Joshua 8:28

28. A heap for ever [The word translated heap is תל , Tel, and strikingly confirms Capt. Wilson’s identification of the site of Ai with the mound still bearing, after the lapse of ages, the name Et-Tel, the ruined heap. Compare note on Joshua 7:2.] Because the meaning of Ai is a heap of ruins the Rationalists build up a theory that the history of its conquest is a myth, growing out of ruins of unknown origin. But the city destroyed by Joshua may have taken the name of Ai or Hai, the ruins, from the ruins of a more ancient city out of which it may have been built.

Unto this day This clause seems awkward, coming immediately after for ever, but it shows that the word for ever sometimes has a limited reference. Perhaps, however, the historian, or some later editor, meant by the former clause, closing with for ever, to express Joshua’s purpose to make Ai a perpetual desolation, and by the latter clause to indicate its fulfilment. The name of Ai appears again, after a thousand years, as inhabited. Nehemiah 11:31. But it was probably on another site, just as there were an Old and a New Troy, an Old and a New Tyre.