[Avodah] The Ai Plan

[Shmuel Weidberg]

Hello everybody. Even though I haven't posted in a while, I just had
to post this pshat that occurred to me while reviewing Sefer Yehoshua.

The Bnei Yisroel under Yehoshua sent 3000 soldiers to attack the city
of Ai, but they were routed and according to the posuk 36 of them were
killed.

It occurred because Achan took from the spoils of Yericho. After they
settled the matter of Achan they came up with a plan to attack Ai
again.

They had 30,000 soldiers hiding near Ai and had 5000 soldiers make a
feint towards Ai to draw the soldiers out. Then when the soldiers of
Ai chased them they would run away. As soon as Ai was empty of
soldiers the 30,000 soldiers hiding near Ai burnt it to a crisp and
the soldiers of Ai lost their nerve and were easy pickings for the
soldiers of the Bnei Yisroel. In all 12,000 soldiers from Ai were
killed.

The question is why did the Bnei Yisroel  need such a complicated
plan? Why couldn't they simply launch a full conventional attack
without trickery?

I think that the answer is that Yehoshua did not want any of the
surrounding nations to realize that the Bnei Yisroel had really been
defeated by Ai's first counterattack. He designed the second attack to
make it look like the failure of the first attack had been planned all
along in order to draw the soldiers of Ai out and leave the city
undefended.