What did Joshua and the Israelites do to the king of Ai after they burned his city?

Answer 1

Joshua 8:28-29: "And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day. And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raise thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day. "

According to the Book of Joshua, they hanged the king of Ai from a tree until sunset, then cast his body into the gate of the city and heaped stones on to it. Much later, when the Book of Joshua was being written, the wreckage of the city and the heap of stones were still visible.

Hidden in that passage are clues to what really happened. First of all, the writer tells us with his two references to "unto this day" that the book was written speculatively long after the events that are supposedly portrayed. Secondly, there is an emphasis on the evident ruin of the city, still there to see at the time of writing.

In Hebrew, the word Ai means 'the ruin'. German scholars have long maintained that the Ai narrative is a showcase example of how etiological explanations were used to enhance the conquest narratives by explaining extensive ruins as being the result of early Israelite victories, when this was not really the case. These 'ruins' are now known to date from the latter part of the third millennium BCE, and the site had not been occupied during the second millennium until an Iron Age I village was built in the twelfth century, long after the arrival of the Israelites. It was not Joshua who destroyed the city of Ai, and the Israelites never captured nor hanged a king of Ai.