Chapter Eight

1. Divine encouragement of Joshua. 3. A military stratagem by which Ai was taken. 28. The burning of Ai and the execution of its king. 30. The building of an altar on Mount Ebal. 32. The writing of the law on stones and its reading in the presence of all the people.

Joshua 8:1. The Lord said to Joshua: Do not fear and do not be terrified; take all the people capable of war with you, and rise up, go to Ai; behold, I deliver into your hand the king of Ai and his people, his city and his land; Joshua 8:2. Do with Ai and its king as you did with Jericho and its king, except that its spoil and its livestock you shall divide among yourselves; set an ambush behind the city. After the people had cleansed themselves from the guilt that lay upon them, there came to Joshua a divine revelation that encouraged him with a promise—to deliver Ai into his hand—and commanded him to march against it not with a small detachment as before, but with all his forces (except, of course, the portion that was to remain in Gilgal to guard the Israelite camp). Although the size of the army that went out is not specified, it must have been very considerable in any case. If from the two and a half trans-Jordanian tribes about 40,000 warriors were selected—that is, about 15,000 from a tribe—then from 12 Israelite tribes about 180,000 should have gone forth. The reason for assigning such a large force against a small city of 12,000 inhabitants (Josh 8:25) could lie both in the defeat previously suffered, which had weakened the courage of the Israelites, and in the fact that, in general, the taking of even a small city was a great difficulty for them, as people grown up in the wilderness. In this lies also the reason for the command to “set an ambush behind the city,” that is, on the western side (Josh 8:9). Resorting to such a method, devised by human skill, presented nothing inconsistent with divine majesty. Since the taking of the city of Ai was entrusted to the Israelites themselves, without special supernatural aid, they could and should have employed the most suitable means for this. And since they were not acquainted with these, the Lord points to one of them, consisting in the arrangement of an ambush. In issuing this command, the Lord, according to the words of the blessed Theodoret, “teaches those who have entrusted themselves to His direction to use human industry as well. Since they had taken the first city by the sound of trumpets alone, it is fitting that they learn to strive, to labor, and to wait for God’s help” 71.

Joshua 8:3. Joshua and all the people capable of war rose to go to Ai, and Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men and sent them out at night, Joshua 8:4. and gave them a command and said: Behold, you shall set an ambush against the city behind it; do not go far from the city and all of you be ready; Joshua 8:5. And I and all the people with me will approach the city; and when the inhabitants of Ai come out against us as before, we shall flee before them; Joshua 8:6. They will come out after us, so that we draw them away from the city; for they will say, “They are fleeing before us as before”; when we flee before them, Joshua 8:7. then you rise up from the ambush and take possession of the city, and the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand; Joshua 8:8. When you have taken the city, you shall set the city on fire; according to the word of the Lord do it; behold, I command you. Joshua 8:9. So Joshua sent them out, and they went to the ambush and remained between Bethel and Ai, on the western side of Ai; and Joshua spent that night among the people. The detachment sent to the ambush had to set out toward Ai at night and, given the small distance from Gilgal (about 20 versts), could reach the vicinity of the city early the next morning and hide in a deep valley, called by researchers 72 Wadi Gharit, which lies between Ai (for its location see Josh 7:2) and Bethel. Those sent to the ambush had to, according to Joshua’s instruction, not go far from the city and be constantly ready to rush into it when its defenders would come out to pursue the Israelite army, which would feign flight; having taken possession of the city, those in the ambush were to set it on fire.

Joshua 8:10. Rising early in the morning, Joshua inspected the people and went, he and the elders of Israel, in front of the people to Ai; Joshua 8:11. And all the people, the men of war who were with him, went forward and drew near, and came to the city [from the eastern side, and the ambush was to the west of the city], Meanwhile, as the detachment sent to Ai had taken its appointed place to the west of the city, Joshua, who had spent the night among the people destined for the campaign, inspected it early the next morning and then directed himself to Ai, going with the elders at the head of the army. He approached the city from the eastern side, and the ambush was located on the western side. This very representation of the location of the main Israelite army is expressed in the Greek translation LXX, the rendering of which serves the words Josh 8:11, according to the Russian translation, agreeing with the Slavonic: “drew near and came to the city [from the eastern side, and the ambush was to the west of the city]” 73. In the current Hebrew text and the translation of the blessed Jerome, instead of the above words at the end of Josh 8:11, it reads: “and encamped on the north side of Ai, and the valley was between them and Ai.” These words of the Hebrew text were not read in LXX according to its earliest manuscripts (the Vatican, Alexandrian, and others); they were introduced into the Greek translation by Origen in his Hexapla, from which they later passed into later Greek manuscripts and appear in them sometimes in the margins of the text in the form of notes, sometimes in the text itself, as in the Lucianic manuscripts (Field) and in the Complutensian and Aldine editions, with which the current Slavonic translation is in agreement Josh 8:12, and with it the Russian. Thus this passage of the biblical text is rendered in Russian in two ways: according to the earliest manuscripts of the LXX translation Joshua approached Ai from the eastern side, and according to the Hebrew text and some later Greek manuscripts—from the northern side. The earliest, pre-Ostrog Slavonic translation followed here the LXX translation according to its earliest manuscripts 74; the current Slavonic translation, like the Russian, agrees here in Josh 8:11 with the earliest manuscripts of the LXX translation, and in Josh 8:12—with the current Hebrew text and with later Greek manuscripts. Which of these translations at the end of Josh 8:11 and beginning of Josh 8:12 has the advantage will be explained in the examination of the following verses.

