Bible Commentaries
Joshua 7

Verses 1-29

Failure and Success at Ai (7:1-8:29)

This story is told in great detail, for it illustrates dramatically the main contention of the Deuteronomic point of view: Israel’s success in the capture and continued possession of the land and its prosperity and leadership of the nations depend on its absolute obedience to the will of God. The slightest deviation will bring disaster for the whole nation.

The story begins with the account of the sin of Achan and the ensuing defeat at Ai (7:1-5). The name "Achan" is similar to the Hebrew word for "man of trouble" (Achar) and to the name of a plain (called in 7:24 "the Valley of Achor") where Achan and his family were put to death. This similarity leads to a pun on the name "Achan" in 7:25: "Why did you bring trouble on us? The Loan brings trouble on you today." The entire story is meant to show that sinning against the will of God as expressed in the Law brings deep trouble.

Achan’s sin was the covetous appropriation of taboo items on which he chanced in Jericho: "a beautiful mantle from Shinar [Babylonia], and two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels" (7:21). The mantle should have been burned and the precious metal turned over to the treasury of the Lord (6:19). The metals were in the form of ingots or bars, not coins. The latter were not in use among the Hebrews until about the sixth or fifth century B.C. Two hundred shekels of silver would amount to about five pounds (a shekel weighing about four tenths of an ounce) and a bar (literally, "tongue") of gold weighing fifty shekels would constitute about one and one-fourth pounds. It was a tempting bit of spoil, and Achan could not resist it.

The first attack on Ai by a small force of Israelites was launched after a report by spies (7:2-5). The initial success at Jericho apparently led to overconfidence. Hence, only a small force was dispatched and no adequate strategy was devised. The topography of the territory between Jericho and Ai is accurately reflected in the narrative (vs. 3). Jericho lies some 800 feet below sea level and Ai about 2,500 feet above. The ten or eleven mile climb by the entire fighting force was regarded as unnecessary by the spies sent out by Joshua. The attack apparently was frontal, for we are told that the invaders were chased from the gate of the city to Shebarim ("the quarries," an unknown place on the way of descent to the Jordan Valley).

The defeat threw Israel into near panic (vs. 5). Joshua was as alert to the significance of psychological advantage as modern generals are. When the Canaanites would hear that Israel was not invincible, they would unite and exterminate the invading force. Not only would Israel’s name be cut off from the earth but God’s as well (vs. 9).

The intercessory prayer of Joshua and the elders, accompanied by the tearing of garments and the putting of dust on the head—conventional signs of mourning (1 Samuel 4:12; 2 Samuel 1:2)—led to the disclosure that Israel had sinned in the matter of the devoted (taboo) things at Jericho. The sinner, by appropriating taboo articles, had himself become taboo and, in fact, had communicated it to all Israel. Israel had become "a thing for destruction" (vs. 12). It was Joshua’s responsibility to find the offender and the misappropriated articles and to exterminate both. The people were to be sanctified (prepared by the proper purifying rituals) so that they could appear before the Lord for the casting of lots as a means of discovering the guilty person.

The casting of lots was carried out in the sanctuary at Gilgal, the tribes being "brought . . . near" one by one (vs. 16). The lots were apparently the Urim and Thummim (see comment on Deuteronomy 33:1-29). The guilty tribe was narrowed down to the guilty clan, the guilty household, and the guilty person. When Achan was identified as the culprit, he was told by Joshua to "give glory to the LORD God of Israel, and render praise to him" (vs. 19). God is to be praised because it is he, not Joshua or any human being, who has brought the secret sinner to light. Thereupon a full confession is demanded, the misappropriated articles are located, and the full penalty—apparently the destruction of Achan, his family, and all of his possessions by burning (see vs. 15)—is exacted. The implication that Achan was stoned seems to have arisen because the place of his burning was marked with a heap of stones (vs. 26).

