: “Woe to the wicked, and woe to his neighbor.” Which by Hesiod is thus expressed:
Πολλάκι καὶ ξύμπασα πόλις κακοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐπαύρει.
[Hesiod, Works and Days 240: “Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man.” Serarius’s Latin: “Often the whole people pays for the ill deeds of [one] man.”]
By Homer more fully, when (Iliad, bk. 1) he tells in fable of the plague sent by Apollo into the camp of the Greeks, because — as Calchas, far the most excellent of all the augurs, explains to Achilles:
ἦ τ’ ἄρ ὅ γ’ εὐχωλῆς ἐπιμέμφεται (Apollo, namely) / ἦ θ’ ἑκατόμβης· / ἀλλ’ ἕνεκ’ ἀρητῆρος ὃν ἠτίμησ’ Ἀγαμέμνων.
[Homer, Iliad 1.65–67: “whether he (Apollo) blames [us] for a vow, or for a hecatomb; but [it is] on account of the priest whom Agamemnon dishonored.”]
Because, I say, King Agamemnon had ill received God’s priest, and had been unwilling either to send back his ravished daughter Chryseis, or to accept the offered gifts. Third: [this is] also set here (v. 12): “I will not be any more with you, until you crush him who is guilty of this crime.” (v. 13): “Thou canst not stand before thy enemies, until he be destroyed out of thee, who is contaminated with this crime.” But now, he being destroyed, the fury of the Lord was turned away (v. 26). For because, while the people itself inquires into the author of the crime and punishes him, it openly professes that it wills not the offense of God, nor [his] wrath; [and that it] wills to obey all his precepts; to detest the sins and crimes by which he is deservedly provoked, and to do penance, as it were public, by tearing from its own body a certain member of its own — therefore by a punishment of this kind the Lord is appeased. Just as also [in] 2 Sam. ch. 21; nay, by the sole will of inflicting the punishment — publicly, and [as far] as the matter allowed, attested seriously and in the very deed — [the Lord] was appeased (1 Sam. ch. 14, v. 44). And this cause and opinion also once drove the Delphic citizens — [so] that, when they had brought an unjust death upon Aesop, and therefore were divinely afflicted with the most grievous punishments of various diseases and of sterility, they might, with public tears as it were, beg pardon of the gods (albeit false); the cities of Greece walked about in mourning, and, moreover, through heralds sought everywhere with cries [that] he who wished to take vengeance should come forth, and appoint a punishment — [they declaring] that they would of their own accord and gladly undergo it, whatever at last it might be — as Plutarch relates in the book On the Delayed Vengeance of the Deity.