They killed all the inhabitants,the men and the women and the children,and the cows and the sheep and the dogs and everything that drew the breath of life,with the exception of Rahab and her friends.Then they took possession of the ruins and prepared for the next campaign,for now it seemed that all the land between themselves and the Mediterranean Sea was at their mercy.
But alas!all was not well within the camp of Joshua.The expedition which had begun so well was suddenly threatened with defeat.
Just before the attack,Joshua had given a few final instructions.He positively forbade the soldiers to take or keep any loot.Everything must be surrendered to the tabernacle.
Most of the men had obeyed these orders,but one private,by the name of Achan,who belonged to the tribe of Judah,stole a few hundred pieces of silver and gold and a few bits of clothing and he had hidden them underneath the floor of his tent.
Of course,Joshua could not possibly know this and he continued his westward march,fully expecting that Jehovah would continue to give him victory.But although the people of Ai were much frightened by the horrible things which had just happened to their neighbours of Jericho,they did not surrender.And as soon as the Jews attacked,they made a sally,and they broke through the ranks of the invaders and they forced them to retreat in great disorder and with a severe loss of men.
Then it became clear to Joshua that some one had been unfaithful.He called together all the survivors of the rout and told them what he suspected.He asked the guilty man to confess,that the others might be saved.Achan,however,hoped to lie himself out of his trouble and he did not step forward as he should have done.
After a while,when no one seemed willing to take the blame upon himself,Joshua decided to detect the thief by means of casting lots.The lot pointed to Achan as the thief.He was forced to tell where he had hidden his stolen goods.The gold and silver and the clothes were thrown into the fire.
When this had been done,the soldiers turned upon Achan and killed him.
For a long time afterwards,a small pile of stones in the valley of Achor reminded the passerby of the fate of the first Jewish soldier who had dared to disobey the laws of Jehovah.
Joshua withdrew his troops and then made his plans for a new attack upon the defiant city.
He divided his army into two parts.During the night,thirty thousand men hid themselves in the hills of Bethel,just outside of Ai.Later on,five thousand more were added to their number.
With five thousand others,Joshua boldly marched upon the gates of Ai.The garrison,when they saw this small group of Jews,believed that they had to deal with the remnant of those same forces which they had defeated a few days before.
They laughed out loud,and they left the walls of the fortress to punish this recklessness out in the open,where it is easier to kill your enemies.
But Joshua did not wait for them.Followed by his soldiers,he fled away in the direction of the mountains.
Then the men from Ai threw all prudence to the winds and they too ran as fast as they could.Soon they found themselves in a narrow gorge.There Joshua halted.
He waved a piece of cloth on the top of a spear as a sign for the men who were in ambush in the western hills.They rushed out of their trenches and they attacked the Ai-ites in the rear.Caught between two fires,the heathen were entirely at the mercy of the Jews.
A few hours later,they were all dead.And as for Ai,it was captured without any difficulty,as the city gates were still wide open.
The citizens,men,women and children,shared the fate of the people of Jericho.They were all killed and the town was burned down.That evening,the reddened sky of Canaan told for a second time of the arrival of this new and victorious invader,who claimed all Canaan as his own and who showed no mercy to those who dared to oppose themselves against his will.
In their fear,a few of the Canaanite cities tried to escape their ultimate fate by the use of strategy.
One of them almost succeeded.That was the city of Gibeon.
“The Jews,”so the Gibeonites argued,“have come to settle here for all time.They are so powerful that we cannot fight them.We shall have to make terms with them as best we can.They will soon be in our neighbourhood.Suppose that we make them believe that our city is really a thousand miles away.In that case,they will perhaps make a treaty with us and they will never discover that our village is just off the main road.”
It was a clever bit of reasoning and at first,it was quite successful.Late one evening,a delegation of people from the city of Gibeon came to the Jewish camp and asked to be taken to the tent of Joshua.