Joshua 8:12. And he set up camp on the north side of Ai, and the valley was between him and Ai. Then he took about 5,000 men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. Joshua 8:13. And when the people had set all the camp on the north side of the city, with the rear of them toward the west of the city, Joshua went that night into the middle of the valley. What is read in these verses according to the Russian translation and the current Slavonic is, as has been noted, a rendering of the Hebrew text, agreeing with it later Greek manuscripts, and based on the latest editions of the Greek translation, such as the Complutensian Polyglot and the Aldine Bible 75. In the earliest Greek manuscripts of the LXX translation and in the editions based on them, such as the Sixtine, what is contained in these verses according to our current translations is absent. In the ancient Greek manuscripts after the final words Josh 8:11 “[and the ambush was to the west of the city]” there immediately followed Josh 8:14: καί ἐγένετο ὡς εῖδεν βασιλεὺς Γαι – “when the king of Ai saw this.” In the ancient pre-Ostrog translation also what is found in Josh 8:12-13 was not read 76. This agreement of the pre-Ostrog translation with the earliest Greek manuscripts in the omission of Josh 8:12-13 is significant in that it indicates the correct way to resolve the perplexities raised by the content of these two verses. What is said in them presents an obvious disagreement with what is set forth in the preceding verses. Instead of the eastern side of Ai as the location for the Israelite camp, here the place is indicated on the northern side; instead of an ambush of 30,000, located “between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the latter” (Josh 8:9), here an ambush of 5,000 is mentioned: “likewise between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city” (Josh 8:12). The resolution of this second difference presents particular difficulties for commentators explaining the translation from the current Hebrew text 77. The explanation adopted in our instructional literature 78 that two ambushes were set up at Ai, the first of 30,000, the second of 5,000, seems implausible given that the first ambush was too large compared with the number of inhabitants of Ai to require reinforcement. And the final words Josh 8:13 also remain unclear: “And Joshua went that night into the middle of the valley.” From them it is evident that, having approached Ai with his army, Joshua did not attack the city that day and was not himself attacked by the king of Ai; only in the following night did he advance into the valley before the city, and at the breaking of dawn he was noticed by the king of Ai (Josh 8:15). And this delay in attacking the city and the fact that the whole army went unnoticed near it for some part of the day and night naturally raise a perplexity, for which the biblical text offers no explanation. The way out of these difficulties presented by the content of Josh 8:12-13 is given by the translation LXX according to its earliest manuscripts, as excluding these verses from the text; and the ancient Slavonic translation, not having them, also strengthens the importance of this feature of the LXX translation: if neither the LXX translators nor our ancient translators included these verses in the biblical text, then with a clear conscience we can follow their example and not introduce into our national translation what appeared in this place in later Greek manuscripts under the influence of the current Hebrew text 79. On the basis of this, what is said in Josh 8:11—that the Israelite army approached the city from the eastern side—retains its full force.

Joshua 8:14. When the king of Ai saw this, the men of the city hurried and went out to meet Israel in battle, he and all his people, at the appointed place before the plain; and he did not know that there was an ambush against him behind the city [of his]. As soon as the king of Ai saw the approaching Israelite army, he hastened to go out with his warriors to meet them at the appointed place before the plain. The words “rose early” are a rendering of the phrase found in the Complutensian and Aldine editions and in some Greek manuscripts, as well as in the Hebrew text, the word (“vaiyashkimu” – ὤρθρισε); in the earliest Greek manuscripts (Vatican, Alexandrian, and others) they are not read. The place where the inhabitants of Ai were to gather to repel the Israelites, an attack which was obviously expected (cf. Josh 8:17), was appointed beforehand; it was located before the plain (according to the Hebrew text “ha-arabah,” as the Jordan Valley was commonly called), by which is understood, probably, the desert region to the east of Ai in the direction toward the Jordan, along which ran the road of the Israelite army to this city.

