What Does Joshua 7:25 Mean?
And Joshua said, Why have you stirred us? The LORD will stir you this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.
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 Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the LORD shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.THE KEY
The accusation and sentence are the same Hebrew word turned around: the trouble done to “us” is returned upon “thee,” ending in execution.
THE MEANING
The verse confronts you with harm framed in the plural: Joshua asks why one accused person has troubled “us.” The same root turns back toward him, and Israel’s answer is explicit and lethal, stones and fire. Communal injury and collective violence remain bound together here.
THE ROOT
עֲכַרְתָּנוּ
ʿakartanu
GROWS FROM
עכר
To stir up or disturb; to bring trouble or calamity.
“stirred” in this verse is ʿakartanu. Joshua’s question and his sentence use the same root: “Why hast thou troubled us?” and “the LORD shall trouble thee.” The next verse carries that root into Achor, so the word for communal harm becomes the name of the place marked by this execution.
ALSO GROWS
ʿōḵēr: A person who brings trouble.
עֹכֵר
The same form appears in Ahab’s accusation, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel?”, again framing trouble as something that reaches a whole people.
ʿĀḵôr: The name Achor, linked to trouble.
עָכוֹר
Joshua 7:26 gives this name to the place where the stoning and burning are remembered, fixing the root’s language of trouble in the landscape.
THE PATTERN
What touches one member is often described as reaching the household or community around them.
And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, You have troubled me, and made me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites. I am few in number, and they will gather against me, and strike me down; and I will be destroyed, I and my house.And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, Are you the one who muddies Israel?If one limb aches, all the limbs ache with it, and if one is clothed in weight, all of them rejoice with it.THE THREAD
And they raised over him a great heap of stones to this day. So the LORD turned back from the burning of his anger. Therefore the name of that place was called the valley of Achor, the valley of stirring, to this day.The next verse gives the charge a place-name: Achor is linked to the same root, עכר, meaning trouble. What begins as “Why hast thou troubled us?” becomes the name attached to the place where the stoning and burning are remembered.
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