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Context No. 428 of 4322 · Joshua

Context · Reflection

Joshua 8:1-8: in context

1The LORD said to Joshua, “Don’t be afraid, and don’t be dismayed. Take all the warriors with you, and arise, go up to Ai. Behold, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, with his people, his city, and his land. 2You shall do to Ai and her king as you did to Jericho and her king, except you shall take its goods and its livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush for the city behind it.” 3So Joshua arose, with all the warriors, to go up to Ai. Joshua chose thirty thousand men, the mighty men of valor, and sent them out by night. 4He commanded them, saying, “Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Don’t go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. 5I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. It shall happen, when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them. 6They will come out after us until we have drawn them away from the city; for they will say, ‘They flee before us, like the first time.’ So we will flee before them, 7and you shall rise up from the ambush, and take possession of the city; for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand. 8It shall be, when you have seized the city, that you shall set the city on fire. You shall do this according to the LORD’s word. Behold, I have commanded you.”

This is Israel's second attempt on the city of Ai, and that is the whole point. The first attempt had been a humiliating disaster. They had marched up confidently, been routed, lost men, and fled, and the hearts of the whole nation had melted like water. It later came out that the defeat was caused by hidden sin in the camp, which was then dealt with. And now God speaks, and the first thing he says is aimed straight at the wound: do not be afraid, and do not be dismayed. Then he sends them back, to the exact city where they had just failed, with a promise: take the fighting men and go up to Ai, for I have given its king and its people into your hand.

Notice two things about how the victory comes. First, God does not route them around the place of their failure. He sends them right back to it, to Ai, the scene of their shame, to redeem the very ground where they had been beaten. And second, look at the strategy he gives them, because it is remarkable. The plan is a feigned retreat: the main force will approach and then flee, exactly as they really did the first time, and the men of Ai, remembering the earlier rout, will chase them, saying, they flee before us like the first time. Their previous defeat becomes the bait. The memory of Israel's genuine weakness is turned into the trap that wins the city. God takes not only the place of their failure but even the manner of it, the fleeing, and makes it the instrument of the victory.

There is real hope in that for anyone haunted by a past failure. God's way is often not to route us permanently around the place we fell, but, once the thing that caused the fall has been dealt with, to send us back to it and redeem it, sometimes even using the failure itself. What place of past defeat have I been avoiding, sure I could never go back there, when God might be saying, do not be afraid, and even now be preparing to turn the very failure I am ashamed of into part of how he wins?

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