Zacchaeus

The Zacchaeus story appears in Luke 19:1-10. The story actually begins, or the stage is set, in Luke 18:35-43.
I need to refer you to Jeremiah 34. In Jeremiah 34:8 King Zedekiah, in the face of an oncoming Babylonian invasion has proclaimed a Jubilee, a release of all the Hebrew/Jewish slaves. But, once the Babylonian threat passes, they revoke the Jubilee, in Jeremiah 34:11 they have reenslaved those who they have set free.

The Lord speaks to Jeremiah again and has him deliver a message to King Zedekiah:

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I myself made a covenant with your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, saying, ‘Every seventh year each of you must set free any Hebrews who have been sold to you and have served you for six years; you must set them free from your service.’ But your ancestors did not listen to me or incline their ears to me. You yourselves recently repented and did what was right in my sight by proclaiming liberty to one another, and you made a covenant before me in the house that is called by my name; but then you turned about and profaned my name when each of you took back your male and female slaves, whom you had set free according to their desire, and you brought them again into subjection to be your slaves. Therefore, thus says the Lord: You have not obeyed me by granting a release to your neighbours and friends; I am going to grant a release to you, says the Lord—a release to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine. I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. And those who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make like the calf when they cut it in two and passed between its parts: the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf shall be handed over to their enemies and to those who seek their lives. Their corpses shall become food for the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth. And as for King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials, I will hand them over to their enemies and to those who seek their lives, to the army of the king of Babylon, which has withdrawn from you. I am going to command, says the Lord, and will bring them back to this city; and they will fight against it, and take it, and burn it with fire. The towns of Judah I will make a desolation without inhabitant. 

Jeremiah blames the Babylonian invasion and exile on the revocation of the Jubilee.

When the Babylonians invade King Zedekiah flees to the plains near Jericho and there he is captured. The Babylonians gouge his eyes out and kill his sons.

I don't know if the blind man Jesus heals outside Jericho is King Zedekiah or represents King Zedekiah, or alludes to him, but it's something to think about.

Zacchaeus

The Zacchaeus story is pretty incredible, especially in light of the 2008 economic catastrophe.

Jesus is passing through Jericho.

All right, let's look at this from Zacchaeus' perspective. What is that guy thinking?

Zacchaeus is a very rich man, the 1% of Jericho, a bonafide kleptocrat, a looter. 

Zacchaeus knows he is hated, that the people of Jericho resent him, but he doesn't really care, they can take up any issues they have with the Roman soldiers and see how far they get.

What is Zacchaeus thinking when he hears that Jesus is coming?

First of all people aren't saying Jesus is coming, they're saying "Yeshua is coming", "Joshua is coming". Zacchaeus hears that Joshua is coming to Jericho. He's heard this story before. What is that story? Joshua comes to Jericho and the former Hebrew slaves are returning to Israel from bondage in Egypt. They come to Jericho, saying "let us in", "give back to us our wealth."  The Hebrews are ordered to circle Jericho blowing ram's horns. Well, that's not quite right, and where are english translations do an extreme disservice. They were ordered to blow "yobel" horns, Jubilee horns. The Hebrews are circling the city demanding a Jubilee. They are demanding to be let in, to be given what is rightfully theirs. The Jerichoites are hard-hearted and refuse to enact Jubilee. The walls fall down, and what happens in most revolutions when Jubilee is not enacted there is slaughter.

Zacchaeus knows this story. He knows this "Joshua" has also been proclaiming Jubilee. It's Joshua coming to Jericho blowing the trumpets of Jubilee. Zacchaeus readily identifies himself as "Jericho" in this story. "What the bleep is going on, is this for real, is this some kind of joke."

Zacchaeus goes out and the story says he climbs a tree. How convenient. The mob is there. Zacchaeus is their scapegoat, who just happens to be already up a tree. Is there a noose?...of course I'm just speculating, and just to speculate some more, I think the mob/crowd wants this "Joshua" to approve of the lynching, come on Joshua we have "Jericho" surrounded, just the say the word and we'll commence the slaughter. The crowd wants their Jubilee.

