I thought we would do a little something different with this next series of web teachings. I always like to do things that look more at history or science than anything else, so I thought we would do a little examination of major cities that are spoken about in the Bible. This would include such Old Testament cities as Jericho, Bethel, Succoth, and Samaria, as well as looking at New Testament cities, especially those that appear as places that Paul wrote to, such as Corinth and Ephesus. We will see that many of these cities, such as Jericho and Samaria, have important references in both the Old and New Testaments.
As part of these studies I thought we would examine what the Bible tells us about the city, what the city was like, who were its inhabitants, and why this city is important to the Bible. I hope you enjoy this as much as I think I will.
I thought we would begin our study with the city of Ai. This city is first mentioned in Genesis 12:8 in relation to Abraham:
Ai and Bethel are the two earliest cities that are mentioned in the Bible. Ai means “heap of ruins,” ‘and was founded by Abraham. In verse 8 we are told that he set his tent between the cities of Ai and Bethel.
After this initial mention, we do not see the city mentioned again until the book of Joshua. In Joshua 7 we are told that the Israelite army attempted to capture Ai but each time they engaged the city in battle they were defeated. It is then exposed that Achan had hidden some of the booty from the conquest of Jericho in his tent, in opposition to what God had commanded.
After this action is uncovered and punished, the Israelites battle against the city again. Joshua creates a plan where they will begin the attack and after the citizens of Ai come out to counter-attack, the Israelites would act like they were retreating, leading the Ai army into an ambush. Joshua 8:9 tells us:
What is interesting about this verse is that Joshua set this ambush at the same place that Abraham had built an altar nearly 500 years earlier. The place where this ambush was established is not named, but it is between Bethel (House of God) and Ai (heap of ruins).
The Israelites conquer the city and destroy the army, and in Joshua 8:28 we are told:
It was interesting that Abraham spoke prophetically in naming this city 500 years before Joshua would conquer the city and make it permanently a heap of ruins.
From that point on that city lay dormant in the Bible. There is no further mention of it, until after the time of the Babylonian Captivity. In the book of Ezra (Ezra 2:28) we read that when the Israelites returned to Judah following the Babylonian Captivity that 223 returned who had been from Bethel and Ai.
It appears that the people of Ai had originally been Ammonites. Jeremiah 49:2-3 tells us:
2 "But the days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will sound the battle cry against Rabbah of the Ammonites; it will become a mound of ruins, and its surrounding villages will be set on fire. those who drove her out," says the LORD. 3 "Wail, O Heshbon, for Ai is destroyed! Cry out, O inhabitants of Rabbah! on sackcloth and mourn; rush here and there inside the walls, for Molech will go into exile, together with his priests and officials.
The Ammonites are descendants of Lot, the nephew of Abraham. The story of Ammon's birth is told in Genesis 19:38. Here we read that after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, Lot had taken his family into the hills. There his two daughters schemed that they would get their father drunk and have sexual relations with him to keep the family line going. Both do this, with the oldest daughter giving birth to Moab, and the youngest to Ammon.
Ammon literally means “inbred,” and I believe speaks to how inbreeding will make nothing but a heap of ruin of that lineage. According to Geneticist Eugene Ochap, inbreeding has an incredibly negative effect on a family line. He writes about the British Royal Family of the 1800's:
Hemophilia spreads rapidly through the British royal house for several generations, and inbreeding in the family was seen as a major cause of the deleterious recessive allele's frequently through the lines of British royalty. Moreover, the disease was also spread into the royal houses of Russia and Spain by descendants of Queen Victoria. Victoria gave birth to three children with the hemophilia allele; Leopold, Alice, and Beatrice. Alice then gave birth to two female carriers and one male hemophiliac. One of the carrier daughters was Alexandra, also known as Alix. Alix was married to Nicholas the Czar of Russia in 1894. Alix then had tremendous pressure on her to produce a male heir. She finally gave birth to a male, Alexis, but he had hemophilia. This lead to political unrest in Russia, and the royal family was executed by a firing squad during the Russian Revolution.
The Ammonites were inbred and thus destined to be ruined, which they were when the people were eventually captured by the Assyrians, and incorporated completely into their empire.
After this mention there is no mention of the city again. In fact there was very little knowledge of the city at all. The city lay undiscovered and in ruins for thousands of years. For the longest time many discounted the Biblical account of the city, because no archeological record of the city could be found.
This changed in 1838 when archeologist Edward Robinson discovered that Ai was beneath the city of et -Tell. What led him to the city in the first place was the fact that et-Tell roughly means the same thing as Ai in Aramaic.
In their research archeologists have discovered that the city and its walls were built in the following fashion:
