The Ai War

שיעור בתנ"ך - פרקים ז-ח, מלחמת העי.

סקירה כללית על הפרקים

In the beginning we see that Achan ben Carni took booty from Jericho. Then Yehoshua sends 3000 soldiers the fight against the AI. They loose and 36 people are killed. Yehoshua prays to Hashem and finds out that some people took booty from Jericho. He does a raffle and finds about Achan from shevet Yehuda. They kill him and his family in skila. After that Yehoshua gets a promise from Hashem that he will defeat the AI. Yehoshua bilds a tactic plan – that they will lure out all of the soldiers from the AI to fight. Before hand, Yehoshua ordered 5000 soldiers to hide on the other side of the city, wile they lured out the soldiers, this way the can attack the city when they are unguarded. At the end of the battle 10,000 people from the AI were killed and the city was ruined.

Why does Yehoshua reached so radically when he hears that 36 people were killed? In tanach terms that is counted as very litte.

From Yehoshua's reaction we can learn that bnei yisrael are afraid, they have'nt fought a real battle yet in Israel. Jericho fell under Hashem's command and bnie yisrael didn't have to do anything. They are in a high spiritual feeling and thought that all the battles for the knisa laretz will be won by hashem. That's why Yehoshua was scared when he herd that 36 people were killed.

We can find this idea also when bnei yisrael left mitzraim and fought amalek. Bnei yisrael just left mitzraim after beating the Egyptians with the ten makot. They are in a high spiritual feeling and think that hashem will do everything for them. That's why they had the battle against amalek – to understand that they have to work for their freedom.

This same problem also happened to midinat yisrael after the six day war. We defeated all our Arab neighbors in just six days and conquered an enormous amount of land – 3 times bigger then what Israel was then. The felling in the country was that a miracle had happen. The Israeli society felt that they were unbeatable and were in a "highly spiritual feeling".

Six years later came the Yom kippur war and taught us all a lesson.  

From this story we must learn no to "lismoch al hanes" and always make an effort to overcome our problems by our self and to pray that hashem is on our side.

הרעיון מסיכום של שיעור של הרב מדן.