Jesus, of course, goes much farther. Jubilee is not just for the little people, it's for the rich. It's for both the "Hebrew slaves and "Jericho". Jesus tells Zacchaeus to come down, I'm going to your house. Zacchaeus by now has seen the wisdom of this Jubilee thing, to enact Jubilee before it comes to him getting killed. Zacchaeus returns the money he has stolen and looted. So Jesus says Zacchaeus is also the son of Abraham. Jesus' Jubilee includes everyone, the rich and poor, that Jesus has come to save those who were lost.

Barack Obama for President

I'm endorsing Barack Obama for President of the USA. Barack Obama has shown the leadership, character and wisdom to be the next President of the United States.

The last eight years of Republican rule have been a disaster. John McCain has only shown that he fully endorses the foreign policy disasters, economic mismanagement and corruption of the Bush administration. As the Republican National Convention has shown the Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt. There is nothing to their party platform except envy, insults and exploitation of military and religious symbols.

As McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis stated, "This election is not about issues... This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” Their convention was almost totally without substance. Nothing but the stock insults of strawmen "Liberals" we've heard so much over the last 20 years on talk radio/Cable News and the shameless/cynical exploitation of military and religious symbolism.

The mainstream media doesn't have the ability to say it, for whatever reason, but Sarah Palin as vice president is ridiculous. I grew up in authentic small towns and I've lived in big cities. Being Mayor of a town of 5000 people does not provide you with the experience to govern the United States. It's laughable. The media, if they were'nt owned and operated by the Republican Party, should be openly mocking McCain's lack of judgment.

I'll concede the fact that Palin is not as deranged as Minnesota's own Michelle Bachman, who she reminds me of, but she certainly represents all that is bad with conservatives (and almost all of it is bad).

Barack Obama has impressed me from the very first time I heard him speak. He is someone I can relate to, having lived in small towns and big cities. He has thought a lot about the issues, and though I don't agree with him on everything he is closer to what needs to be done than the alternative. Barack Obama knows his stuff.

Obama has shown the judgment and seriousness which our nation needs. Joe Biden was a tremendous pick for VP. I was totally shocked that the 72 year old, cancer survivor McCain would recklessly choose a person with almost no experience and even interest in foreign policy or macro domestic economic issues. The McCain/Palin ticket scares me. The Obama/Biden ticket shows the seriousness, judgment, vision and smarts to meet the challenges the United States will have to deal with after the disastrous Bush Presidency.

I'm going to try to write more over the next few months and see if I can contribute my own Girardian/Alisonian/etc views on the election. I thought I would get this whole endorsement thing over with right from the beginning. I like Obama, even though I'm usually very wary of politics. He is the first candidate in my life time that I have felt really positive about.

Little Drummer Boy

Could the Little Drummer Boy be the most Girardian Christmas animation out there?

Little Drummer Boy Part 1 of 3



Little Drummer Boy Part 2 of 3



Little Drummer Boy Part 3 of 3

Neo-Conservatism is the Rise of Neo-Paganism

I was reading this article by Glenn Greenwald, and it he unknowingly gives a great Girardian critique of neo-conservative ideology. He states the following:

On a different note, is the curriculum for history classes in some American states restricted to learning about Hitler and the Nazis and 1938 and Hitler and Germany? It must be, because there are many right-wing fanatics whose entire understanding of the world is reduced in every instance to that sole historical event -- as though the world began in 1937, ended in 1945, and we just re-live that moment in time over and over and over:

Love war? You are Churchill, a noble warrior. Oppose war? You're Chamberlain, a vile appeaser. And everyone else is Hitler. That, more or less, composes the full scope of "thought" among this strain on the right.

This is great Girardian analysis, from an obviously non-Girardian. He has really stumbled on the truth of the situation. For Neo-Conservatives World War II was the founding murder. The great collective violence that unified the nation. Neo-conservatism isn't just a political movement it is a pagan religion. It wants to keep repeating this founding, collective and unanimous violence. Their rituals aren't working very well, people are just too skeptical of this new religion, they aren't joining in. So Neo-Conservatives keep rehearsing the ritual, finding new Hitlers, hoping they find someone sufficiently evil to make their rituals, incantations and human sacrifices work. A successful ritual would gather all believers and all dissenters into a cohesive, unified group, focused on the designated evil. Neo-Conservatism is the ideology of the lynch mob, it's this continuing search for an evil that we can all agree on and that we can do away with unanimously. Each event has the same characters, the evil man du jour is Hitler, the Neo-Conservatives are always Churchill and anyone who doesn't believe in these charades are appeasing Chamberlains. Greenwald is right, that's the entirety of Neo-Conservative "thought". World War II has been turned into this mythical event by which all else must be interpreted. This is obviously in stark contrast to Christianity. Christianity holds that the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the great interpretive event.

