Ai Is Taken, Then the Law Is Heard

The scouts had said “Let not all the people go up” (7:3). God now says “take all the people of war with thee”, reversing the advice that led to the first defeat. The pairing “fear not, neither be dismayed” is the one Moses used in Deuteronomy 1:21 when he first set the land before Israel.

“As thou didst unto Jericho and her king” assumes something chapter 6 never narrated: the fate of Jericho’s king. The Book of Joshua often supplies such details later, as 10:1 does again. “Behind it” means west of the city, since the Hebrew compass faced east.

The march is made by night, up the long road from the Jordan valley into the hills. Some scholars propose that eleph, “thousand”, can also mean a military unit or clan contingent, which would make such figures counts of companies rather than of men; that is a proposal, not the text’s own explanation.

“Lie in wait” is arav, the verb for an ambush. The Book of Judges uses it for Abimelech’s men lying in wait against Shechem in four companies (Judges 9:32–34). “Be ye all ready” is nekhonim, set in readiness, from the same root as the priests who stood firm in the Jordan.

Joshua puts himself in the decoy force: “I, and all the people that are with me”. The commander is the bait. “As at the first” is said here and again in the next verse; the whole plan rests on doing a second time what went wrong the first.

The King James brackets the first clause as an aside. “Drawn” is nataq, to pull away, as a cord is pulled from a peg. The same verb returns when Israel uses this tactic against Gibeah, drawing the Benjamites “from the city unto the highways” (Judges 20:31–32).

“Seize upon” is the causative of yarash, the conquest verb, to take possession of. The promise “the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand” is given to the hidden force in particular: the men who will never see the battle start are told how it ends.

“See, I have commanded you” sounds like God’s words to Joshua in 1:9, “Have not I commanded thee?”, now passed down the line from Joshua to his officers. Burning the city is tied to “the commandment of the LORD”, not left to the soldiers’ choice.

Between Bethel and Ai is where Abraham pitched his tent and built an altar on his first journey through the land, “having Beth-el on the west, and Hai on the east” (Genesis 12:8; 13:3). The ambush waits near the place where Abraham called on the name of the LORD.

“Numbered” is paqad, to muster and inspect, the census verb of the Book of Numbers. The elders go up “before the people”, the same elders who had put dust on their heads before the ark (7:6). This time they lead the column.

“A valley” is gai, a ravine. With a ravine between them, both armies could see each other clearly and neither could close quickly. Joshua camps in open view on the north, which is exactly what Ai’s king is meant to see.

This verse picks up verse 9 again, naming the same spot between Bethel and Ai. Bethel was the town once called Luz, where Jacob slept with a stone for a pillow and saw the ladder (Genesis 28:19). The ambush lies in country full of the patriarchs’ memories.

Where the King James reads “went that night”, some Hebrew manuscripts read “lodged that night”, a difference of one letter. The Greek version lacks most of verses 11–13, which suggests the account of the positions circulated in more than one form.

Ai’s king “hasted and rose up early”, as Joshua had in verse 10: both commanders are up at first light. “At a time appointed” can also mean “at the appointed place”. “Before the plain” faces the Arabah, the Jordan valley, the direction of the road down to Jericho.

“Made as if they were beaten” is a reflexive verb, “let themselves be struck”: the defeat is performed. “The way of the wilderness” leads east and down toward the Jordan valley, the same road the first force had fled along (7:5).

“Called together” is zaaq, to cry out, used for summoning fighting men by a shout. Gideon’s clan is “gathered” with the same verb when he blows the trumpet (Judges 6:34). Every man within hearing is called out of the city.

“They left the city open”: Jericho had been “straitly shut up” (6:1); Ai throws its gate wide in pursuit. Bethel’s own capture is not told here at all; the Book of Judges records the house of Joseph taking it through a man who showed them the entrance (Judges 1:22–26).

