There are two words tucked inside Joshua chapter six that most readers pass over quickly, and yet they carry the theological weight of the entire passage. The first is holy. The second, often translated devoted, is the Hebrew word herem. We tend to assume these are opposites in the ordinary sense, one good and one bad. They are not opposites in that way at all. They are two expressions of the same underlying truth, that everything ultimately belongs to God, either for His use or for His judgment.
Holy, in its most basic sense, means set apart. Set apart people, set apart objects, set apart time, all dedicated to God's purposes rather than common use. When we call something holy in scripture, we are saying it has been claimed by God for blessing, for worship, for service. Herem moves in the opposite direction while making the identical claim of ownership. It also means set apart, but set apart for destruction rather than use, claimed by God not for blessing but for judgment. Both words say the same thing about God's rights over what belongs to Him. They simply describe two different outcomes of that ownership.
In Joshua six, we see both categories applied within a single city. The silver, gold, bronze, and iron are called holy, devoted to the Lord's treasury, set apart for sacred use. The rest of Jericho, its people and its structures, is placed under herem, devoted to the Lord for judgment. Two different destinies, but one identical claim underneath them both. God says, this is mine, whether I am blessing it or judging it. The ownership does not shift depending on the outcome. Only the outcome shifts depending on what is being claimed.
This ought to unsettle any theology that treats God's ownership as something we grant Him only when it is convenient. We are quick to affirm that God is Lord over our blessings, our successes, our answered prayers. We are far slower to affirm that same lordship over the areas of our life that stand under discipline or correction. But scripture will not let us divide God's authority that neatly. The same Lord who claims the treasury also claims the city under judgment. His rule does not stop at the edge of blessing. It governs everything, because everything already belongs to Him before we ever decide whether to offer it.
There is something clarifying in this for how we think about our own lives as believers. We are told repeatedly in the New Testament that we have been made holy, set apart for God's use, no longer our own but bought with a price. That language is not incidental. It draws directly on this same vocabulary of total belonging. We do not belong to ourselves in part and to God in part. We belong to Him entirely, the same totality of claim that stood over Jericho's treasury and over Jericho's walls alike. The difference for us is not the extent of the claim but the outcome of it, and that outcome was decided at the cross, where judgment that we deserved was absorbed so that we could be set apart for use rather than for destruction.
This is also why the ancient Israelites were forbidden from touching anything under herem for their own benefit. Achan's failure in the following chapter, which we will look at soon, comes from exactly this violation, treating what was devoted for judgment as though it were available for personal gain. The warning embedded in chapter six is that we cannot casually reach into what God has claimed and expect no consequence, whether that claim results in blessing or in judgment. Ownership carries weight in both directions.
Perhaps the most sobering implication is this. Every human life stands somewhere in this same framework, claimed by God, destined either for the holiness that comes through faith in Christ or for the judgment that comes through rejection of Him. There is no third category, no neutral ground outside of God's ownership altogether. The two words in Joshua six are not describing an ancient military exception. They are describing the permanent shape of every life before a holy God, who claims all things, and who has, through the cross, made a way for what was devoted to judgment to be transferred instead into what is devoted to Him for blessing.
Dr. William C.K. Yomes is the founding apologist of Faith Makes Sense and the Senior Pastor of Catalyst Community Church in Wilmington, Delaware. This article is part of his ongoing teaching ministry at Catalyst Community Church.