Kasey Chambers - I Still Pray

Contagion: A Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture

Great News!!! All back volumes of the great Girardian journal Contagion have been digitized and are available to download.

Do They Really Need Another Massive Human Sacrifice?

This is awesome evidence for the contemporary American reality of mimetic theory.



I don't think this yearning, expectation, and hope for another large scale human sacrifice similar to 9/11 is something that's outside of conservative thought. I believe the need for human sacrifice is at the very center of contemporary, Fox News conservatism. They need the power of a televisual spectacle to unite people. They need the blood to flow, so they can feel the love.

They really don't care that much for fighting "terrorism", what they really care about is the unity that comes about after a large scale terrorist attack/human sacrifice. I don't think they're capable of actually conducting the sacrifice themselves so they must rely on the "terrorists" to don the sacrificial mask.

Mr. Bykofsky thesis seems to be that we need continuing human sacrifice to maintain unity and keep internal conflict at bay. We need human sacrifice. Some kind of massive human burnt offering to maintain our unity. He realizes that massive sacrifices, conducted by outside executioners, that unveil an evil that we can all agree on will give us the ability to project our internal disagreements, violence, disunity, psychosis and whatever else may be keeping us from being at one with our neighbor and place these negativities onto an outside other, as we did in Iraq.

There were stories about people celebrating 9/11 and it was understood that those celebrations were conducted by "Islamofascists", but Mr. Bykofsky column puts in doubt the notion that it was only "Islamofascists". Ancient human sacrifices were indeed celebrations, which relieved great stress. We are dealing with a very primitive religion here, a religion of human sacrifice. The greatest threat to American Christianity is Fox News conservatism.

The Sick Longing for Massive Destruction

The Iraq War is a conundrum. No one can figure out the reasons for the invasion of Iraq. People from across the political/theological spectrum have put in enormous effort and have set forth the most creative and far-fetched reasons behind the invasion. The WMD thing was plainly bogus from the start. That Saddam was behind 9/11 was just plain ludicrous. The grab for oil was a plausible reason, but definitely not an immediate justification for the invasion of a country and the 100's of billions of dollars thrown away.

The great question remains "Why?". I think we must stop trying to come up with strategic or rational reasons. The pro-war neocons are not rational people, they're ideology is a reversion to the pagan past. A past filled with human sacrifice and witches, of darkness and demons, of pogroms and persecutions.

I read this article by Stu Bykofsky, I don't know who he is and I don't believe the article is satire (you never know anymore). Actually some of the stuff I think is most likely satire usually turns out not to be.

Mr. Bykofsky doesn't believe the human sacrifices of 9/11 and the Iraq War have been sufficient. He thinks Americans are separated from each other, that we don't have any common bonds.

There was a large thread going through the pro-war movement (movement is the wrong word, mostly it was just people sitting in front of their TVs) of this need for unity. Like the whole thing was a big football game. We all had to cheer for the same team, and if you weren't cheering loud enough for our team you must be for the other team.

I'm still not getting to the point I want to make. The conservative movement is obsessed with "Liberals". They can't stand this separation from the "Liberals", they want us all together, all tearing at the same meat. All cheering for the deaths of whoever has been designated by Fox News as the "bad guy(s)". They want to feel the electrifying thrill of unity, of all the differences and barriers falling away, everybody for once playing by their rules, holding their opinions and playing their game. They want to belong to the crowd, the unified crowd. They're sick and tired of confrontation and disagreements, of arguments and conflict. They long for large-scale human sacrifice, some kind of horrific spectacle of human death and destruction that unveils an evil that we can all agree on. That all these happy people doing their own thing will finally feel the anger they feel, that they'll finally have a purpose that they can pursue without being checked by laws or the opinions of others.

