Matthew Henry: The Bible, Prayer, and Piety (continued)
David J. Chalcraft
A heap of stones was raised on the place where Achan was executed, every one perhaps of the congregation throwing a stone to the heap, in token of his detestation of the crime.1
1. Introduction
A. Joshua 7: A Troubling Text for All Times
Joshua 7 narrates a crime committed by one person, Achan, who is named as the culprit at the outset of the story and whose guilt is therefore known by Yahweh and now shared immediately with the reading audience. Joshua and the rest of the Israelites only discover the fact over a period of time and through a complex ritual process. However, the crime, though committed by an individual, implicates ‘all Israel’. Moreover, when all Israel finally learns the truth, all Israel joins with Joshua in not only condemning the man to death, but also his family and all his livestock, and proceed to stone them to death and burn their corpses.
Whatever the social context in the history of reception, Joshua 7 draws forth needed comment. It is not a text that can be ignored but a text that challenges the audience since it touches on the issues of the organization of society and the place of the individual within the collectivity, the meaning and purpose of crime and punishment, and the operation of (divine and civic) justice and mercy. It has challenged interpreters across time and space and the strategies employed by readers and exegetes over time are fascinatingly varied. Joshua 7 then can work as something of a ‘litmus test’ to assess how the political and cultural context, and the values and norms associated with collective group life and individualism (legitimate and deviant action), impact on how the text is read, and how the text, in turn, might challenge those beliefs or be used to do so.2 This essay considers the way in which Matthew Henry (1662–1714) responded to what he took to be the challenges of Joshua 7, and the ways in which that response reflects social and cultural attitudes from his context. An important part of that background, especially for the assessment of Henry’s treatment of Joshua 7, is his encounter with the socio-legal system during the successive reigns of English monarchs from 1660 to 1714.3
B. Structure of the Essay
In the following I begin with a brief overview of English history 1660–1714 before concentrating on two settings in which Matthew Henry had first-hand experience of the criminal justice system then operative. These settings provided Henry with a set of opinions, values, and tools when thinking about Joshua 7. The second part of the essay then turns to consider Henry’s comments on Joshua 7, highlighting the ways in which he drew on the socio-legal context (often unconsciously) to consider the relation between the individual crime of Achan and the collective guilt of Israel, the establishment beyond all doubt of Achan’s guilt and the justice of his execution, and the execution of his whole family. The practical spiritual advice that Henry generated for his congregation and readers is also considered and it is proposed that Henry largely envisages the ‘community’ not to be the nation as such but the dissenting conventicles. Overall, Henry’s engagement with the text illustrates where he felt the narrative (and the actions of Yahweh it describes) needed explaining and defending. He tended to read with the ideology and grain of the text, and utilized Joshua 7 to reinforce the legitimate operation of the criminal justice system, concentrating more on the need for the individual to reform their way of life rather than offering a critique of the workings of the state and its use of violence to maintain social order, as his radical Puritan forebears more often did.
C. Legislation and the Status of Dissenters, 1660–1714
The reigns of Charles II (1660–1685), James II (1685–1688), William and Mary (1689–1702), and Queen Anne (1702–1714), were turbulent periods in English religious history. It was a period of changing allegiance and treachery, and the monarch was often far from secure and could not enjoy the support of the whole kingdom, as Monmouth’s rebellion and, of course, the Glorious Revolution of 1689 clearly showed. The struggles between Catholic and Protestant, and between the established Anglican Church and nonconformity, were prominent. The struggles were influenced strongly by the legislation that was passed. For example, the period includes the Act of Uniformity of 1662, and various other Tests and Acts under the Clarendon Code, which effectively established a nonconformist position and thereby restricted the liberty of worship and conscience of Dissenters, excluding them from public service. In 1661, Philip Henry, Matthew’s father, was ousted from his living, along with 2,000 other priests a year later, for refusing to sign the oath of allegiance and utilize the new edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1662).4 The Dissenters did experience some relief whilst the Indulgences of Charles II (1672) and James II (1687) were in effect (the latter was quite short-lived), but even the Act of Toleration of 1689 was probably motivated more by James II’s desire to relieve the Catholics and admit them to political office than it was driven by concern for his dissenting subjects. Indeed, it was suspicion of the king’s Catholic motives which resulted in the invitation to William to invade the country and finally secure a Protestant dynasty for the throne. But even during the reign of Queen Anne (who, despite being the daughter of the Catholic James II, was, like her sister Mary, raised an ardent Protestant), Tories felt that the established church, ‘was in danger’, and the extent of the Sacherveral riots in 1710 confirmed that many others were also persuaded of this threat from the Dissenters, with the Act of Occasional Conformity seen to be in need of major revision in order to further restrict their liberty.5 Hence, although the worst persecution seemed to have passed for Matthew Henry and the Dissenters, and the situation was certainly more promising than it had been in his father’s time, there was still a need to be cautious and watchful. Despite the lack of liberty, and persecution, Henry did not emulate his Puritan forebears to develop an exegesis that would challenge church and state.
