What Does Joshua 7:20 Mean?
And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Firmly I have missed the mark against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus I have done.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:THE KEY
“I have sinned” names the miss, while “thus and thus have I done” refuses to leave it abstract.
THE MEANING
A hidden miss becomes speakable: the admission names the rupture, then points toward the deed itself. “I have sinned” does not remain a cloudy label; “thus and thus have I done” makes the confession specific. The verse speaks to the reader wherever a general admission is giving way to the actual thing done.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that a general “I was wrong” is the same as bringing the actual deed into view.
THE ROOT
חָטָאתִי
ḥāṭā’tî
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
To miss or fail to reach.
“missed the mark” in this verse is ḥāṭā’tî. The Hebrew verb translated “sinned” belongs to the root חטא, the language of missing. A related noun can name the miss itself, and the same root appears in the term for an offering for the missing; the confession reaches beyond a vague label to the rupture that needs to be brought into view.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēt: The miss or failure named as sin.
חֵטְא
It shows that “I have sinned” names a specific missing, not just a feeling of guilt.
ḥaṭṭā’t: The miss, and in a ritual context, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The same root language extends from naming the miss to what addresses it.
THE PATTERN
Confession moves wrongdoing from concealment into acknowledgment.
I make my falling short known to you, and my crookedness I do not cover. I say, I will speak my rebellion into the open before the LORD, and you release the crookedness of my falling short. Selah.Whoever covers his rebellions shall not prosper, but whoever speaks them into the open and lets them go shall be shown compassion.If we speak our shortcomings into the open, he is steady and aligned, to release our shortcomings, and to cleanse us from all crookedness.THE THREAD
I make my falling short known to you, and my crookedness I do not cover. I say, I will speak my rebellion into the open before the LORD, and you release the crookedness of my falling short. Selah.Joshua’s “I have sinned” and the psalm’s “my sin” grow from חטא (ḥ-ṭ-ʾ), the root of missing. The psalm makes the movement visible: confession means the miss is no longer concealed.
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