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This is still a very early look into the unfinished text of the Open English Translation of the Bible. Please double-check the text in advance before using in public.
8:1 The defeat and destruction of Ay
8 Then Yahweh told Yehoshua, “Don’t be afraid or discouraged. Take all your warriors with you and go to Ay. Listen, I’ve given you victory over Ay’s king and his people and his city and his land. 2 You’ll do to Ay and its king what you did to Yericho and its king,[fn] except that you all can plunder its spoil and its livestock for yourselves. Ambush the city from behind.”
3 So Yehoshua led his warriors towards Ay. He chose thirty thousand of the bravest and strongest warriors and sent them ahead in the darkness 4 and told them, “Listen, you all lie in ambush against the city from close behind it, and make sure you all stay alert and ready to attack. 5 I will bring those warriors who are with me and we’ll approach the city, then when they come out to attack us like last time, we’ll run back away from them. 6 They’ll think we’re running away from them like we did before, so they’ll chase after us until we’ve drawn them away from the city. 7 Then you’ll all move in from your ambush position and capture the city, and your god Yahweh will give the city to you all. 8 After you capture the city, set fire to it. Do what I’ve ordered you all which in turn has come from Yahweh. 9 So Yehoshua sent them to set up the ambush between Ay and Beyt-El (so west of Ay). Meanwhile, he stayed overnight at the camp.
10 Yehoshua got up early in the morning and gathered the warriors, then he and the Israeli elders went in front of them to go and attack Ay. 11 They all went close to the city and camped there slightly to the north, with just a valley between them and Ay. 12 (He had sent around five thousand warriors to lie in ambush between Beyt-El and Ay, west of the city, 13 so the main group was to the north and the rear guard to the west.) That night Yehoshua went down into the valley. 14 When the king of Ay saw the Israelis, he hurriedly got his men ready, and went out early to meet Yisrael for the battle. The king and his people went to a prepared spot overlooking the Yordan valley, but he didn’t know that another group lay in ambush behind the city. 15 Yehoshua and the Israeli group allowed themselves to be struck by them, then they fled back towards the wilderness 16 and all the men in the city were called out to chase them. So they chased after Yehoshua and were drawn away from the city, 17 and there wasn’t a single man left in Ay or Beyt-El who didn’t join the chase—they left the city wide open and chased after the Israelis.
18 Then Yahweh told Yehoshua, “Hold your spear out pointing towards Ay, because I will allow you to defeat it.” So Yehoshua held the spear that was in his hand out toward the city. 19 When the warriors in the ambush saw that, they rushed out from their place and entered the city and captured it, and quickly set it on fire. 20 When the men from Ay turned and looked behind them, the smoke from their city was going up into the sky, but they had nowhere to escape to. Then Yehoshua’s men who’d been fleeing towards the wilderness turned back around towards their pursuers 21 and saw that the ambush had captured the city and the smoke was rising. So they continued back towards Ay, killing their men. 22 Meanwhile, their warriors came back out of the city, so the men from Ay ended up in the middle of the two groups, and the Israelis fought until they’d killed them all. 23 However they captured the king of Ay alive and brought him to Yehoshua.
24 Then after the Israelis had finished killing the men of Ay who had chased them towards the wilderness, they returned to Ay and slaughtered the people still in there, 25 so a total of twelve thousand men and women from Ay were killed that day. 26 Yehoshua didn’t lower his spear until everyone who lived in Ay had been completely destroyed. 27 The Israelis only took the livestock and the goods from Ay, just as Yahweh had instructed Yehoshua, 28 then Yehoshua burnt the city and made it a permanent pile of rubble where no one lives to this day. 29 He hanged the king of Ay on a tree, but as the sun was going down, he commanded that the corpse be brought down from the tree. They threw it into the city gateway and piled a big heap of rocks on top of it which is still there today.
8:2 We’re not actually given any details about what happened to the king of Yericho.
8:11 OSHB variant note: בינ/ו: (x-qere) ’בֵּינָ֥י/ו’: lemma_996 morph_HR/Sp3ms id_06PZV בֵּינָ֥י/ו
8:16 OSHB variant note: ב/עיר: (x-qere) ’בָּ/עַ֔י’: lemma_b/5857 n_1.1 morph_HR/Np id_06JcF בָּ/עַ֔י
Joshua 8
[Author’s note: This map and article assume that Ai was located at Khirbet al-Maqatir and Bethel was located at al-Bira. It is beyond the scope of this article to present all the convincing reasons for these assumptions, but they are well summarized in the following articles: “Traditional Site of Bethel Questioned,” “Location of Biblical Bethel and Ai Reconsidered,” and “The Khirbet el-Maqatir Excavations.” The expected locations for Roman mile markers are also included on this map, which confirm that al-Bira is located precisely at the twelfth mile marker from Jerusalem, as Eusebius and Jerome both asserted. All other maps in this Atlas have been recently updated to use these same locations for Ai and Bethel.
Soon after the Israelites entered the Promised Land and captured the city of Jericho, they sent a force of only three thousand men to capture the much smaller fortified town of Ai (Joshua 7). They suffered defeat, however, and the Lord revealed to them that this happened because a man named Achan had taken some of the devoted items from Jericho. So Joshua took Achan and his family to the Valley of Achor and executed them there (see Israel Enters the Promised Land map). Later the Lord told Joshua to attack Ai again, because this time he was going to give them the town. It appears that Ai, which had a direct line of sight to the more powerful city of Jerusalem to the south, must have served as a sort of early warning outpost for the larger city. Thus, capturing Ai was critical to staging an effective battle campaign throughout southern Canaan. So Joshua advanced with thirty thousand troops during the night and camped north of the city, and he positioned a force of five thousand men in ambush between Bethel and Ai, just to the west of Ai. The men in ambush were also just east of the mountain where Abraham had pitched his tent centuries earlier (Genesis 12:8). Joshua himself spent the night in the valley between Ai and the main Israelite camp. Early the next morning, the king of Ai led all the inhabitants of the town in an attack on the main camp of the Israelites, who feigned retreat into the wilderness. After the Israelite army had drawn the people of Ai away from the town, the Israelites hiding in ambush rose up and captured Ai. They set the town on fire, sending a signal to the the main army of Israelites to turn back upon the forces of Ai. The Israelites completely destroyed the people of Ai and reduced the town to a burning heap of ruins.
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