They want to stick the sword into somebody and let out the primal scream that cleanses one of low-esteem and loneliness. Instead of it being lonely me and the "them" who thwart me, it can be the beautiful and exhilarating "Us" against the evil "them".

It's the longing to be part of a lynch mob. The freedom to unreservedly thwart whatever you happen to see as evil at that moment. To be around people who wholeheartedly agree with you, who are thinking the same thoughts, who, as the mutilated "evil" lies dead before them, feel all their insecurities and the barriers between individuals dissolve. To stand around the mutilated corpse of a person or a country and finally be able to call the people around them "buddies" and sing some kind of macabre version of "Kum By Yah". To finally have society ordered to their liking.

They long for sacrificed dead bodies and the mob unity that is always found around them. They long for decisive violence and death that clearly delineates good and evil, a human sacrifice that will bring us all together.

Mercy Now

This is a great song by Mary Gauthier.

Rene Girard on YouTube

Haven't actually listened to this, but certainly seems pretty interesting.

COV&R Conference

The 2007 Colloquium on Violence and Religion conference is coming up in July. The list of abstracts looks pretty interesting, can't wait to read the actual papers. As an extra I'll link to video of Rene Girard's speech Violence, Victims and Christianity.

King Josiah

The latest scholarship and research seems to show that King Josiah had an enormous influence on Biblical history. This is related to our recent discussion on Achan, because it seems that Joshua in the Book of Joshua was actually a not-so-well disguised projection of King Josiah. King Josiah instituted sweeping reforms and the Book of Joshua seems to be propaganda for those reforms. Margaret Barker, though not dealing with Joshua or the politics re the Book of Joshua, has a great speech on the the symbolic reforms of King Josiah. What Did King Josiah Reform?

The Forgiving Victim

James Alison's visit to the House of Mercy was very formative in my Christian theological developement. Quite possibly the best sermon I've ever witnessed, Staggered Vision. Anyway, he seems to be conducting a class in London. I suggest to run, not walk to it.

The Iraq War Did Not Take Place?

I think it was Baudrillard who said the first Gulf War did not take place. Well I think it's my contention that the current Gulf War isn't really a war, but that it's some kind of post-modern, international atonement ritual. An attempt on the macro-level to revive the primitive schemes and forms of collective/mob murder. It was an attempt to restore confidence in the voice of the mob. Anyway, I came across this today, I think the remarks of right-wing pundit Dick Morris are relevant to our discussions on the atonement and scapegoating. Mr. Morris asserts,

MORRIS: I think that withdrawal from Iraq — it obviously gives al Qaeda a huge victory. Huge victory. On the other hand, if we stay in Iraq, it gives them the opportunity to kill more Americans, which they really like.

One of the things, though, that I think the antiwar crowd has not considered is that, if we’re putting the Americans right within their arms’ reach, they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the trade center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.

There it is the atonement theme of someone else supposedly dying for us, dying so that we don't have to, regardless of whether paranoia/lies form the basis of the belief in the supposed need for the sacrifice.

Richard Koenigsberg has been doing some great work re the sources of war and genocide.

In the atonement ritual are two goats. One goat which was Azazel, somehow synonymous with evil/Satan/the Devil, was led outside the city of the walls and thrown over a cliff. The other goat which was Yahweh was killed in front of the people and the blood brought into the temple to repair creation and bind the people together and cover the people from the violence of other members of the community.

So in the Iraq war we have two sets of people, two sacrificial classes. The first class is comprised of the Iraqi people. They, from the perspective of the persecutors in the ritual, correspond to the Azazel goat, they represent evil and are unceremoniously killed outside the camp. All sin is laid on the Azazel goat, making us into innocents.

This is all from the American perspective. The Yahweh goat corresponds to the American soldiers. From Koenigsberg,

According to Marvin, “The community celebrates and reveres its insiders turned outsiders. From within the boundaries, the community fears and worships these outsiders it consumes to preserve its life.” Soldiers are celebrated, revered and worshipped because they (like Christ) take the sacrificial burden upon themselves. They are the designated victims who are required to suffer—and perhaps to die—for other members of the group. The soldier is an “insider turned outsider,” member of the community who has been thrust outward from within the nation’s boundaries in order to do battle over there—on foreign soil.

He asserts that we delegate the execution of our soldiers to our enemies.