Joshua 8:17. Not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel; leaving the city open, they pursued Israel. The warriors of Bethel, located near Ai, were evidently invited by the king of Ai to help him in view of the expected new attack by the Israelites.

Joshua 8:18. Then the Lord said to Joshua: Stretch out the spear that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will deliver it into your hand [and the ambush shall rise up at once from its place]. Joshua stretched out [his hand and] the spear that was in his hand toward the city. Joshua 8:19. Those lying in wait rose up quickly from their place, and when he had stretched out his hand, they ran, entered the city, took it, and at once set the city on fire. The raising of the spear could have been seen by those in the ambush if this was done from a high place on which the Israelite commander probably stood during the battle, or it could have become immediately known to those in the ambush if, for that purpose, special men had been sent to them to receive orders from Joshua.

Joshua 8:20. When the men of Ai looked back, they saw the smoke of the city rising up to heaven. And they had no power to flee this way or that way; and the people who had fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers. “And they had no power to flee this way or that way,” or, according to a literal translation from the Hebrew: “and there were no hands to them to flee there or here,” that is, there was no strength, the organ of which the hands are, or, according to the translation of the blessed Jerome: non poluerunt ultra huc illucque diffugere – “they could no longer flee there or here.” A similar sense is expressed in a phrase similar to this in Ps 75:6: “all the men did not find the strength of their hands.”

Joshua 8:29. And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree, [and he remained on the tree] until evening; and at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his corpse down from the tree and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised over it a great heap of stones, which remains even to this day. The king of Ai was hanged on a tree after he was put to death; this was done also with other Canaanite kings according to clear testimony Josh 10:26; the corpse remained on the tree until evening (Deut 21:22-23).

