When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and killed the men of Ai.
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When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and killed the men of Ai.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
For Joshua and all of Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city went up, and they turned and struck the men of Ai.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and killed the men of Ai.
When Joshua and all Israel saw that the men in ambush had captured the city and that smoke was rising from it, they turned around and struck down the men of Ai.
When Joshua and all Israel saw that the men in ambush had captured the city and that smoke was rising from it, they turned around and struck down the men of Ai.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
When Ioshua and all Israel sawe that they that lay in waite, had taken the citie, and that the smoke of the citie mounted vp, then they turned againe and slewe the men of Ai.
So Josue and all Israel seeing that the city was taken, and that the smoke of the city rose up, returned and slew the men of Hai.
and Joshua and all Israel have seen that the ambush hath captured the city, and that the smoke of the city hath gone up, and they turn back and smite the men of Ai;
and Joshua and all Israel have seen that the ambush has captured the city, and that the smoke of the city has gone up, and they turn back and strike the men of Ai;
When Joshua and all Israel saw the ambush had captured the city with the smoke rising, they turned around and killed the men of Ai.
For Joshua and all of Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city went up, and they turned and struck the men of Ai.
When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city went up, they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned back and killed the men of Ai.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again and slew the men of Ai.
For when Joshua and the Israelites saw that the ambush group had captured the town, and that smoke was rising from it, they turned around and attacked the men of Ai.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the town had been taken by the surprise attack, and that the smoke of the town had gone up, turning round they overcame the men of Ai.
And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned back, and slew the men of Ai.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
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These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is עֲשַׁ֣ן smoke H6227 — appearing just 25 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
עֲשַׁ֣ן smoke H6227 occurs in 24 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 31 words from the Hebrew and 33 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
In the original languages it is 18 Hebrew tokens and 29 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
וִיהוֹשֻׁ֨עַ וְכָֽל יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל רָא֗וּ כִּֽי לָכַ֤ד הָֽאֹרֵב֙ אֶת הָעִ֔יר וְכִ֥י עָלָ֖ה עֲשַׁ֣ן הָעִ֑יר וַיָּשֻׁ֕בוּ וַיַּכּ֖וּ אֶת אַנְשֵׁ֥י הָעָֽי
When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and killed the men of Ai.
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί ἰησοῦς καί πᾶς ἰσραήλ ὁράω ὅτι λαμβάνω ὁ ἔνεδρον ὁ πόλις καί ὅτι ἀναβαίνω ὁ καπνός ὁ πόλις εἰς ὁ οὐρανός καί μεταβάλλω πατάσσω ὁ ἀνήρ ὁ γαι
And Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambuscade had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city went up to heaven; and they turned and struck the men of Gai.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
וִיהוֹשֻׁעַ וְכָל יִשְׂרָאֵל חֲזוֹ אֲרֵי כְבַשׁ כְּמָנָא יַת קַרְתָּא וַאֲרֵי סְלֵיק תְּנָנָא דְקַרְתָּא וְתָבוּ וּמְחוֹ יַת אֱנָשֵׁי עָי:
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Joshua, in the Historical, opens this verse with 18 words (15 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʻâshân (“smoke”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on Joshua 8:21 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Wesley's Explanatory Notes
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.