2. Matthew Henry’s Experiences of the Criminal Justice System
A. Studying at Gray’s Inn, 1686
During 1686, Matthew Henry’s letters home to his father from Gray’s Inn, London, where he was studying law, include a topical commentary on the trials and prosecutions of a number of notable persons, including the Earl of Stamford (1654–1720), Lord Delamere (1652–1694), Lord Bandon Gerrard (1618–1694), Lord Grey (1655–1701) (a leader in the Monmouth rebellion, but restored to full honours after giving evidence against his former comrades), and the ‘odious informers’ Nathaniel Wade and Richard Goodenough.6 Henry often attended the court sessions and frequently witnessed condemned criminals on their way to execution, or saw the decapitated or dismembered bodies on public display. Henry happened to be studying law during the aftermath of the Monmouth rebellion, and the trials of suspects associated with the earlier Rye House plot. More suspects were created by those who took part in the Monmouth rebellion trying to find some reduction of their own sentences. It certainly was a lively, newsworthy, and gruesome period of political history involving many cases of treason. The aftermath of Monmouth’s rebellion would also be of striking interest to the Henry family since Philip Henry, Matthew’s father, was himself briefly imprisoned in Chester Castle on suspicion of having sympathies with the uprising.
In his letters home, Henry covers the trial of Lord Brandon Gerrard in some detail. He records on 1 December:
On Thursd. last Ld. Brand. Ger. had his Tryal. The students came early & big wth Expecta. but were outed the Court (to make room for the abundance of Lords that were there present) & I among ye rest.7
Henry was actually present when sentence was passed:
On Satt. I was in Court when hee was brought to receive Sentence. Somth. hee moved in arrest of judgment. reading a Paper drawn up for that purpose, but it availed nothing. So they proceeded to sentence wch ye Ld. Ch. Just. Herbert Pronounced after a long Speech tending to aggravate his fault & set home the sense of it. The Prisoner often pleaded his own innocency, But carried it with the strangest unconcernedness that I could not but admire. To see a man stand there receiving a sentence of Death without any change of countenance, or so much as a down look. Hee desired some time to prepare, for indeed (said hee) I have bin a great sinner, wch was the best word I heard him say. Execution is to bee on Friday next – ye sentence to be hanged drawn & quartered – wch tis probable will be altered to beheading. The Prisoner is a comely man seems to bee about 30y old hath a clear complexion, good head of hair & inclining to bee fat.8
We learn of the fate of Gerrard subsequently. A later entry reads:
Tis reported Lord Gerrard is reprieved, ’t is lookt upon as ye Harbinger of a Pardon. Tis said most of ye Lords present did Petition for his life & gave him some hope of speeding before his sentence, wch. perhaps made him so unconcerned.9
Henry lived through a period when the justice system often condemned the criminal to death. Moreover, Henry experienced trials, the plights of prisoners, and executions first-hand. These experiences began during his period studying law in London and continued throughout his ministry in Chester. In such a context, interactions with a text dealing with crime, guilt, justice, and execution (as narrated in Josh 7) would understandably be of a different character from readings taking place within an alternative system of criminal justice (e.g., one based on fundamentally different principles of justice, and alternative approaches to the reform and restitution of the criminal). His first biographer, William Tong, writing of 1685 and the decision to encourage Matthew Henry to study law, observes that it was a reasonable choice because:
[T]he Times were then very dark, he was young, had Time enough before him to mix that with his other Studies; the Knowledge of the Law would not only be convenient for one that was Heir to an handsome Estate, but might be of use for the better understanding the Nature of the Divine Law and Government, and the forensick Terms so much used in the Holy Scriptures, and in other Divinity Books both Ancient and Modern. … [H]e loved to look into the Body of the Civil Law, and did not neglect to acquaint himself with the Municipal Laws of his own Country.10
We will see in what ways this learning in the law influenced his reaction to Joshua 7.
In these descriptions of the trials in his letters home, Henry does not express any criticism of the state or any misgivings about the carriage of justice. In such difficult times it is perhaps not surprising that, as his father warned him, he needed to be careful what was committed to paper. But it also seems the case that, despite living through the midst of (inconsistent and relatively arbitrary) state interference in church affairs, especially concerning the status and plight of the dissenting congregations, Henry was not encouraged to develop anything but a position of non-resistance. Moreover, when he was able to celebrate the reigning monarch (which became possible once the Protestant champion William III was ruling with Queen Mary, and was continued under the reign of Queen Anne), he did so with enthusiasm.11 In other words, the political and cultural context, and the suffering of the Dissenters under the burden of legislative acts, did not motivate Henry to take up a position when engaging with biblical texts that tended to sympathize with people subject to the rule of the theocracy. The potential was there for Henry to develop a political exegesis like his Puritan forebears when the ‘world was turned upside down’. For example, in the late 1620s, Josh 7 was utilized by Henry Burton to attack Laudianism in church and politics, and to expose not only one Achan whose sins were crippling the well-being of the nation and inviting the wrath of God, but a host of Achans.12 Burton suffered the consequences of such political exegesis, with imprisonment in Lancaster Castle, and the cutting off of his ears. Henry’s exegesis, as we shall see, did not question the state but rather worked to justify the justice of God’s anger and judgement, and in the process shared the views of many of his contemporaries regarding the workings of the then-current criminal justice system.
