described the population on their return as small (“they are but few”), Joshua did not send the whole of the fighting men against Ai, but only about 3000 men. As there were not more than 12,000 inhabitants (Jos 8:25), there could hardly have been 3000 fighting men, who might easily have been beaten by 3000 Israelitish warriors. But when the Israelites attacked the town they fled before its inhabitants, who slew about thirty-six men, and pursued them before the gate, i.e., outside the town, to the stone quarries, and smote them on the sloping ground. The Shebarim, from sheber, a breach or fracture, were probably stone quarries near the slope on the east of the town. Nothing more can be decided, as the country has not been thoroughly explored by travellers. On account of this repulse the people lost all their courage. “The hearts of the people melted” (see Jos 2:15): this expression is strengthened still further by the additional clause, “and became as water.”
Verses 6-7
Joshua and the elders of the people were also deeply affected, not so much at the loss of thirty-six men, as because Israel, which was invincible with the help of the Lord, had been beaten, and therefore the Lord must have withdrawn His help. In the deepest grief, with their clothes rent (see at Lev 10:6) and ashes upon their heads, they fell down before the ark of the Lord (vid., Num 20:6) until the evening, to pour out their grief before the Lord. Joshua's prayer contains a complaint (Jos 7:7) and as question addressed to God (Jos 7:8, Jos 7:9). The complaint, “Alas, O Lord Jehovah, wherefore hast Thou brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us?” almost amounts to murmuring, and sounds very much like the complaint which the murmuring people brought against Moses and Aaron in the desert (Num 14:2-3); but it is very different from the murmuring of the people on that occasion against the guidance of God; for it by no means arose from unbelief, but was simply the bold language of faith wrestling with God in prayer - faith which could not comprehend the ways of the Lord - and involved the most urgent appeal to the Lord to carry out His work in the same glorious manner in which it had been begun, with the firm conviction that God could neither relinquish nor alter His purposes of grace. The words which follow, “Would to God that we had been content (see at Deu 1:5) to remain on the other side of the Jordan,” assume on the one hand, that previous to the crossing of the river Israel had cherished a longing for the possession of Canaan, and on the
