J7-6: Why The Rabbis Severely Criticize How Joshua Reacted When He Lost The Battle At AI

“Y’hoshua sent men from Yericho to ‘Ai, which is next to Beit-Aven, east of Beit-El, telling them to go up and spy out the land. So the men went up, reconnoitered ‘Ai, returned to Y’hoshua and told him, ‘Don’t have all the people go up; but let perhaps two or three thousand men go up and attack ‘Ai. There’s no point in making all the people exert themselves to get there, because there are only a few of them.‘”-Joshua 7:2-4

Today I want to jump deep into the text of Joshua Chapter 7 to mine the theological gold embedded there.

The chapter starts off by telling us Joshua sent out a couple of scouts to spy out a region called AI not too far from Jericho.

AI was located near two towns called Beit-Even and Beit-El.

So in Hebrew, what does AI mean?

It just means “ruins”.

Of course, since about 12,000 enemies of Israel were living in the area during the time of Joshua, it wasn’t a ruin back then.

What happened was that many, many years later, the town was built on top of a huge ruins and thus the name AI was given to it.

The soldiers of Israel sized up the situation and immediately became puffed up with pride and arrogance.

Their haughtiness was also fueled by the easy success they had had in conquering Jericho.

They decided it wouldn’t be necessary to send a lot of troops and that only about 2-3 thousand soldiers would be more than enough to do the job.

Well, needless to to say, they had a rude awakening when they attacked AI.

The Israelite army was routed and chased down for a good couple of miles.

And 36 soldiers were killed during the battle.

In one fell swoop, all of the confidence the Israelite army had instantly evaporated into thin air.

Or as the Scripture puts it…

...“the hearts of the people melted in fear and became like water”.

Joshua also was in complete shock and went from being a self-assured general who believed he was unstoppable to a timid leader now ruling over a bunch of soldiers lacking in courage and confidence.

Terrified at the prospect that God had abandoned them, Joshua went before the Lord (meaning he went before the Ark of the Covenant) and poured himself out before Hashem asking…

…”Why oh why God did you bring us across the Jordan River if your only intention was for us to be defeated by the Amorites?”.

This question was more of an emotionally-filled complaint rather than a legitimate inquiry.

And here’s something interesting you should know.

The ancient Jewish sages severely and I mean SEVERELY criticize Joshua for his response here.

Why?

Because it’s one thing for the people to grumble and moan like a bunch of little sissies (like what happened out in the wilderness) and it’s another thing for the Leader of God’s army to do such a thing.

We’ll continue this discussion the next time we meet.