Q&A: Am I an Informer?
Am I an Informer?
Question
“He said before Him: (Joshua) Master of the Universe, who sinned? He said to him: Am I an informer? Go cast lots. He went and cast lots, and the lot fell on Achan. He said to him: Joshua, are you coming against me on the basis of a lot?! You and Eleazar the priest are the two greatest men of the generation; if I were to cast a lot on you, it would fall on one of you. He said to him: Please… Immediately: ‘And Achan answered Joshua and said: Indeed, I have sinned against the Lord, God of Israel, and this and this have I done.'” (Sanhedrin 11a)
Why does it matter whether the Holy One, blessed be He, tells him through prophecy or through lots? Both are forms of divine revelation.
Answer
A very good question.
Perhaps the Holy One, blessed be He, merely wanted to teach him a lesson: that informing is something negative, and therefore He tells him that He will not inform, and sends him to the lot instead. As you wrote, the lot too is a message from the Holy One, blessed be He, but this introduction nevertheless helped Joshua—and us—internalize the negative value of informing.
Something similar appears in Moses our teacher’s gratitude to the Nile, which had hidden him. Clearly there is no point in showing gratitude to inanimate objects; rather, the point is to internalize the value of gratitude.