Darash Chai Experiment Darash Chai, Inc

After the crushing defeat at Ai, and the removal of the offense from the camp of Israel, the army is now ready to attack this small fortress once a second time. But this time, rather than making the decision on how to attack Ai on their own, they consult God on the strategy to use, and from this we can learn a lot about how to wage our own battles.

Just after the victory at Jericho, Israel presses on to their next target. A small fortress town called simply Ai. After what had happened in the first victory, this small town should pose no real threat. And yet, in their first encounter with this city, Israel is defeated and driven back. The reason that Israel loses is quite simple. Commands had been given regarding what was to be done with the plunder from Jericho, but one man got greedy and decided to take some for himself.

The battle for Jericho is one of the more memorable stories in the Bible. The armies of God march around a city and in the end the wall fall down and Israel is able to defeat the first city of Canaan without any sort of opposition. Most people are at least passingly familiar with this story. But when we dig into the story in the context of the narrative, and in the context of scripture, there are several things that are revealed that shed a new light on this old story.

The first thing that Israel does after crossing the Jordan is to engage in a practice that would leave them in physical pain and vulnerable to attack. This cutting of the flesh is then followed up by a memorial festival of Passover. The reason that these steps are necessary might seem shocking, but let's just say that Israel in the wilderness was not as faithful to God's commands as we might think. Even this second generation had left things undone, and that needed to be remedied.

While Israel is still crossing the Jordan, God asks Joshua to build something. A memorial to the event that is currently happening in the narrative. Just one of many memorials that we find being commanded in the Bible. Why is it that God commands people to create and enact memorials? Because we are human, and we trust our senses of the current world more than we trust our memories of what God has done. And a memorial bridges the gap to act as a current physical reminder of that past to propel us forward into the unknown.

The time has come for Israel to cross the Jordan river into the land of Canaan. Normally this would not be a great undertaking, until you consider the size of the Israeli army, and that it was flood season for the Jordan. There was no reasonable way to get the army across the river. That is, until God intervened. He had parted the water before, and He does so again in spectacular fashion. But that is just the setting of this narrative. There is something more going on here, just below the surface. Pun fully intended.