Joshua 8:30. Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, Joshua 8:31. as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the sons of Israel, as is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, upon which no iron tool had been raised; and they offered on it a burnt offering to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings. Joshua 8:32. And [Joshua] wrote there on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote before the sons of Israel. Joshua 8:33. All Israel, with its elders and officers [and its judges], stood on one side and on the other side of the Ark, before the priests and the Levites who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, both the foreigners and the native-born, one half of them toward Mount Gerizim and the other half toward Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded before, to bless the people of Israel. Joshua 8:34. And afterward he read [Joshua] all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law; Joshua 8:35. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded [to Joshua] that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, [before the men,] and the women, and the children, and the foreigners who lived among them. “Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord on Mount Ebal.” The immediate sense of the phrase “then he built” is, of course, that the building of the altar on Mount Ebal was accomplished after the conquest of Ai, of which mention had been made before. This understanding does, however, raise a perplexity in that in the preceding narrative nothing had been said about the conquest of the land in which Mount Ebal with its neighboring Mount Gerizim is located; to undertake a journey to unconquered territory, located at a considerable distance from the Jericho Gilgal (about 60 versts), with women, children, and foreigners (Josh 8:35), and to remain here for several days near an enemy city (Shechem) could be unsafe in view of possible hostile conflicts with the local population, of which the biblical writer does not speak, however, in these verses. This consideration leads many biblical scholars to the view that the event set forth in Josh 8:30-35 was accomplished not immediately after the conquest of Ai, but much later after this, and that these verses occupy in the biblical text not the place that was originally given them by the biblical writer 80. For all its apparent probability, this explanation cannot be considered plausible precisely because Josh 8:30-35 invariably occupy their present place at the end of Chapter 8 according to the Hebrew text and according to the ancient translations 81. And as regards the perplexity cited, it can be resolved aside from the thought that the event set forth in Josh 8:30-35 was accomplished at another, later time. It is resolved by means of the plausible assumption that the campaign of the Israelites against Ai was not limited to the conquest of that city, but extended to other cities of the central Canaan. And the basis for such an assumption is that the central part of Canaan, in which these named mountains are located, was undoubtedly conquered by Joshua, and that its conquest must have preceded the conquest of southern and northern Canaan. The certainty of the conquest of central Canaan is evident from its very position in the Canaanite land as the central strip, the possession of which opened access to other parts of that country. For Joshua this conquest had, as was noted before, the special significance that, possessing this strip, he thereby separated southern and northern Canaan and made it easier for himself to defeat each of them separately. This task he, it should be supposed, fulfilled after the conquest of Ai, and extended his power to Shechem. The biblical writer, besides what he said about Gibeon and the cities allied with it (Josh 9:1), does not speak particularly about the conquest of central Canaan, as it apparently did not present such remarkable events as those that marked the struggle described by him in Josh 10 and Josh 11 with the kings of southern and northern Canaan, and only by mentioning the king of Bethel, defeated along with other Canaanite kings (Josh 12:16), shows that he knew of the conquest of the cities of central Canaan. And if the conquest of the latter falls at a time following the taking of Ai, then there could be no obstacles to the all-nation journey to Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, of course, and Joshua could find in the very success of this conquest an incentive to fulfill without delay the will of his great predecessor regarding the proclamation of the law and the offering of a sacrifice to the Lord in the soonest time (Deut 27:2: “when you cross over the Jordan”) after entering the Canaanite land. The building of an altar “to the Lord, the God of Israel” on Mount Ebal and the offering on it of a burnt offering and peace offerings in the presence of all the people (Josh 8:35) served as a solemn national expression of dedication to the Lord, who had chosen the Israelite people as his people for the great mercies bestowed upon them. The altar was built in accordance with the Book of the Law (Exod 20:25) and the commandment of Moses (Deut 27:5-7). The inscription of the law of Moses on stones served to proclaim it as the law of the land of Israel. Under “a copy” (Josh 8:32) (in Hebrew “mishneh” – “repetition, copy”) of the law of Moses is understood not merely Deuteronomy (το δευτερονόμιον – “the second law”), but precisely “a reproduction,” or “a copy,” of the law of Moses; the word “copy” used here in Deut 27:3 corresponds to the expression “write all the words of this law.” Concerning the priests and Levites see Josh 3:3. * * * Works of the blessed Theodoret, vol. I, p. 279–280. Tristram. Bible places, 110. North of the hill Tell-el-Hajar, which some recognize as the location of Ai, there is also a deep valley with steep banks. Keil, Iosua, 62. In the Greek text, as well as in Slavonic, there are no brackets here. V. Lebedev, p. 355. A Greek translation fully corresponding to the Slavonic-Russian translation Josh 8:12-13 is read in the Moscow Greek Bible, although in the Alexandrian manuscript this translation is not found in this passage according to this edition. See in V. Lebedev, p. 361, where it is said that Josh 8:12-13, omitted in the pre-Ostrog text, are in agreement with AB (i.e., with the Alexandrian and Vatican manuscripts), and in the Ostrog text they were taken from the Aldine and Complutensian editions. On various explanations of this difference see Cook, II, 42. In domestic literature see in V. Lebedev, p. 322. See the above-named textbooks of archpriests M. Kheraskov and P. A. Vladimirsky. The examination of the current Hebrew text Josh 8:12-13 also leads some Western Christian biblical scholars, using exclusively the Hebrew text, to the view that these verses are a later insertion or gloss, providing more accurate information about the number of people sent to the ambush (that is, only 5,000) than that which is given in Josh 8 (that is, 30,000); the latter number is recognized as having been changed from the original (5,000), which was denoted by the Hebrew letter he – 5,000; it is supposed that the scribe of the Hebrew text mistakenly took this letter for lamed – 30,000. This latter number, as erroneous, was corrected by the gloss indicated. Keil, Iosua, 62–63. Although the author of this commentary abandoned his view of Josh 8:12-13 as a later insertion, the very fact of its origin in the mind of the German commentator indicates the great perplexity raised by the current Hebrew text of these verses. This interpretation is adopted in part in our named above textbooks of archpriests M. Kheraskov and P. A. Vladimirsky. The only exception so far known in this regard is presented by the ancient Vatican manuscript, in which Josh 8:30-35 follow not after Josh 8:29, but after Josh 9:1-2; but even according to this reading of the Vatican manuscript, the content of Josh 8:30-35 is not pushed back far from the conquest of Ai, since in Josh 9:1-2 what is described is not what Joshua did after this conquest, but what the Canaanite kings were doing at that time. The possibility of this journey immediately after the conquest of Ai is explained by some Western Christian commentators also by the fact that the Israelite camp was moved at this time from the Jericho Gilgal to another Gilgal, named in Deuteronomy (Deut 11:30) and located closer to Shechem, known at present by the name Jilgil, to the southwest of Shiloh; because of the position of this second Gilgal, at the ceremony described in Josh 8:30-35, women and children could have been present (Keil. Iosua, 66–70). This assumption appears, however, unlikely because of the absence of any indication of the transfer of the Israelite camp to another place at this time. The silence of the biblical writer on this is all the more important in that the transfer of the Tabernacle that occurred later from Gilgal to Shiloh was not left unmentioned by him (Josh 18:1).