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Do to Ai and its king what you did to Jericho and its king—except that you may take its spoil and livestock as plunder.(A) Set an ambush behind the city. So Joshua and all the soldiers prepared to attack Ai. Picking out thirty thousand warriors,[a] Joshua sent them off by night with these orders: “See that you ambush the city from the rear. Do not be very far from the city. All of you must be ready.

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Footnotes

  1. 8:3 Thirty thousand warriors: this figure of the Hebrew text, which seems extremely high, may be due to a copyist’s error; some manuscripts of the Septuagint have “three thousand,” which is the number of the whole army in the first, unsuccessful attack (7:4); the variant reading in v. 12 mentions “five thousand.” More likely, the word for “thousand” here and in other military contexts may designate a squad or fighting unit, itself composed of significantly fewer warriors.

You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder(A) and livestock for yourselves.(B) Set an ambush(C) behind the city.”

So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at night with these orders: “Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from it. All of you be on the alert.

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