Joshua 8:1-29
Ai Destroyed
1 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. 2 You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.”
Now that Israel had dealt with their sin, God wanted to lead them to victory again. If we want victory, we must first repent of the sin in our lives. He encouraged them not to be afraid or discouraged. After a spiritual failure, it’s easy to get discouraged and afraid that you’ll continue to fail. But God wants to encourage us to pick back up where we left off.
This time God says to take the whole army, not just send 3,000 soldiers. Now that God was with them again, they probably could have taken Ai with 300 men, but God knew their confidence would be helped with a more sound military strategy. That’s why God also instructed Joshua to set an ambush. Once again he tells Joshua not that he would give Ai into his hands, but that he already had. The battle is already won, but we must be obedient to God in order to benefit from it. And this time, God allows them to keep the booty for themselves. The plunder and livestock were not the issue, obeying God was the issue.
3 So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at night 4 with these orders: “Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from it. All of you be on the alert. 5 I and all those with me will advance on the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will flee from them. 6 They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, ‘They are running away from us as they did before.’ So when we flee from them, 7 you are to rise up from ambush and take the city. The LORD your God will give it into your hand. 8 When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the LORD has commanded. See to it; you have my orders.”
9 Then Joshua sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai—but Joshua spent that night with the people.
Joshua gave the orders that God had given him to his troops, and he sent 30,000 men just for the ambush, which was 10 times the total amount of troops that had tried the previous attack on Ai. Plus, he added one wrinkle that shows what a great general he was. He told those who waited in ambush to set the city on fire after the men of Ai came out to chase the main Israelite army. As we’ll see in the next verses, this distracted and disheartened the army of Ai, and proved to be a decisive advantage for Israel.
10 Early the next morning Joshua mustered his men, and he and the leaders of Israel marched before them to Ai. 11 The entire force that was with him marched up and approached the city and arrived in front of it. They set up camp north of Ai, with the valley between them and the city. 12 Joshua had taken about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. 13 They had the soldiers take up their positions—all those in the camp to the north of the city and the ambush to the west of it. That night Joshua went into the valley.
14 When the king of Ai saw this, he and all the men of the city hurried out early in the morning to meet Israel in battle at a certain place overlooking the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush had been set against him behind the city. 15 Joshua and all Israel let themselves be driven back before them, and they fled toward the desert. 16 All the men of Ai were called to pursue them, and they pursued Joshua and were lured away from the city. 17 Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.
18 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Hold out toward Ai the javelin that is in your hand, for into your hand I will deliver the city.” So Joshua held out his javelin toward Ai. 19 As soon as he did this, the men in the ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city and captured it and quickly set it on fire.
20 The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising against the sky, but they had no chance to escape in any direction, for the Israelites who had been fleeing toward the desert had turned back against their pursuers. 21 For when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that smoke was going up from the city, they turned around and attacked the men of Ai. 22 The men of the ambush also came out of the city against them, so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives. 23 But they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.
24 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26 For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed [a] all who lived in Ai. 27 But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the LORD had instructed Joshua.
28 So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29 He hung the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take his body from the tree and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.
The key to this battle, to me, is in verse 18. Joshua waited to give the signal to the troops waiting in ambush until God told him to. Even when we know we are in God’s will, and we think we have a perfect plan, it’s vital to wait on his timing. You can’t rush God. In verse 26, it says Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out the javelin until the battle was completely over. I’m not sure if this is a poetic way of saying he showed Ai no mercy, or if he actually stood there with his spear extended until the battle was won. In either case, Joshua followed through on what God told him to do until the task was completed. Sometimes when God gives us a job to do, we may get tired, distracted by other things, or discouraged, and leave the job unfinished. Joshua did not do that.
For much of the Old Testament this cycle of victory followed by failure followed by repentance followed by more victory followed by more failure, is repeated over and over for Israel. Many of us follow the same pattern in our own lives, but we don’t need to. God wants to give us complete victory over the kind of willful disobedience Israel was guilty of over and over. Even a casual reading of the Old Testament reveals the results of the kind of inconsistency Israel exhibited over the years. They ended up in exile, and only a remnant of the nation remained. But they did not have Jesus Christ and the dispensation of the Holy Spirit working within them like we have. So what’s our excuse?