behind the town, and at no great distance from it. As the distance from Gilgal to Ai was about fifteen miles, and the road runs pretty straight in a north-westerly direction from Jericho through the Wady Faran, the detachment sent forward might easily accomplish the distance in a night, so as to arrive on the western side of Ai before the break of day. They were then to hold themselves in readiness to fight. He (Joshua) himself would approach the town with the people of war that remained with him; and if the inhabitants of Ai should come out against him as they did before, they would flee before them till they had drawn them quite away from their town (Jos 8:5). This was to be expected; “for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first: and we will flee before them” (Jos 8:6). When this was done, the warriors were to come forth from their ambush, fall upon the town, and set it on fire (Jos 8:7, Jos 8:8). Having been sent away with these instructions, the 30,000 men went into ambush, and posted themselves “between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai” (Jos 8:9), i.e., according to Strauss, in the Wady es Suweinit, to the north-west of Ai, where it forms almost a perpendicular wall, near to which the ruins of Chai are to be found, though “not near enough to the rocky wady for it to be possible to look down its almost perpendicular wall” (Ritter, Erdk. xvi. p. 528). Joshua remained for the night in the midst of the people, i.e., in the camp of that portion of the army that had gone with him towards Ai; not in Gilgal, as Knobel supposes.
Verse 10
The next morning he mustered the people as early as possible, and then went, with the elders of Israel, “before the people of Ai.” The elders of Israel are not “military tribunes, who were called elders because of their superiority in military affairs,” as Masius supposes, but, as in every other case, the heads of the people, who accompanied Joshua as counsellors.
Verses 11-13
The whole of the people of war also advanced with him to the front of the town, and encamped on the north of Ai, so that the valley was between it (בינו, as in Jos 3:4) and Ai. This was probably a side valley branching off towards the south from the eastern continuation of the Wady es Suweinit. - In Jos 8:12, Jos 8:13, the account of the preparations for the
