Once again we are dealing with Amorites, who are not famous for building much of anything. The east ridge of the Jordan Valley was filled with sites of ancient pagan shrines, mostly in ruins at this time. The Amorite way is to pitch tents among the ruins. If there was enough usable building materials still at hand, they might try to reconstruct the shrines. However, they seldom bothered with building much else if it required significant effort.
The best we can tell, the site identified as Ai was just ruins at this time, which is just perfect for the Amorite ways. Most likely they partially rebuilt the shrine and began turning it into another tourist trap, claiming that they had restored the ancient worship of some forgotten deity. A primary element in their shrine services was various types of “sacred prostitution.” Like Jericho, the site was on a major through-route.
Indeed, Israel’s conquest would require using the route that runs past Ai, so they didn’t need a filthy idolatrous shrine overlooking their march. Again, this is a religious war. So Joshua sent out his combat surveyors. It was a short journey upland via a wadi that ran west of the Jordan. The hilltop ruins weren’t very well protected, and it was a nice flat top, probably not fully occupied, since the ruins didn’t spread over the whole thing. Attacking troops would be able to take up a good formation before that assault.
So the report came back that this was an easy job, and again, no need for conscripts. Just a relative handful of professional warriors should be able to take care of it. But they were unable to handle the few Amorite defenders from the ruins. The attacking force was driven down the slope and some three dozen were killed in the pursuit. The location of Shebarim has not yet been identified, but it probably refers to a quarry on the route back to the camp at Gilgal. The Lord was not with them in battle.
Joshua was extravagant in his approach to the Lord, and his words include typical Hebrew hyperbole. He laid there until evening, technically the next day. God’s answer was curt in Hebrew terms: Go find the sin in the camp. The Hebrew term behind the English words “cursed thing” is more ambiguous than that. If it’s something that was dedicated to God as a burnt offering, you can’t touch it. If it’s something God says He wants to use, you can’t touch that either. Doing so creates a barrier to shalom, AKA a curse. It removes the covering of God.
Since no one fessed up a the assembly the next morning, Joshua and the High Priest went through the ritual of selection using the Urim and Thummim. It got whittled down to the household of Achan. Finally this man confessed and described what he took from the destruction of Jericho: a fancy robe from Shinar (before it was called Babylon), a gold bar and silver in coin form. The robe was supposed to be burned, and the precious metals were supposed to be in the Tabernacle treasury. That gold bar was about as big as a large modern clay brick. The reason he hid the silver on the bottom of his stash is because in those days, silver was cash, but gold was mostly for decoration. We have reason to believe that a lot of folks in those days valued silver more highly than gold.
So Joshua had his attendants go check and they found all of it where Achan said it would be. We have no idea where the Valley of Achor is, but it wasn’t far. However, it was far enough that Achan’s goods and herds were fully separated from the camp. This is in keeping with bringing dangerous people and scapegoats outside the camp for some ritual purpose. Keep in mind that if the camp at Gilgal was even so much as 250,000 with tents, wagons and herds, that was quite a large spot on the earth all spread out.
This man was guilty of causing the death of 36 warriors (nobles) and his family was complicit. So all the family was stoned — crushed under big rocks in a hollow spot. They added a significant mound of stones on top of that, signifying to everyone that this was the grave of a criminal, and folks would have regarded it as cursed. All of his property was burned on the spot as an offering to the Lord. This turned the wrath of God away from the nation.
