SIL Translator’s Notes on Joshua 8:11

8:11a

Then: The Hebrew connector that the Berean Standard Bible translates as Then indicates the next event of the storyline.

all the troops who were with him: The phrase all the troops refers to the Israelite soldiers who were with Joshua. The word him refers to Joshua, who was the commander of the army.

Here is another way to translate this phrase:

all the soldiers who were with Joshua

marched up: The Hebrew text says marched up because Ai was higher than the Israelite camp. If your language does not keep track of elevation in the same way that Hebrew does, you can translate this as:

went

8:11b

and approached the city: The clause approached the city indicates that the soldiers walked until they were close to the town of Ai.

8:11c

and camped to the north of it: The clause camped to the north of it indicates that the soldiers set up their tents on the northern side of the town of Ai. It may be clearer in some languages if you begin a new sentence here. For example:

They set up camp north of Ai (New International Version)

with the valley between them and the city: The Israelite soldiers made their camp north of the town, with a valley separating them from the town of Ai.

General Comment on 8:11

Because the information contained in 11a-b is already stated in 8:10, it may be more natural in some languages to leave this information implicit, as the Contemporary English Version does:

They set up camp in full view of the town, across the valley to the north. (Contemporary English Version)

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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