The LORD instructed a step-by-step selection process through tribes, clans, and households to identify the offender Joshua 7:14. The text reports the selection narrowing until Achan son of Carmi was taken Joshua 7:16–18.
In Joshua 7:14–15 Joshua is told to gather Israel the next morning for a step-by-step public process that will narrow from tribe to family to household to individual, until Yahweh identifies the offender. The person found with the “devoted thing” is to be burned along with everything he possesses. These verses come after Israel’s defeat at Ai and Joshua’s distress and questioning of why the campaign failed (Joshua 7:1–13). The narrative has already identified the hidden cause for the reader: someone took items that were supposed to be set apart, bringing trouble on the whole community.
Joshua 7:14–15 presents a public, ordered process to expose a hidden violation that has harmed the whole community. The text’s explicit claim is that Israel must assemble in the morning and move from larger groups to smaller ones—tribe, family, household, and finally individual—until Yahweh “takes” one (Stage A textualClaims).
A careful answer keeps the immediate passage, the book's argument, and the whole-Bible storyline together, so the question is answered in context instead of as a detached idea.
Start with Joshua 7:14, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
14In the morning therefore you shall be brought near by your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which Yahweh takes shall come near by families; and the family which Yahweh shall take shall come near by households; and the household which Yahweh shall take shall come near man by man.