Bible Synapse
Was Ai left a heap for ever, or was it lived in again?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.”
And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.
Among the exiles who returned from Babylon were 223 men of Bethel and Ai.
The men of Beth–el and Ai, two hundred twenty and three.
Nehemiah’s copy of the list gives 123 men of Bethel and Ai.
The men of Beth–el and Ai, an hundred twenty and three.
After the return, Benjamites lived at Michmash, Aija and Bethel and their villages.
The children also of Benjamin from Geba dwelt at Michmash, and Aija, and Beth–el, and in their villages,
The objection
Joshua 8:28 says that Joshua burned Ai and made it “an heap for ever”. But after the exile the lists of returning Jews include the men of Bethel and Ai (Ezra 2:28; Nehemiah 7:32), and Benjamites lived at Aija (Nehemiah 11:31). Critics ask how a city left in ruins for ever could be lived in again.
The answer
‘For ever’ translates the Hebrew ‘olam (Strong’s H5769), which often means a long, open-ended time rather than time without end. Joshua 8:28 reads, word for word, that Joshua made Ai ‘a tel of ‘olam, a desolation, unto this day’. A tel is a mound of ruins, and the writer adds what could be seen in his own time: it was still a ruin “unto this day”. He describes the lasting ruin Joshua left; he does not say that no one would ever live in the area again. Gill and Poole both take ‘for ever’ here as ‘for a long time’, and the Hebrew uses ‘olam the same way elsewhere, as of a slave who would serve his master “for ever”, that is, for life (Exodus 21:6).
The men of Ai in Ezra’s list came from a later settlement of that name, many centuries after Joshua, and such a village need not have stood on the old mound. The Pulpit Commentary suggests that it was built near enough to the ruin to take its name, and the forms Aija and Aiath (Nehemiah 11:31; Isaiah 10:28) may belong to it. The name itself suits a ruin, since ha-‘ai means ‘the heap’. The old tel could remain a heap while people lived close by.
Still open
Where Joshua’s Ai stood is debated among archaeologists, and the text does not say whether the later village was on the same site. The lists in Ezra and Nehemiah also differ on the number of the men of Bethel and Ai (223 or 123), a separate question about the copying of numbers.
From the classic commentators
and made it an heap for ever; that is, for a long time, for it appears to have been rebuilt, and to have been inhabited by the Jews, after their return from their Babylonish captivityJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Joshua 8 (1746–1763)