Joshua 8:24

"And it came to pass when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness, wherein they pursued them, and they were all fallen by the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all Israel returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai. For Joshua drew not back his hand, wherewith he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of Jehovah which he commanded Joshua. So Joshua burnt Ai, and made it a heap forever, even a desolation, unto this day. And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the eventide: and at the going down of the sun Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised thereon a great heap of stones, unto this day."

"Joshua drew not back his hand ..." This means that, "According to the common custom of war, the general did not lower the war signal until the conflict was to cease."[23]

Another interesting thing here is that the king of Ai's body was taken down at sunset, exactly in compliance with the Mosaic instructions in Deuteronomy 21:22,23. In fact, all of Joshua shows this constant reflection of the Deuteronomic laws and of the commandments of Moses, which Joshua carefully honored at all times. All efforts of Biblical critics to make a portion of Joshua "the original Deuteronomy" are contradicted and made to be, in fact ridiculous, by this constant reflection of the previous Biblical books in the pages of Joshua. Woudstra dealt with the critical postulations that would make the narratives of Joshua out to be "etiological," meaning simply that the stories were invented by some subsequent generation in order to explain the monuments, such as the cairn of stones raised over the bodies of Achan and of the king of Ai. We agree with the firm way in which Woudstra contradicted such false notions:

"The Bible presents a reliable record of what the God of history did in space and time. For this reason, the Israel of Joshua's day had good reason to treasure the memories attached to the monuments of the past ... It was not the monuments that remain `unto this day' that triggered the Biblical narratives. The events recorded in the Bible are the true cause of the monuments."[24]