Joshua 6:17

17. The city shall be accursed The city, with all its immense wealth, was now put under the ban, and devoted to destruction. To many of the besieging host this was the severest test of their faith and obedience. In oriental usage when a city is stormed the maxim is “To the victors belong the spoils.” As symbol of the utter destruction which the Canaanite race had deserved, this first great representative city is made an example of just doom. For the doom of first things, see note on Acts 5:1-11. The anathema was the devotion of any person or thing to God as irredeemable property; the person or animal was to be killed, and the inanimate thing was either completely destroyed, or set apart forever for the purposes of the sanctuary. The exact idea of the anathema, in the words of Hengstenberg, “is the forced dedication to God of those who have obstinately refused to dedicate themselves to him of their own accord, and the manifestation of his glory in the destruction of those who would not, while they lived, serve as a mirror to reflect it, and thus answer the purpose for which the world was created, and for which especially man was formed.” Compare Leviticus 27:28: note. In the last day all the wicked of the earth shall fall beneath the anathema of the Judge. Only Rahab and her kindred were exempt from the curse, for the oath of the spies had now become the oath of their entire nation.