After the Israelites entered the promised land and conquered Jericho, they ascended into the hill country to attack the fortress of Ai. Joshua 7 records Israel’s defeat at Ai, whereas Joshua 8 recounts their victory. In this presentation I demonstrate how the rhetorical elements in these two literary accounts advance the narrator’s argument. My research contributes to scholarship by proposing a leitwort (keyword) for the account of the military conquest in Joshua 8:1–29. Although many biblical Hebrew narratives lack a keyword, and scholars have not yet proposed a keyword for chapter 8, I show how the preposition ahar functions as the keyword with its nine occurrences, one of which appears at the story’s climax (v. 20). Specifically, the narrator uses ahar to create irony and highlight the reversal of fortune: the Canaanite soldiers chase the Israelites from “behind” (8:6, 16 [2x], 17 [2x]), while the Israelites ambush the Canaanites from “behind” (vv. 2, 4, 14), all the while the Canaanites remain oblivious to the ambush until they look “behind” (v. 20). In addition, special attention goes to the use of wordplays, inclusio, ironies, contrasts, literary allusions, discourse analysis, plot development, narrative pacing, character portraits (e.g., Achan versus Rahab), and the strategic employment of direct dialogue. To accomplish my thesis, I recap the narrative generally, then expound the philological components and their interpretive significance.