Joshua 8:14 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Joshua 8:14
And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hasted and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain; but he wist not that there were liers in ambush against him behind the city.
a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the wi… · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Matthew 24:39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
Deuteronomy 1:1 These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea, between P…
Joshua 8:5 And I, and all the people that are with me, will approach unto the city: and it shall come to pass, when they come out against us, as at the…
Joshua 8:16 And all the people that were in Ai were called together to pursue after them: and they pursued after Joshua, and were drawn away from the ci…
Judges 20:34-36 And there came against Gibeah ten thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and the battle was sore: but they knew not that evil was near them.
Ecclesiastes 9:12 For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the so…
Isaiah 19:11 Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the so…
Isaiah 19:13 The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tri…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Joshua 8:3-22
We have here an account of the taking of Ai by stratagem. The stratagem here used, we are sure, was lawful and good; God himself appointed it, and we have no reason to think but that the like is lawful and good in other wars. Here was no league broken, no treaty of peace, that the advantage was gained; no, these are sacred things, and not to be jested with, nor used to serve a turn; truth, when once it is plighted, becomes a debt even to the enemy. But in this stratagem here was no untruth told; nothing was concealed but their own counsels, which no enemy ever pretended a right to be entrusted with; nothing was dissembled, nothing counterfeited but a retreat, which was no natural or necessar…
at a time appointed--either an hour concocted between the king and people of Ai and those of Beth-el, who were confederates in this enterprise, or perhaps they had fixed on the same time of day, as they had fought successfully against Israel on the former occasion, deeming it a lucky hour (Jdg 20:38).
but he wist not that there were liers in ambush against him behind the city--It is evident that this king and his subjects were little experienced in war; otherwise they would have sent out scouts to reconnoitre the neighborhood; at all events, they would not have left their town wholly unprotected and open. Perhaps an ambuscade may have been a war stratagem hitherto unknown in that country,…
Numbered the people - ויפקד את העם vaiyiphkod eth haam, he visited the people - inspected their ranks to see whether every thing was in perfect readiness, that in case they should be needed they might be led on to the attack. There is no doubt that Joshua had left the rest of the army so disposed and ready, part of it having probably advanced towards Ai, that he might easily receive reinforcements in case of any disaster to the thirty thousand which had advanced against the city; and this consideration will serve to remove a part of the difficulty which arises from Jos 8:1, Jos 8:3, Jos 8:10, collated with other parts of this chapter. Had he brought all his troops in sight, the people of Ai…
The Church Fathers
We entreat you, O hearers of the sacred volumes, not to listen with weariness or distaste to the things that are read, on the ground that their narrative seems to be less delightful. For you ought to know that the things which are read are indeed worthy of the utterance of the Holy Spirit, but for explaining them we have need of that grace of the Holy Spirit of which the Apostle speaks: "to one, moreover, is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit." We too, then, have need of these things in the present passages, in which it is related that Jesus succeeded Moses, and that he himself leads the people, and a certain such history is prefigured in the present reading. Those who inhabited the city of Ai at first seemed indeed to conquer and to turn back the sons of Israel because of the sin which they had committed. But afterward, when the evil had been removed from their midst, Jesus, the leader of the people, is commanded by God to divide the people into two parts, so that one part should feign flight, while the other part should lie waiting in ambush, by which Ai might be deceived when Jesus should give the command. When these things had been thus arranged, "the king of Ai, seeing" Jesus and the sons of Israel from afar, "is stirred up against them into battle." And when the former feigned flight, the others pursue them the more fiercely, and, as though about to carry off spoils from the enemy, all together "go forth out of the city," so that, as Scripture says, "they left the city empty." But after they had advanced to the appointed place, Jesus turned and gave a signal that "those who were in the ambushes should rise up" and cut down the backs of the enemy; and thus those who were last and these who were first slay all the enemy enclosed in the middle. And in this manner, when those who inhabited Ai had been conquered, "they hanged" their "king upon a double wood."
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Ai — Ruins. (1.) One of the royal cities of the Canaanites (Josh. 10:1; Gen. 12:8; 13:3). It was the scene of Joshua’s defeat, and afterwards of his victory. It was the second Canaanite city taken by…
Ambush — Joshua at the capture of Ai lay in ambush, and so deceived the inhabitants that he gained an easy victory (Josh. 8:4-26). Shechem was taken in this manner (Judg. 9:30-45. Comp. Jer. 51:12).
Arabah — Plain, in the Revised Version of 2 Kings 14:25; Josh. 3:16; 8:14; 2 Sam. 2:29; 4:7 (in all these passages the A.V. has “plain”); Amos 6:14 (A.V. “wilderness”). This word is found in the Authorized…
Heap — When Joshua took the city of Ai (Josh. 8), he burned it and “made it an heap [Heb. tel] for ever” (8:28). The ruins of this city were for a long time sought for in vain. It has been at length,…
Ambush · .At Ai — .At Ai
Sieges · Mentioned in scripture: Ai — Mentioned in scripture: Ai
Strategy · In war — In war
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it,.... Not the ambush on the west side, but the host or army on the north side, or, however, some of his people gave him notice of it:
that they hasted and rose up early; or made haste to rise out of their beds, on the alarm given of Israel's near approach:
and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle; being raised out of their beds and accoutred with armour, and put into a military order, they marched out with their king at the head of them, to give Israel battle:
he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain; which was before the city, the same with the valley mentioned, Joshua 8:11; the city was built on an emine…
Joshua 8:1-29
1. And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed: take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land:
1. Dixitque Jehova ad Josuam, Netimeas, nec formides, sume tecum omnem populum bellicosum, et surge, ascende in Hai. Vide, dedi in manu tua regem Hai, ac populum ejus, urbem ejus, et terram ejus.
2. And thou shall do to Ai and her king as thou did unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall you take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.
2. Faciesque Hai, et regi ejus, quemadmodum feci…
Conquest and Burning of Ai. - Jos 8:1, Jos 8:2. After the ban which rested upon the people had been wiped away, the Lord encouraged Joshua to make war upon Ai, promising him that the city should be taken, and giving him instructions what to do to ensure the success of his undertaking. With evident allusion to Joshua's despair after the failure of the first attack, the Lord commences with these words, "Fear not, neither be thou dismayed" (as in Deu 1:21; Deu 31:8), and then commands him to go against Ai with all the people of war. By "all the people of war" we are hardly to understand all the men out of the whole nation who were capable of bearing arms; but as only a third of these were contr…
The king of Ai . . . and all his army were recklessly eager to repeat their heroics of the previous battle. As Joshua and Israel had learned, such overconfidence is dangerous.
Rashi on Joshua 8:14
At the appointed time. At the time of day they had astrologically predicted previously, saying “at that time we will go out,” for they were sorcerers and diviners.
