Quotes About Strategy

They will pursue us until we have drawn them away from the city, for they will say, ëThe Israelites are running away from us as they did before.í So as we flee from them,

you are to rise from the ambush and seize the city, for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand.

So Joshua sent them out, and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai. But Joshua spent that night among the people.

Joshua got up early the next morning and mobilized his men, and he and the elders of Israel marched before them up to Ai.

Then all the troops who were with him marched up and approached the city. They arrived in front of Ai and camped to the north of it, with the valley between them and the city.

Now Joshua had taken about five thousand men and set up an ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city.

So the forces were stationed with the main camp to the north of the city and the rear guard to the west of the city. And that night Joshua went into the valley.

When the king of Ai saw the Israelites, he hurried out early in the morning with the men of the city to engage them in battle at an appointed place overlooking the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush had been set up against him behind the city.

Joshua and all Israel let themselves be beaten back before them, and they fled toward the wilderness.

Then all the men of Ai were summoned to pursue them, and they followed Joshua and were drawn away from the city.

Not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel, leaving the city wide open while they pursued Israel.

and as soon as he did so, the men in ambush rose quickly from their position. They rushed forward, entered the city, captured it, and immediately set it on fire.

When the men of Ai turned and looked back, the smoke of the city was rising into the sky. They could not escape in any direction, and the troops who had fled to the wilderness now became the pursuers.

When Joshua and all Israel saw that the men in ambush had captured the city and that smoke was rising from it, they turned around and struck down the men of Ai.

Meanwhile, those in the ambush came out of the city against them, and the men of Ai were trapped between the Israelite forces on both sides. So Israel struck them down until no survivor or fugitive remained.

But they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.

they came together to wage war against Joshua and Israel.

acted deceptively and set out as envoys, carrying on their donkeys worn-out sacks and old wineskins, cracked and mended.

They went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and the men of Israel, “We have come from a distant land; please make a treaty with us.”

Then Joshua summoned the Gibeonites and said, “Why did you deceive us by telling us you live far away from us, when in fact you live among us?

Now Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem heard that Joshua had captured Ai and devoted it to destruction—doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king—and that the people of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were living near them.

Therefore Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent word to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish, and Debir king of Eglon, saying,

“Come up and help me. We will attack Gibeon, because they have made peace with Joshua and the Israelites.”

So the five kings of the Amorites—the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon—joined forces and advanced with all their armies. They camped before Gibeon and made war against it.