Recently, I posted amount Achan’s sin and issues with the attack on Ai, but there’s more to the story of Ai than just Achan’s sin. There was another problem.

Israel tried to attack Ai and had been completely humiliated. True, a large part of it was Achan’s sin, but there was something else there. If you look back at Joshua 7, you’ll notice a difference in how Joshua and Israel approached the attack on Ai.

After the victory at Jericho, Israel gets a little full of themselves. At the beginning of chapter 7, Joshua sends spies out to survey Ai. They return and tell Joshua, “Do not have all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not make the whole people toil up there, for they are few.” Then Israel attacks and are defeated.

Notice anything missing in this attack?

God.

That’s it. Nowhere in the attack on Ai does Joshua consult with God, and they are utterly defeated.

Skip forward to chapter 8, after Israel takes care of the issue with Achan. Joshua’s feeling a little discouraged, and rightly so. He just followed an outstanding victory with a phenomenal failure and he’s a little down in the dumps. That’s when God approaches him. In Joshua 8:1, God tells Joshua, “Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land.”

What follows is, quite frankly, a brilliantly designed capture of the city of Ai. You should check it out sometime. When Joshua listens to God, Israel pulls off a flawless victory and obliterates the city.

Here’s the issue, though: the spies actually had good advice. From a human perspective. Conventional wisdom would say that you wouldn’t need as many soldiers to take a city much smaller than the one you just decimated. It’s not that Joshua shouldn’t have listened to the spies, but he should have consulted God as well. It’s quite possible that they wouldn’t have had to go through the pain of defeat and would have taken care of the Achan situation.

Human wisdom is great, but it’s still flawed. It’s still human. Human wisdom needs to be supported by divine wisdom. That’s where prayer, meditation, and Scripture reading become important.

Seek advice from others, sure. But make sure you back it up with wisdom from God. After all, why wouldn’t you want wisdom from the originator of wisdom Himself?