B. Visiting Prisoners in Chester Castle 1690–1710
Another context in which Henry encountered the criminal justice system were the many occasions when he visited prisoners (many of them condemned to death) in Chester Castle, whilst he was a minister in the city.13 Henry visited prisoners incarcerated in Chester Castle periodically for over 20 years (1690–1710). Tong narrates that ‘he was sent for to the Castle by one that was to be executed for clipping the King’s Coin; he prayed with him and endeavoured to convince him of Sin, but observes that the Man seemed rather amazed or sullen’.14 Clearly Henry considers it justifiable that the king’s coin should not be clipped and that breaking this law, and presumably committing theft, breaks the eighth commandment and is a sin. Tong gives a number of examples and records the texts from which Henry liked to preach in these circumstances, most of which were hardly comforting (e.g., 2 Thess 1:7, 8; Prov 14:2; Ps 99:67; Eccl 9:5), before reporting:
I shall mention but one more, and that is a Sermon which he preached on the 8th of May, 1701, to the Prisoners, where three Women were under Sentence of Death for murdering their Bastard Children; it was a very aweful and awakening Discourse, from James i. 15. Then when Lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth Sin, and Sin when it is finished bringeth forth Death, not the Death of the Body only, that is not the finishing Stroke of Sin, but the Death and Damnation of the Soul; while he reasoned about these Things, the poor Wretches trembled exceedingly, and several good People that used to attend their Prison-Sermons, were mightily affected, Tears and Trembling were every where observed: He visits these Poor Wretches a second and third time after this, and was with them the very Day that they died; it is not easy in such Cases clearly to discern whether God gives true Repentance or no, but he had done all he could for them, and they were very thankful for the Compassion he had shewed to their poor Souls.15
Henry then was living at a time, and experiencing the full force of the criminal justice system, that is far removed from our own time and system. Living at a time when executions not only took place but took place on a regular basis surely provides a different context for thinking about Joshua 7. The justification of public execution was possible, as was the lack of mercy shown on particular occasions. In the case of Henry’s visits to the condemned prisoners in Chester Castle, there is no indication that Henry questioned the decisions of the courts or made a plea for mitigating circumstances resulting in the criminal activities. Guilt is always presumed by Henry and the justice of the law presupposed. A general sense of conformity to the law and morality of the wider society is promoted. Is this perspective on the role of law and punishment also found in his exegesis of Joshua 7?
3. Matthew Henry’s Exegesis
A firm Belief of God’s all-seeing Eye always upon us, wherever we are, and whatever we are doing, would be a mighty Aweband upon the Spirit, to keep it serious and watchful; dare I omit such a known Duty, or commit such a known Sin, while I am under the Eye of a just and holy God, who hates Sin, and cannot endure to look on Iniquity?16
In his Exposition, Henry devotes over eight thousand words to the exegesis of Joshua 7. In doing so, he adds one more stone to the growing cairn of interpretation on Achan. For Matthew Henry, Josh 7 is not a text of terror, rather it magnifies the glory of God. However, this does not mean the text is not without its difficulties, and Henry is left with some explaining to do, both to make the text palatable for himself and to present it to his readers. The justice of God’s actions need some explanation and the guilt of Achan needs to be established as a heinous crime necessitating the punishment by death. Also, the execution of his family and the loss of all property needs to be addressed.
Henry’s accounting for the all-Israelite guilt has some relation to the unravelling of the plot. There is little narrative tension here. It is not a detective story which follows the skills of the sleuth who slowly reveals the culprit; rather we are told at the outset of the narrative that Israel has sinned and that the guilty party is Achan. The detective story here is about how Joshua and ‘all Israel’ gradually learn who was guilty and the process by which they do so.
For most commentators, the Achan story raises two central concerns. The first issue is: how can a body of people be guilty for an action that has clearly been carried out by only one of them? Wherein lies the logic of their responsibility? Henry suggests that the connection of the crime with ‘all Israel’ is because, at the early stage of the story, Achan has yet to be singled out.17 There are theological and sociological reasons to be given by Henry. It is implied that only by singling out and punishing the individual can the collective be exonerated and relieved of any guilt. The execution of the criminal pardons the collective crime. We shall see that Henry’s emphasis is in fact less on the guilt of the community and a collective crime, and more on the responsibility of keeping the community pure and holy. The crime for sure is committed by Achan and his family only.
The second theme that attracts attention concerns the punishment of Achan and his family. When the criminal is singled out and has confessed his crime he is executed, but so too are all his family, and their possessions are also destroyed. Again the question arises: how can the crime of one person require the destruction of many others who are related? For a modern audience familiar with the concepts of individual responsibility, such a collective punishment is not only unjustified and unfair but completely outrageous. Moreover, a modern audience, in the light of Achan’s confession, would likely expect the extension of mercy and are shocked by his execution, regarding it as needless cruelty. From this perspective, Josh 7 is a text that Richard Dawkins might very much have in mind as an example to support the claim that, ‘The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction’.18 We will see below how Henry deals with these issues. In his view, the text attributes guilt to all Israel on account of the actions of one member, yet in the event, the punishment is metered out to Achan (and his family) but not to all Israel. Israel has already suffered some loss, with the deaths of those warriors who fell in the first failed attack on Ai (which led to the inquiry as to why they had lost the battle), but in the final punishment it is Achan and his family who are executed and the execution is carried out by all Israel in unison, as the text is at pains to point out and as Henry underlines.