The cause of the defeat at Ai was now eradicated and God’s burning anger was turned away (7:1, 26). Joshua next proceeded to a second attempt on Ai (ch. 8). This time a careful strategy was devised. The force was divided: one contingent formed an ambush by night to the west of the city and the other approached the following day from the southeast to a point north of the city. The size of the ambush is given in verse 3 as 30,000 but in verse 12 as 5,000. Material from two sources is being woven together here, with differences of detail (note the two starts from Gilgal, vss. 3, 10; the two accounts of the ambush, vss. 9, 12; the two burnings of the city, vss. 19, 28). Needless to say, the smaller size of the ambush is to be preferred!

When the battle was joined by the aggressive move of the king of Ai and his forces against Israel’s main contingent, Joshua’s warriors fled before them to the southeast in feigned defeat. Thereupon Joshua, who co-ordinated the movements of his troops from a position visible to all of them, gave the signal for the descent of the ambush on the city. The plan was successful: the city was taken and burned; the fighting force and all the inhabitants of Ai were annihilated; and the king of Ai was hanged on a tree.

It is a dramatic and bloody story. The topographical details (the hills and valleys around Ai) fit nicely the terrain around et-Tell, the mound with which Ai is to be identified. Standing on the spot, about a mile and a half east of Bethel and about eleven miles north of Jerusalem, one can relive the story in detail. But there is just one difficulty: archaeologists who excavated the ruin in 1933-36 found that the last Canaanite city here was destroyed about 2200 B.C. It was not inhabited again until around 1000 B.C., when an Israelite settlement appeared on the site. In other words, the city was a ruin when Joshua came into the land and had been for about a thousand years! How then could he have captured it? And what are we to make of the story in Joshua 7-8?

Several attempts at explanation have been made. (1) The story in Joshua 7-8 was invented to explain the presence of a ruined city in Israel’s midst. Since Joshua was lauded in Israelite tradition as the great destroyer of Canaanite cities, it was assumed erroneously that he had destroyed this one. (2) Either the true location of Ai has not yet been found or somehow the archaeologists missed the evidences at et-Tell of the city destroyed by Joshua. (3) The inhabitants of a neighboring city, probably Bethel, occupied the ruins of the old city to check the advance of Israel against their own town. (4) The story of the fall of Ai is really the story of the capture of Bethel. Archaeologists have established the fact that Bethel was destroyed at the time of Joshua, but no story of this capture is recorded in the Book of Joshua. Since Bethel continued to be occupied but Ai remained a ruin, it is understandable that the story of Bethel’s fall could have been transferred to Ai to explain the existence of that ruin. The proximity of the two sites would make such a switch possible.

The most likely hypothesis is the last. The first assumes the unhistoricity of most of the stories of Joshua, quite certainly too skeptical a view. The second supposes that the archaeologists have not adequately done their work. In the vicinity of et-Tell no other location is possible for Ai, and it is not possible that the ruins of so large a city as Ai could have been missed on the mound of et-Tell by the excavators. The third flies in the face of the data of the story itself. It is said that there was a king of Ai who was hanged on a tree, and the story certainly does not assume that the city was only a temporarily occupied ruin. The fourth explains the silence in Joshua concerning the capture of Bethel (an event briefly described in Judges 1:22-26). However, if this view is correct, the story of the fall of Bethel was reshaped somewhat to fit the topography of et-Tell. The land around Bethel does not lend itself, as does that around et-Tell, to the concealment of an ambush. There is a complicated history behind our story—that much is evident. But it is quite certainly not a pure fiction.

The story emphasizes several truths. Any disobedience to the will of God is a matter of great consequence. Hidden sins are no less displeasing to God than open ones. No man sins to himself; what he does has its effects on his family and indeed on the entire social group to which he belongs. True strength comes from obedient living and confident trust in God, not from the contemplation of past successes. If God be not for us and with us, no strongholds of evil will capitulate to us.