Week 11 Joshua 8
I read something today I hadn’t noticed before.
In the second battle at Ai Joshua set up a more complicated strategy than they had used the first time. In my memory of the story Joshua planned-out the ambush and then spent the night with the army and then fought the battle the next day. But today I realized he had a) sent the ambush party ahead then b) travelled with the army the next day then c) spent one more night in camp and then d) stormed the city on the third day. So I’d made a mistake.
Anyway while I was re-reading the passage I also noticed that there was a discrepancy in numbers. Initially: Joshua chose thirty thousand fighting men… to hide in ambush close behind the city. But then the next night: Joshua sent five thousand men to lie in ambush. So which was it? 30,000 or 5,000?
There’s possibilities. It’s possible that the original 30,000 was the total fighting force and the ambush party was a 5,000-soldier subset. Or it’s possible that there were two different ambush parties with different responsibilities. Or it’s possible there was a secretarial-transcriber glitch and whoever hand-copied the original book of Joshua copied the numbers incorrectly.
But the long-and-short is that there’s a problem. I can look for a solution. But if I don’t find one I have to put the numbers in the Unresolved Problems file. And move on.
Note: quotes from Joshua 8:3-4 12 (NLT)