A. Individual and Community
Of Achan’s guilt and the need for punishment, Henry is in no doubt. Since all Israel had been told by Joshua expressly to spare no one in the city of Jericho, and moreover not to take any spoil but to put it all to the flame or dedicate it to Yahweh, then, since Achan did take from the spoil and is in direct contradiction of the divine command, he is guilty. Henry does not question the legitimacy of the ban or the reason for it (for example, that it was a means of discipline to maintain the military commitment of the tribes, or served the interests of the priests in adding to the treasury); rather, since the ban had been put into effect, a transgression of it is, by definition, a crime, and Achan is the criminal. It is an act of ‘disobedience’ and deserves punishment.
What is in need of more explanation (and defence) is the relation between Achan as an individual and all Israel both in terms of the crime and, later, in terms of the punishment. Henry writes:
And yet, though it was a single person that sinned, the children of Israel are said to commit the trespass, because one of their body did it, and he was not as yet separated from them, nor disowned by them. They did it, that is, by what Achan did guilt was brought upon the whole society of which he was a member.19
Henry wants to point out that Achan was the only criminal in all Israel. While perfection of the followers of God will only ever be achieved ‘in the heavenly Canaan’, Henry presents the Israelites at this time as in harmony and unity almost to a man (and woman). Israel here is a pure and holy nation, and it is this purity that needs to be maintained. Achan is the only exception. Achan is the only ‘delinquent’. The fact that more of the members of the society had not strayed from their obedience is a remarkable one, Henry opines, given the sore temptation that all the spoil would present to ordinary men and women. It was on account of the ordinances of God, of circumcision, and Passover (Henry clearly dating all these prior to the conquest), that the Israelites were kept on the straight and narrow.20
In applying such thinking to Henry’s own situation and that of his audience, there is a sense that the society that is envisaged is less the English nation (and Scotland too after the Act of Union of 1707) as a whole, or some sense of one church, but rather that it is the dissenting congregation itself that is in view – a situation where members of the community are known to each other and able to monitor the behaviour, speech, and ideas of fellow members in a mutual effort to remain on the straight and narrow. In other words, a social setting more akin to a sectarian movement made up of ‘the elect’, in the classical Weberian sense of the term.21 In such small-scale social settings, the deviancy of one member is more clearly seen, more strongly objected to, and more easily expunged through removal of the deviant. This is the way in which Henry understands the Israelite polity as narrated in Josh 7, and the connection with the context to which he and his congregations belong is a relatively smooth and straightforward one.
Henry is able to address the relation between the individual and the community with respect to Achan’s crime by seeing the individual as part of the community, so that if the deviant can be identified and removed from the community, the purity of the community can be restored and maintained. There is no mysterious bond between community and individual or sense of a community soul or psychology. Such reasoning is not required by Henry, and neither does it occur to him. Henry simply sees the community as being implicated because Achan is a member of that community. Hence self and community can be differentiated, but there is a strong sense of community since the deviance cannot be tolerated; in a Durkheimian sense, there is increased sensitivity to deviance in the context of a bounded community devoted to holiness.22 Furthermore, until the criminal is identified and punished by the community, the community itself, Henry understands, will not thrive. In this instance, the community’s pathological status results in their loss in the first attack on Ai. What there is, however, is a strong bond between the community (and its status and health) and Yahweh. In addition, the metaphor of disease is utilized by Henry. The community is seen as a body which has been infected in one of its limbs/members; if that member can be cut off (if the gangrenous element can be eliminated), the health of the body will be restored. As Henry notes: ‘No reprieve could be obtained; a gangrened member must be cut off immediately’.23 Such metaphorical ways of thinking about crime and punishment in Matthew Henry’s times were quite common and often drawn upon by preachers at Assize sermons.24 Henry drew fully upon it, and extended the concept of the social body to the ‘congregation as the body of Christ’. Indeed, the body metaphor itself in secular society had its origins in theological thought.
Since Achan is part of the community, the community is responsible, not so much for the crime (would they incriminate themselves for a failed socialization?), but more for identifying both the crime and the criminal and then acting accordingly. Not to act to remove the deviant individual would be to act wrongly and incur further punishment. This is the emphasis in Henry’s account. The history of reception would need to wait until the ‘anthropological turn’ in biblical studies (with its ideas of taboo and contagion, or indeed for its notions of collective personality) to offer a different account.25 Given the more collective nature of social thought at the time of Henry’s writing, and the culture of crime and punishment, Henry already has contextual tools ready to hand to interpret the biblical text.
B. Implications for Individuals in the Community
Henry draws out the lesson for the community of readers of his commentary when he writes:
This should be a warning to us to take heed of sin ourselves, lest by it many be defiled or disquieted (Heb. 12:15), and to take heed of having fellowship with sinners, and of being in league with them, lest we share in their guilt.26
Hence the relation between the individual and the community is one where the sin of the individual can corrupt others, so one must keep a watchful eye on oneself and also upon fellow congregation members. Such advice surely can be followed much more readily in smaller, sectarian, congregational settings. Only here can the warnings found in the Epistle to the Hebrews be fully followed, making sure that there is ‘no one among you … no bitter, noxious weed growing up to poison the whole, no immoral person, no one worldly-minded like Esau’ (Heb 12:15–16 [NEB]).
