2. Only its booty and its cattle you may plunder. Ai, like Jericho, is to be put to the ban, its structures burned and all its inhabitants massacred, but an exception is made for booty, which the conquering Israelites are allowed to take.

3. the combat troops. Throughout this episode, ‘am, elsewhere “people,” clearly has this military sense.

thirty thousand men. The very large number here for men in an ambush is cited by proponents of the idea that ’elef must refer to a small contingent and does not mean a thousand. But highly exaggerated numbers are often used in ancient narrative, and the sense of “contingent” in the count of the deaths of the town’s inhabitants in verse 25 is problematic.

4–8. Although God had said he would deliver Ai to Joshua, it is Joshua’s shrewdness as a strategist that brings about the fall of the town. The elaboration of the details of military strategy is untypical of biblical narrative. Scholars have pointed out a similarity not only in strategy but also in wording between this story and the account of the siege of Gibeah in the civil war reported in Judges 20, and it is generally thought that this story draws on the one in Judges. Joshua shrewdly capitalizes on the previous defeat of the Israelites at Ai by seeming to repeat the same tactical error, positioning his troops in front of the town gate and then retreating. This time, however, he hides an attack unit behind the town that will move forward against it once the armed men of the town have been drawn out in pursuit of the main body of Israelites.

4. behind the town. This would be west of the town. The main gates of the town are evidently on the eastern side, and the main Israelite camp is northeast of the city.

10. before the troops. This phrase looks odd and may reflect a scribal error.

12. And he took about five thousand men. This verse seems to replicate verses 3–4 using a different (somewhat more plausible) number—5,000 instead of 30,000. It also puts the sending out of the ambush troops after the general encampment, not before it. Two different versions may have been awkwardly spliced together.

13. And they put the troops, the whole camp. Like the translation, the wording of the Hebrew is a bit clumsy and the syntax ambiguous.

its covert contingent. The Hebrew ʿaqev usually means “heel.” There is no evidence that it means “rear guard,” as some claim, and an ambush is not a rear guard. It is equally questionable that it could mean “far edge,” again an inappropriate term for ambush. The translation follows the Targum of Jonathan, Rashi, and Kimchi, in relating ʿaqev to ʿoqbah, a term that suggests deviousness and that might apply to an ambush.

Joshua spent that night. The Masoretic Text reads wayelekh, “walked,” but a few manuscripts show wayalen, “spent the night,” which seems more plausible.

14. the Arabah. This is the north-south rift of the Jordan Valley and is equivalent to the wilderness several times mentioned in this episode.

15. were routed. The obvious implication in context is: pretended to be routed. The verb used wayinagʿu (literally, “were smitten/plagued”) comes instead of the expected wayinagfu, and may be influenced by the parallel passage in Judges 20, where the same verbal stem is employed in a different sense.

18. Reach out with the javelin that is in your hand. The exact nature of the weapon, kidon, is in dispute. (Modern Hebrew has adopted it as the term for bayonet.) Some scholars think it is a kind of scimitar. In any case, the outstretched kidon is both a signal for the men in the ambush to move against the town and a magical act pointedly reminiscent of Moses’s upraised staff in the battle against Amalek reported in Exodus 17.

21. the ambushers. The Hebrew term haʾorev can refer either to the ambush or, as a collective noun, to the combatants carrying out the ambush.

22. And these had come out of the town toward them. These are the ambushers, who, having put the town to the torch, now attack its troops outside, who are caught in a pincer movement between the main Israelite force and the ambushers (whether 5,000 or 30,000). The reference to no place to flee in verse 20 may be out of chronological order because it makes good sense here, when the men of Ai are attacked from both sides.

24. turned back to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword. The gruesome reality of this report is as follows: the ambushing force, after setting fire to the town and then coming out to join in the attack on the troops of Ai, now comes back with the main Israelite camp to the town to slaughter the women and elders and children left there.

29. impaled on a pole. This is the form of execution that many modern scholars think likely. But the traditional rendering of “hanged on a tree” remains a distinct possibility.

they took his corpse down from the pole and flung it by the entrance of the town gate. The use of the verb “flung” is a clear indication that this is not an honorable burial, though the biblical prohibition against leaving a body hanging overnight is preserved. The place of burial may point toward the area in front of the gates of the town where the Israelites were killed in their earlier attack.

30. Then did Joshua build an altar. This textual unit invokes the two mountains of blessing and curse mentioned in Deuteronomy 11:26–32, and is a direct implementation of the command in Deuteronomy 27:2–3, “on the day that you cross the Jordan into the land that the LORD your God is about to give you, you shall set up for yourself great stones and coat them with plaster. And you shall write on them the words of this teaching. . . .” But the placement of the episode has puzzled both ancient and modern commentators. Temporally, it does not happen right after the crossing of the Jordan as it should, and geographically, the Israelites at Ai are not opposite Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.

31. an altar of whole stones, over which no iron has been brandished. This is an approximate quotation of Exodus 20:25.

32. the repetition of the teaching of Moses. The Hebrew mishneh torat mosheh refers to Deuteronomy (that Greek name itself being a rendering of the Hebrew mishneh torah). The Deuteronomist behind this story is clearly promoting the interests of his own privileged text.