Although the Lord had promised certain victory to Joshua and his soldiers the second time they attacked the city of AI, Joshua was still stinging from the defeat of the first attack and wasn’t taking any chances this time around.
He selected 30,000 of his best soldiers and set off in the dead of the night towards Ai from Gilgal where they were camped (about 12 miles from Ai).
Take note of the nighttime strategy being employed here.
In this era, night time raids were extremely rare and when they did happen it was because the attacking army was far outnumbered by the enemy.
This is actually a tactic we’ll see Israel use many times because the element of surprise gave them a huge advantage over their opponents.
A perfect modern example is the 6-day war over Egypt.
Israel launched a surprise nighttime raid that utterly demolished the Egyptian Air Force.
That was the critical move that turned the conflict in Israel’s favor.
During the attack on Ai, a similar “take ’em by surprise” strategy was going to be used that involved dividing up the 30,000 soldiers into two groups: a larger one and a smaller one.
The smaller group would go into hiding and remain concealed until the proper time.
The other larger group would boldly attack the main gates of the city of Ai with the objective of drawing the Canaanite soldiers outside the city.
Once the enemy soldiers standing guard on top of the of the walls of Ai witnessed this frontal attack, they would respond.
At that instant, the Israelite soldiers pretending they were scared would halt their frontal assault, make a u-turn and start running in the opposite direction like a bunch of frightened rabbits.
Seeing this, the Canaanite troops, thinking another easy victory was in their hands, would leave the safe protection of their walled city behind and go in hot pursuit after the Israelite army that had just attacked them.
Once the Canaanite troops were outside the protection of their city of Ai, Joshua would then signal to the other smaller group of Israelite soldiers to come out of hiding, run into the now unguarded city of Ai and conquer it.
Afterwards the city of AI was to be set on fire.
We can see how Joshua is using psychology to his strategic advantage here.
No doubt, the fighting men of Ai were feeling overconfident because of the easy victory they had achieved over the Israelites just a few days earlier.
And once they saw Israel attacking them again, they just assumed the Hebrew army would do what they did before…
…which was to attack and then run away once the fighting intensified.
Onward.
What was the purpose behind setting the city on fire?
This accomplished three things.
FIRST, it stopped the soldiers of Ai from chasing after Israel because once they realized their city was now ablaze, they would panic and rush back to their city in an effort to save it.
SECOND, the smoke served as a signal to all of Israel that the city of Ai had been taken and they could rest easy.
THIRD, don’t forget that completely burning up physical objects in the fire is how Hashem gets His portion.
Keep in mind that in this case, God has declared the buildings (the infrastructure so to speak) and the men, women and children of AI to be His possessions…they are under HEREM or the ban and thus must be destroyed by burning them up in the fire.
It was the livestock and the personal possessions of the residents of AI that the Israelite soldiers were allowed to keep.
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