This observation of Henry’s, to be vigilant of one’s self and other members of society, is a common one in interpretation of various passages in the Old Testament by commentators in the seventeenth century,27 and reflects aspects of social organization in the communities of England at that time, where the policing of morals was performed by all citizens of each other. Such mutual policing, of course, becomes much harder to effect when the nation is divided on political and religious lines, and for Henry’s day a nostalgic picture of close-knit communities is not helpful.28 In a more sectarian setting, the vigilance is enjoined for the monitoring of fellow-sect members, it is of greater intensity, and, moreover, capable of being carried out. For Henry, secret sins will ‘be brought to light’ and if the community is not to do it, God will instigate processes that bring the sin to the attention of the people: ‘Many a community is under guilt and wrath and is not aware of it till the fire breaks out: here it broke out quickly’.29
Henry manages to keep both a collective, societal dimension to his exegesis and one that speaks to the individual piety of the people in his audience, but the overall emphasis of the impact of Josh 7 is at the individual level; reform of the individual is promoted, not reform of the state or society. The lessons he draws from the story of Achan attempt to combine the collective and the individual. For example, he writes:
That which is accursed will be destroyed; and those whom God has entrusted to bear the sword bear it in vain if they make it not a terror to that wickedness which brings these judgments of God on a land. By personal repentance and reformation, we destroy the accursed thing in our own hearts, and, unless we do this, we must never expect the favour of the blessed God. Let all men know that is nothing but sin that separates between them and God, and, if it be not sincerely repented of and forsaken, it will separate eternally.30
On the collective level, Henry invokes those charged with the oversight of the community through designated positions – they must uncover and eradicate wrongdoing. Nevertheless, his emphasis is more on the individual and personal responsibility; the Achans that exercise Henry are not leaders in the state but each individual themselves. Henry appeals to the individual’s conscience and responsibility for their own integrity. In another place, Henry draws the moral lessons for the individual, rendering each far-from-perfect believer a type of Achan. Rather than throwing further stones at Achan, the Christian reader should consider whether they themselves (as Jesus challenged the would-be stoners of the fallen women in the Gospel) ‘are free from sin’ (John 8:7). Indeed, the individual believer knows themselves not to be in a right relationship with their God. He writes:
How much it is our concern, when God is contending with us, to find out what the cause of action is, what the particular sin is, that, like Achan, troubles our camp. We must thus examine ourselves and carefully review the records of conscience, that we may find out the accursed thing, and pray earnestly with holy Job, Lord, show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Discover the traitor and he shall be no longer harboured.31
Henry clearly sees Achan as an individual who shares these human attributes. They have an individual responsibility to acknowledge their own faults and sins and, once committed, to subject their consciences to scrutiny and to act upon the guilt that emerges to encourage them to self-reformation, repentance, and the seeking for forgiveness, whether that be through redress to the community or through the acceptance of justice. Henry is at pains to point out that the Israelites went to great lengths to be sure to identify the guilty person – the task was not to make a show of punishment, but to punish the right man. For Henry this shows a great commitment to justice on the part of Joshua and the people.
C. Achan’s Crime is Heinous and Deserves to be Met with Death by Execution
Another line of interpretation adopted by Henry in his overall defence of the justice of Yahweh in Josh 7 is to emphasise the seriousness of the crime/sin committed by Achan – a crime so serious that normal guidelines for justice, even those lain down by the deity, need not be followed. The sin is made to appear ‘exceedingly sinful’.32 Henry imagines a scene that is not presented in the narrative, where Joshua would have enquired of the whole army that they had indeed followed the ban faithfully and not taken anything for themselves. In this scene, Achan, of course, is imagined as giving his assent to Joshua’s general question. Moreover, in a further imagined scene where Henry has Joshua enquiring again since it was clear to him now that something had gone amiss, Achan continued to deny his crime. Henry posits that Yahweh does not name the culprit outright (remembering that we have already been told about the crime and the criminal from the beginning of the chapter) so as to give Achan time to repent and confess. It is likely that Henry is led to invent these scenes in order to better account for the fact that, even though in the end Achan does confess, there is no chance of his escaping the death penalty.
Joshua no doubt proclaimed it immediately throughout the camp that there was such a transgression committed, upon which, if Achan had surrendered himself, and penitently owned his guilt, and prevented the scrutiny, who knows but he might have had the benefit of that law which accepted of a trespass-offering, with restitution, from those that had sinned through ignorance in the holy things of the law? Lev. 5:15, 16. But Achan never discovering himself till the lot discovered him evidenced the hardness of his heart, and therefore he found no mercy.33
Again, Henry shows no interest in the anthropology of the structure of Israelite society. Rather, the delay in discovering the criminal (through the mustering of all Israel, and then taking the tribe, followed by household and family), is seen as yet another opportunity for Achan to discover himself and confess his crime. Henry creatively constructs the scene whereby the lot gets closer and closer to putting the finger precisely (and only) on Achan’s head:
It was strange that Achan, being conscious to himself of guilt, when he saw the lot come nearer and nearer to him, had not either the wit to make an escape or the grace to make a confession; … We may well imagine how his countenance changed, and what horror and confusion seized him when he was singled out as the delinquent, when the eyes of all Israel were fastened upon him, …34
In these comments on the changes imagined to have overcome Achan’s face, we are reminded of Henry’s observations about the unchanging countenance of Lord Brandon Gerrard in 1686 when he received (with no visible signs of disturbance) the sentence of death metered out to him for his association with the Rye House plot. It is also interesting to note that Henry does seem to think that if an earlier and swifter confession had been made, Achan may have escaped the death penalty.
