HAI (Heb. hā-'Aj, always with the article "the ruin"; Septuagint I°a). A Canaanite city to the east and near Bethel and Bethaven (Gen. 12:8; Josh. 8:9; 12:9), a little to the north of Machmas (Is. 10:28), identified with the ruins of et-Tell, located 2 km east of Bejtin (v. BETHEL) and 2 km north of Dejr Divān on the Muḥmas-Bejtin road.
The first attack of the Israelites failed because of the transgression of Achan (v.) regarding the ban on Jericho, but, once the guilty man was punished and the guilt expiated, the action was resumed and crowned with victory: the inhabitants were defeated, the King hanged and the city burned and reduced to a heap of rubble (Josh. 7-8). After the exile a small village with the name of 'Ajāh arose in the vicinity (Neh. 11:31), but in the time of Eusebius (Onom., 4, 27) the place lay deserted.
The excavations carried out in the years 1933-35 revealed the imposing remains of a vast city, with a royal palace, sanctuaries, houses, protected by a triple circuit of walls, with ceramic evidence of occupation from the 3rd to the 2nd millennium B.C., when, for unknown reasons, the city was destroyed and its population annihilated. For eight centuries H. remained abandoned, and only between 1200 and 1000 was a small village re-formed on its outskirts, for a duration of about 150 years. The report of the results of the excavations immediately raised the problem of the historicity of the account in Joshua. Independent criticism declared it outright legendary (R. Dussaud, A. Lods) or of an etiological character (M. Noth), arising in the Benjaminite milieu to explain the configuration and the archaeological state of the country. W. F. Albright inclines to read it as the historical account of the conquest of Bethel, which occurred in the 13th century but was transferred by the Bethelites to the nearby Tell for etiological reasons. The position of Catholics was either to deny the identification of hā-'Aj with et-Tell (Simons) or to wait prudently for the complete results of the excavations (A. Fernández). The archaeologist P. Vincent maintains the topographical equation of hā-'Aj = et-Tell and fits the biblical account within the archaeological conclusions. In the time of Joshua the ancient Canaanite fortress, destroyed and abandoned for centuries but still powerful and admirably situated, was transformed into a temporary defensive bastion by the Canaanites and especially by the inhabitants of Bethel (8:17), determined to prevent and halt the victorious advance of the Israelites into the interior of the country. The account, then, victorious in the whole action, would have been clothed with the narrative colors of the other chapters relating to the conquest.
Bibliography11 works
Donato Baldi