“Spear” is kidon, a javelin or curved sword, the weapon Goliath carried (1 Samuel 17:6). The outstretched arm recalls Moses stretching his rod over the sea (Exodus 14:16) and holding up his hands at Rephidim while the young Joshua fought Amalek below (Exodus 17:11).

Three words of speed in one verse: “quickly”, “ran”, “hasted”. The ambush covers the ground between hiding place and gate before the defenders can turn, and fire is set at once, because the smoke is the second signal.

The same sign ends the battle at Gibeah in Judges 20:38–40, where a cloud of smoke rising from the captured city tells the pursuers that their city is lost. “No power” is literally “no hands”: the men of Ai had no strength left to flee either way.

Two sets of eyes see the same smoke. In verse 20 Ai’s men saw it and lost heart; here Joshua’s men see it and turn. The flight that was acted now reverses, and the verb shuv, turn back, marks the moment.

“Some on this side, and some on that side” traps Ai’s men between the two forces. “Remain or escape” is sarid and palit, survivor and fugitive, a fixed pair for total defeat that Jeremiah and Lamentations reuse (Jeremiah 42:17; Lamentations 2:22).

Saul later took Agag king of Amalek alive and kept him (1 Samuel 15:8–9), which Samuel condemned. Joshua’s captive is taken alive only to be brought to him for a public end. The king is the one person in Ai singled out for capture.

“Until they were consumed” is tamam, to be finished, the verb used of Israel passing “clean over” the Jordan. The slaughter happens in two places, the open field where the pursuit ended and the city itself, and the verse names both.

The Hebrew is literally “from man and unto woman”, everyone. Twelve thousand is the only casualty figure the Book of Joshua gives for a single city, set against the scouts’ confident estimate that the people of Ai were few.

This verse is missing from the Greek Old Testament. In the Hebrew, Joshua keeps the spear stretched out until the end, as Moses kept his hands raised at Rephidim “until the going down of the sun” (Exodus 17:12).

Numbers 31:9–12 had set the precedent: after the war with Midian, Israel took the cattle and goods as prey and brought them to the camp. The verse repeats the permission of verse 2, “according unto the word of the LORD”, at the point it is used.

“An heap for ever” is tel olam, a permanent ruin mound. Deuteronomy 13:16 used the same words for a town that turned to idols: “it shall be an heap for ever”. The site usually identified as Ai still bears the Arabic name et-Tell, “the mound”.

The gate where the king’s body is thrown was where he had sat in judgment, the civic centre of his city. Five more kings are hanged and taken down at sunset in 10:26–27, treated exactly as this one. “Carcase” is nevelah, a corpse.

Mount Ebal is some twenty miles north of Ai, and no conquest of the Shechem region is recorded in the Book of Joshua. The Greek version places this passage after 9:2, and a Dead Sea Scroll of Joshua seems to place it right after the crossing, before the circumcision at Gilgal.

This is the first appearance in the Bible of the phrase “the book of the law of Moses”, which returns in Joshua 23:6, 2 Kings 14:6 and Nehemiah 8:1. The instruction being followed is Deuteronomy 27:5–7, the altar on Ebal with burnt offerings and peace offerings.

“A copy of the law” is mishneh torah, the phrase used for the copy the king must write for himself in Deuteronomy 17:18. The Greek rendering of that phrase, “second law”, gave Deuteronomy its name. Joshua writes “in the presence of the children of Israel”.

“The stranger, as he that was born among them” pairs ger and ezrach, the resident foreigner and the native, the pairing of Exodus 12:49: “One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger.” “Commanded before” means from the first: blessing was the ceremony’s first purpose.

Josiah later does the same thing in Jerusalem: he “read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant” before the whole people, small and great (2 Kings 23:2). The order here is blessings first, then curses.

“Not a word... which Joshua read not” matches Deuteronomy 4:2, “Ye shall not add unto the word... neither shall ye diminish”. “Conversant” in 1611 meant living and moving among them; the Hebrew is literally “walking in their midst”.