Henry continues in this vein of underlining the severity of the crime that Achan has committed, so as to justify the apparent severity of God’s punishment. Establishing the severity of the crime appears to be essential to Henry if he is going to be able to justify God’s actions and exonerate the deity from injustice, cruelty, and barbarism. Even though for Henry, God, being God, could act arbitrarily if he wanted to, Henry nevertheless works hard to establish the deep seriousness of Achan’s crime. First, he observes, the crime was a great affront to God because Achan transgressed the covenant, the sacred bond between Yahweh and his people. Second, the punishment needs to be severe to match the severity of the crime because Achan has caused ‘great injury’ to the church of God, damaging the reputation of the holy nation which is to be an example to all nations; a holy nation of which Yahweh is the protector. Moreover, for Henry the text indicates that the goods were stolen and that Achan, even though given ample opportunity to confess, continually hid his guilt and did not own up. In addition, Achan hid the stolen things, which were under the ban, among his own goods (Josh 7:11). Henry therefore draws the conclusion that:
These being crimes so heinous in their nature, and of such pernicious consequence and example, the execution, which otherwise would have come under the imputation of cruelty, is to be applauded as a piece of necessary justice. It was sacrilege; it was invading God’s rights, alienating his property, and converting to a private use that which was devoted to his glory and appropriated to the service of his sanctuary – this was the crime to be thus severely punished, for warning to all people in all ages to take heed how they rob God.35
So in fact for Henry, one act of theft has been elevated to a range of crimes. Indeed, theft has been transformed into sacrilege tantamount to treason. There is no suggestion that Achan would have intended all these consequences, or was conscious of the full implications in these terms of the simple act of theft. Henry does not, to be clear, label these actions treason. If he had done, it would have served to justify the punishment Achan receives, for at the time of his writing, treason in England was a crime whose punishment included in its sweep the criminal’s family and possessions.
However, it is the context of crime and punishment in Henry’s day that explains the emphasis Henry lays on the heinous nature of the crime. Although many criminal acts (especially after the passing of the Black Act of 1723) were subject to the death penalty, this was far less frequently carried out in practice.
By the number of statutes creating capital offences, it sweeps into the net every crime which, under any possible circumstances, may merit the punishment of death: but when the execution of this sentence comes to be deliberated on, a small proportion of each class are singled out, the general character, or the peculiar aggravations of which crimes, render them fit examples of public justice. By this expedient, few actually suffer death, whilst the dread danger of it hang over the crimes of many.36
Since many were reprieved of the death penalty and given alternative sentences, the question becomes how it was decided to execute some and not others. The answer is that those who were executed were considered to be particularly deserving of execution given the nature of their crime and their overall standing, character, and record. William Paley lists three elements: ‘Repetition, cruelty and combination’.37 Matthew Henry works hard to establish why Achan’s execution was equally merited.
D. Achan’s Arraignment and Examination: Confession
Joshua seeks Achan’s confession, even though the lot has determined the guilty party (Josh 7:18–19). Not only will confession be required but also retrieval of the stolen goods from where they were hidden to confirm the accuracy of Achan’s confession. Henry considers in all cases the accuracy and justice of the lot (and hence of Yahweh’s guidance) to be confirmed in this process. Commentators and preachers have found much to interest them in these passages. Henry suggests that Joshua ‘urges him to make a penitent confession, that his soul might be saved by it in the other world, though he could not give him any encouragement to hope that he should save his life by it’.38 Henry here clearly and anachronistically attributes a belief in a Christian afterlife to both Joshua and Achan (though he himself would not have seen such an approach as anachronistic, given his Christian approach to both Testaments). Behind these discussions one can sense the idea that confession of guilt is a required part of the justice system, since the confession confirms for all that the system is indeed just, that those found guilty are indeed guilty, and that the punishment is fit and deserved. As a modern historian observes:
Confession, while important to the individual, was important in a wider sense. The message of the gallows depended, in theory, if not always in practice, upon the condemned person making a public acknowledgement of his guilt, delivering words of warning to the assembled crowd to prevent them from making the mistakes that he or she had made, and thus dying truly repentant.39
There may also be a sense that confession, even at the last moment, will place the guilty penitent in a better relation with the deity, and hence is strong motivation for Christian magistrates and pastors to press till the very end for confession, but it is probably the case that the motivation to justify the law and the criminal process is the stronger. ‘Thus does Achan confess the whole matter, that God might be justified in the sentence passed upon him’.40
Henry’s thinking about the trial and execution of Achan is coloured by this general sense of the criminal justice system as operative in his own time, where public executions took place and were seen as necessary and effective elements of the maintenance of law and order, and where the role of confession was an important part of the procedure and the spectacle.41
One particular feature of the interchange between Joshua and Achan in Josh 7:19–22 has drawn the attention of commentators in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, namely the calm and considerate way in which Joshua speaks to Achan. The Hebrew text is short but conveys a depth of concern from Joshua which has the effect of bringing forth the confession of Achan and the details of his theft. It is the fact that Joshua does not mistreat Achan, nor call him a host of derogatory names, that is often commented upon. In this way, commentators challenge the contemporary justice system from their own perspective for what they see as the mistreatment of the accused. For example, Henry writes:
How he accosts him with the greatest mildness and tenderness that could be, like a true disciple of Moses. He might justly have called him ‘thief’, and ‘rebel’, ‘Raca’, and ‘thou fool’, but he calls him ‘son’; he might have adjured him to confess, as the high priest did our blessed Saviour, or threatened him with the torture to extort a confession, but for love’s sake he rather beseeches him: I pray thee make confession. This is an example to all not to insult over those that are in misery, though they have brought themselves into it by their own wickedness, but to treat even offenders with the spirit of meekness, not knowing, what we ourselves should have been and done if God had put us into the hands of our own counsels. It is likewise an example to magistrates, in executing justice, to govern their own passions with a strict and prudent hand, and never suffer themselves to be transported by them into any indecencies of behaviour or language, no, not towards those that have given the greatest provocations.42
