Good questions, Brian. Let’s take them one at a time.

Deut 21:10-14 has to do with the treatment of a female prisoner of war. I think it will help us to put this situation in context. In that day, prisoners were treated as mere objects. Captive women were raped and/or made slaves. (We see the illustration of the little girl who served Naaman in 2 Kings 5, for example.)

In these verses in Deuteronomy, God’s people are instructed to treat female captives as human beings. If the captor is attracted to the woman, he must marry her, not rape her. If she doesn’t please him, he is free to let her go, but “since you have dishonored her” he is not allowed to either sell her or treat her as a slave. This was a totally new concept.

Joshua 7:25 deals with the experience of Achan’s sin a punishment. The People of Israel had their first experience of the conquest of the “Promised Land.” Before conquering the city of Jericho they were given specific instructions:

“Keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it.”

And then the command detailed specifically what the prohibition was:

“All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury” (Joshua 6:18-20).

As the text continues, we see that Achan specifically broke this command. We then note the Lord’s strong reaction:

“Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. (Details follow.) That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies…I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction” (Joshua 7:10ff).

And, in the text you cite, Achan, after being discovered, confesses his temptation and sin, and he and his family are executed by stoning.

How do we understand this extreme reaction on God’s part? I cannot speak for God, much less defend him, but the following thoughts help me understand this experience.

1) As the people of God are entering the Promised Land and are about to be constituted as a people there, it appears that the Lord wants them to take seriously who they are before Him. As he told them when he gave them the 10 Commandments (Ex 20), he has taken them out of slavery in Egypt to be his people and his covenental relationship with them is based on their obedience. Here is a test case. Does God take his commands seriously? Yes, he does. He is a God who means what he says. He operates with justice.

2) Achan, together with the rest, was well warned. His disobedience, as the Lord anticipated, would not only affect him, but also his family, and indeed the whole nation – which is what happened in the failure at Ai, when Israel was defeated.

3) Achan’s execution illustrates that disobeying God’s law results in punishment and even death. As we see in Israel’s history, God did not continue punishing in such a grave way every offense. However, the prophets reveal to us that when God’s people did not take seriously his laws, they suffered moral collapse, which eventually resulted in God’s terrible judgment upon them. But even as the prophets speak of God’s justice / judgment, they also include statements that describe his mercy and love.

4) In the New Testament, we see the development of justice and mercy in full relief in the life and death of Jesus. Paul then unfolds the Gospel and how we can take advantage of what Jesus has done for us.

5) It is hard to keep these two dimensions of justice and mercy in proper balance. I think that today we are more inclined to emphasize God’s mercy to the extreme (what Bonhoeffer described as “cheap grace”). We need to remember the sober reminder of the writer of the Hebrews:

“Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay’ and again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:28ff).

I trust these few thoughts will be helpful to you, Brian. Feel free to respond