War as a unifier of the national community works best when people are able to avert their eyes from the sight of the victims; when they don’t have to look closely at what happens to the bodies of soldiers. People enjoy the idea of war, but would prefer to participate at a distance. They would rather not see the maimed bodies. Sight of a soldier’s mutilated body drains warfare of its glory.

Jesus in the Gospels represents both goats in the atonement. He is Yahweh who is killed in front of the people, but He is also the Azazel goat which is led outside the walls carrying the sins of the people, carrying the violence and dissension of the people and thrown over the cliff. The Yahweh goat is a substitute for the High Priest who also represents Yahweh. The goat is a substitute for the High Priest, so the High Priest can be resurrected in the Holy of Holies and walk out of the temple raised from the dead. The atonement ritual is a unifier, it disguises the violence done to Yahweh and the scapegoat. Jesus making the ritual come alive in history shows that it is the mob that is actually killing the Yahweh goat which is the substitute for the High Priest.

Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Lovers in a Dangerous Time from Bruce Cockburn and a cover from Barenaked Ladies.

Stonings and Sin Laid on Innocent People

I've been discussing the stoning/murder of Achan so this post over at Metafilter caught my attention. It's almost astounding that collective, lynch mob murders, in their most barbaric/primitive, most raw form still take place in our world today. This isn't the highly mediated lynch mob of the Iraq war, where people sat around their TVs watching Fox News waiting for "Shock and Awe" to start, this is a story of a group people picking up stones and brutally murdering a young girl to uphold some kind of order or unity. I know for certain, without really knowing anything about the situation that this girl is not guilty, that this girl surrounded by a group of murderers, bloody, dying a horrific death, for supposedly breaking some kind of "law" is a scapegoat. The same kind of "law" that Achan supposedly broke. As a commenter at Metafilter, speaking of another stoning, said "...all that was left was a mutilated body slumped over. It looked like an animal rather than a human. It was savage and nauseating." It's obvious that this girl is a scapegoat, but it should also be obvious with Achan, I understand that he is our scapegoat, but by the 20th century we should be able to understand that Achan is a scapegoat in the same way that this girl and Jesus were scapegoats.

I'm sure the people who were involved in this lynching were quite happy with themselves. They had punished an evil-doer. They felt very close to each other, they felt very good about each other. United in a job well done. I'm reminded of this photo from a Duluth, Minnesota lynching, it's a very graphic, disgusting and as the Metafilter commenter said, "savage and nauseating", but this is the way the crowd looked as it stood around Achan's dead body and the mutilated bodies of his children. Here's the photo (rated graphic and disgusting, but it's from the Minnesota Historical Society site). The people standing around the mutilated bodies, posing for the camera, thinking they delivered some kind of justice. This is the way all lynch mobs look. This is the way the people around Achan looked, this is the way the people around Jesus looked, this the way the people around Stephen looked, this is the way lynch mobs look. They all look happy and sure of themselves, because so many others around them look happy and sure of themselves. They all believe in the guilt of their scapegoat and in their own righteousness and goodness. You must remember that we Americans aren't very far removed from scenes like the above. That photo was from 1920's Duluth, Minnesota.

The mob feels a tremendous amount of unity after a lynching. It feels to them as if a god has blessed them with peace and unity. This is the foundation of all primitive religion. Religion begins around the body of a dead lynch mob victim. The community in world-ending crisis one minute and the next after they have united to kill a transgressor falls under an indescribable peace. Gods and religions are formed in this unity and peace around a dead body. The thing with Christianity though, some one speaks up, before or after the lynching and says, "this person is/was not guilty". This destroys everything, this is the sword that Jesus brings, because people will retaliate and seek revenge on the murderers if they don't believe the victim was guilty. So it's either endless reciprocal/retributive violence or people with broken and repentant hearts putting a stop to it. The Gospels destroy the idea that the scapegoat is guilty and the lynch mob is innocent and righteous.