It can now perhaps be better understood why the prisoners in Chester Castle benefitted from Henry’s ministry, given the humanity in this understanding of the convicted criminal being still deserving of respect. In his exegesis, Henry here also shares a concern with George Fox (1624–1691) who, given his dedication to resisting all forms of oaths and oath-making, and ensuring that all speech was plain and to the glory of God, in 1676 commented similarly and at length on the subject, using Josh 7 as the point of departure for a survey of scripture on the theme.43 Fox himself, in his many trials, had no doubt been subject to a lot of abuse, both verbal and physical. It is in this context of the speech of the magistrates that Henry comes closest to making any implicit criticism of the criminal justice system, or of rendering any constructive advice.
E. The Punishment
Since the lot had identified Achan as the sinner and the criminal, and since Achan had confessed to the crime and the goods had been recovered from the very place he said they were hidden, there is no doubt of Achan’s guilt and no sense that the troubler of Israel would not now themselves be troubled by all Israel. Execution was to take place and each qualified member of the society was to take part in the execution. As Henry reiterates:
See why Achan was so severely dealt with, not only because he had robbed God, but because he had troubled Israel; … It was the act of all Israel, … They were all spectators of it, that they might see and fear. Public executions are public examples. Nay, they were all consenting to his death, and as many as could were active in it, in token of the universal detestation in which they held his sacrilegious attempt, and their dread of God’s displeasure against them.44
The public execution of Achan and the collective involvement demonstrates that all were united in their hatred of the crime and willing to exercise their abhorrence through stoning. Henry also demonstrates how he was familiar with public executions and the general belief in their efficacy in emphasising the terror of the law and the terror of punishment. The public execution confirmed the justice of the system, involved the whole community (rather than being the arbitrary act of the ruling classes), and served as a terrible example to all, as a major deterrent. Unlike William Paley, who felt that public executions would rather have the effect of lessening the humanity of all involved and wanted to advocate alternative means, Matthew Henry gives no indication of finding such occurrences harmful and, as we have seen, expected the powers that be to effectively wield the sword. He observes:
The concurrence of all the people in this execution teaches us how much it is the interest of a nation that all in it should contribute what they can, in their places, to the suppression of vice and profaneness, and the reformation of manners; sin is a reproach to any people, and therefore every Israelite indeed will have a stone to throw at it.45
In these ways Henry reads with the grain of the narrative and adds further stones to the cairn of consensus raised over Achan’s dead body.
F. The Sins of the Fathers are Visited on the Children: Killing all the Family
Henry does not question the punishment that is metered out to Achan and his family, nor the loss of property. In English law at the time, the crime of treason was also punishable by the loss of property so that spouses and descendants were disinherited and left without means in one blow. The sins of the fathers were certainly borne by the children in these instances. Henry seeks to justify the execution of all of Achan’s family on the grounds that the sons and daughters must have been cognisant of the crime. Otherwise he cannot actually countenance that their punishment was just, as seen in the following passage:
God had expressly provided that magistrates should not put the children to death for the fathers’; but he did not intend to bind himself by that law, and in this case he had expressly ordered (v. 15) that the criminal, and all that he had, should be burnt. Perhaps his sons and daughters were aiders and abettors in the villainy, had helped to carry off the accursed thing. It is very probable that they assisted in the concealment, and that he could not hide them in the midst of his tent but they must know and keep his counsel, and so they became accessories ex post facto—after the fact; and, if they were ever so little partakers in the crime, it was so heinous that they were justly sharers in the punishment. However God was hereby glorified, and the judgment executed was thus made the more tremendous.46
Even God is defended when his own legislation not to punish the children on account of the crimes of the parents (as found in Deut 24:16 and Ezek 18:4) is contradicted by these actions. Henry does not resort to identifying the Joshua narrative as earlier than the law found in Deuteronomy in order to escape the tension. On the contrary, since God is God, he has the perfect right to break his own laws as he sees fit. The natural law of the universe and of morality, since established by God can also be broken by him. In this fashion, Henry is not so far from Calvin’s response to this text, namely that God’s justice is a mystery and cannot be questioned, and his knowledge of the secrets of a person’s heart is deeper than any human can fathom. Calvin is left speechless in the sight of such texts and considers it unworthy and sinful to seek to fathom the logic of the case. As he states in his commentary on Joshua:
Wherefore, there is nothing better in this case, than to holde our mindes in suspense, untill the bookes be opened, where the judgementes of God shall be openly seene, which are nowe shadowed with our darkenes.… But if we do consider, how much deeper the knowlege of God pearceth, than the understanding of our mind, we will rather stay in his decree, than by advancing our selves with rashnesse, and mad pride and presumption, cast our selves headlong into destruction.47
4. Conclusion
Henry did speculate further than Calvin would seem to allow, and in his engagement with the text utilizes his imagination and draws consequences for the nation, the community, and (most emphatically) for the individual. Whilst there is an element of constructive criticism of the contemporary criminal justice system in his comments about the appropriate ‘words of the magistrate’ in interrogating the suspected criminal and in eliciting full confessions, overall Henry adopts a somewhat conservative approach to the text. Rather than using Josh 7 as his Puritan forebears had done on occasion to directly challenge the state and its officers, he instead draws upon and reinforces the values, beliefs, and procedures of the criminal justice system in his own day. Perhaps his dissenting status, being a minority one and precarious in the country, inhibited his biblical interpretation to seek the reform of the individual rather than to engage in social and political criticism of the state. While Henry certainly felt the discomfort of a few splinters arising from the narrative, generally he read and interpreted with the grain of the text.
1. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
2. David J Chalcraft, ‘Deviant and Legitimate Action in the Book of Judges’, in The Bible in Three Dimensions, ed. David J.A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl, and Stanley E. Porter, JSOTSup 87 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 177–201.
3. For surveys of the historical period see: George Clarke, The Later Stuarts: 1660–1714, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934); Jonathan Clarke, From Restoration to Reform: The British Isles 1660–1832 (London: Vintage, 2014); Barry Coward, The Stuart Age: England, 1603–1714, 4th ed. (Harlow: Longman, 2012); Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007); Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (London: Harper Press, 2012).
4. David L Wykes, ‘The Early Years of Religious Dissent in Cheshire following James II’s Declaration of Indulgence in April 1687’, Northern History 52 (2015): 217–32.
5. Geoffrey Holmes, ‘The Sacheverell Riots: The Crowd and the Church in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, Past & Present 72 (August 1976): 55–85.
6. H.D. Roberts, Matthew Henry and his Chapel: 1662–1900 (Liverpool: The Liverpool Booksellers’ Company, 1901).
7. Roberts, Matthew Henry, 62.
8. Roberts, Matthew Henry, 64.
9. Roberts, Matthew Henry, 65.
10. William Tong, An Account of the Life and Death of Mr. Matthew Henry, Minister of the Gospel at Hackney (London: E. Matthews, M. Lawrence, and S. Cliff, 1716), 34–35.
11. Tong, An Account, 161–67.
12. Henry Burton, Israel’s Fast: Or, a meditation upon the seventh chapter of Joshua; A faire Precedent for these Times (London: Thomas Cotes, 1628). See also, James Holstun, Ehud’s Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution (London: Verso, 2000), 161.
13. Tong, An Account, 174–78.
14. Tong, An Account, 175–76.
15. Tong, An Account, 177.
16. Matthew Henry, cited in Tong, An Account, 37.
17. Henry on Josh 7:1–5.
18. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Transworld, 2006), 51.
19. 19. Henry on Josh 7:1–5.
20. Henry on Josh 7:1–5.
21. Max Weber, ‘The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 302–22. The essay was originally published in German in 1920. See further, David J. Chalcraft, ‘The Development of Weber’s Sociology of Sects: Encouraging a New Fascination’, in Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances, ed. David J. Chalcraft (London: Equinox, 2007), 26–51.
22. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988). Originally published in French in 1895.
23. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
24. David Taylor, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1750–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 126.
25. For an introduction to the debate, see John W. Rogerson, ‘The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality: A Re-Examination’, JTS 21 (1970): 1–16.
26. Henry on Josh 7:1–5.
27. See for example, the exegesis of Judg 16:1–3 in Richard Rogers, A Commentary upon the Whole Book of Judges (London: Felix Kyngston, 1615). See further, David Underdown, Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (London: Fontana, 1993).
28. See, for example, Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, 2nd ed. (Stroud: Sutton, 2000).
29. Henry on Josh 7:1–5.
30. Henry on Josh 7:10–15.
31. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
32. Henry on Josh 7:10–15.
33. Henry on Josh 7:10–15.
34. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
35. Henry on Josh 7:10–15.
36. William Paley, ‘Moral and Political Philosophy’, in The Works of William Paley D.D: Complete in One Volume (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, 1828), 133. Originally published 1785.
37. Paley, ‘Moral and Political Philosophy’, 133.
38. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
39. Taylor, Crime, Policing and Punishment, 127.
40. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
41. Taylor, Crime, Policing and Punishment, 127.
42. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
43. George Fox, The Christian Judges, so called, Their Words Judged by the Holy Men of God, and Christ, and his Apostles, and by the Heathen (n.p.: n.p., 1676).
44. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
45. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
46. Henry on Josh 7:16–26.
47. John Calvin, A Commentarie of M. Iohn Caluine, upon the Booke of Iosue, finished a little before his death, trans. William Fulke (London: Thomas Dawson, 1578), fols. 33, 39.