The Gospels make a big deal about Peter denying Jesus. Peter was not able to separate himself from the crowd. He still believed the crowd had all authority, that the crowd was the voice of Yahweh. Even Pilate was not able to resist the lynch mob. The Gospels tell us that everybody was involved in the lynching of Jesus, all institutions, all people, even the disciples were not able to resist the lynch mob. They were all lost in the flood of violence that had rained down on earth and crushed Jesus. It wasn't until Jesus returned, forgiving them that they were able to resist the narrative of the lynch mob and begin telling another story about Jesus. Stephen became the first martyr by trying to tell the story, by proclaiming Jesus' innocence.

Rene Girard in The Scapegoat said, "The Gospels constantly reveal what the texts of historical persecutors, and especially mythological persecutors, hide from us: the knowledge that their victim is a scapegoat...".

Achan and the Crucifixion of Jesus

The next step is to lay out the argument that there is no essential difference between the mob lynching of Achan and the crucifixion of Jesus. In the despicable mob lynching of Achan and his family there is still the belief that the insane and ravenous mob, who the Psalms describe as packs of dogs, or herds of bulls or the "strong beasts of Bashaan", is murdering these isolated individuals in the service of Yahweh. Structurally the Gospel narratives and the Achan story are the same. The only difference is that the Gospels destroy the idea that the mob is killing the isolated victim in the service of Yahweh. The mob still thinks they're doing the service of Yahweh by killing Jesus, but in fact they're killing Yahweh himself. The mob is completely wrong, they literally do not know what they are doing. The mob that killed Achan was also operating under false assumptions, they thought Achan caused the defeat at Ai, but Achan could not return from the dead to tell them that they were wrong. Jesus came back from the dead, his voice was not extinguished by that of the mob. The mob's narrative was no longer the sole story. Jesus was speaking, and was now speaking with the full glory of Yahweh. He comes to Paul, the man who was continuing to murder the body of Christ, and says, not "why don't you believe in me?", but "Why are you persecuting me?". Jesus/Yahweh confronts Paul with the light of Genesis 1:3, the light of the holy of holies, and shows him that he does not know what he is doing. That Paul is not serving Yahweh by being part of the lynch mob, but in fact is killing Yahweh, the god he purportedly serves. This sudden revelation literally blinds him. Now the certainty that comes in the total, all-engulfing unity of the mob falls apart, Paul is created as a man by Yahweh. Paul is no longer part of the flood of violence that continues to kill Yahweh and his servants.

During the atonement ritual the blood Yahweh was spread throughout the temple the left over blood, though, was poured underneath the altar. In Revelation 6:9 this blood is shown to be the souls of the martyrs. The death of the martyrs are included in the atonement death of Jesus, they are assumed to be part of the great atonement.

In John 20:21–23 Jesus breathed into the disciples, as Yahweh breathed into Adam in Genesis. "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" The word translated "forgive" also means to bear. He is telling is disciples to forgive/bear the sins of others. He is creating them as high priests, as Adam was a high priest, He is telling them to do what Achan did involuntarily, what the servant in Isaiah 53 did, what Jesus himself did, to bear the sins of others. To carry the sins of others so that the people will not destroy themselves, so that they will be transformed, so that they will be created in the same way the disciples were created when Jesus/Yahweh breathed into them and gave them the Holy Spirit, and gave them the ability to no longer conform to the mob, but to conform to Jesus. Jesus in the Gospels is creating the World. He is calming the flood waters which are the murderous crowd.

In Matthew 23:35 Jesus compares his death to all the other murders and mob lynchings in the Old Testament from the first to the last.

Easter Eyes

This is a great insight, a very succinct theological summary from S. Mark Heim and the Grow Mercy blog.

The Achan Story - Addendum

In my rush to finish up last night before bed time I forgot a couple important details in the conclusion.

In Chapter 8 Joshua goes against Ai again. You would think that since it was Achan's fault that the first attack failed on Ai Joshua wouldn't really need to change strategy. It wasn't the strategy that caused the defeat it was Achan stealing the loot, but that's not how Joshua sees things. He knows it was a strategic failure and that he violated God's commandments re leading all of Israel into battle. So this time Joshua does in fact lead all the newly reunited Israel into battle, he doesn't sit back and let just a small contingent do the dirty work.

The second interesting thing is that in 8:2 he immediately rescinds the ban, now it ain't so bad to have privatized loot.

The first attack ended with the human sacrifice of Achan, the second attack ended with subdued animal sacrifice.

Chickamauga by Uncle Tupelo

I love this video.