Joshua 8:12 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 12. And he took about five thousand men— Besides the thirty thousand men whom Joshua had sent off, he detached five thousand more, either to inforce the former, or to guard the defiles, and shut up passages against those who fled. See Le Clerc and Calmet. We cannot help owning, however, that all this is far from being clear. It is reckoned, that six hundred thousand fighting men would only have occasioned perplexity on this occasion; that Joshua took only thirty thousand chosen men for this expedition; that of these thirty thousand men he detached five thousand, who, making a turn from the north to the south, by way of the east, posted themselves in the nighttime as near as possible to Ai, while the general passed that night with the twenty-five thousand men remaining, and did not advance till the morrow. Or else, some conjecture, with Calvin, that the five thousand men, who had lain in ambush under favour of the dark, formed a detachment separate from that of the thirty thousand men, who did not march till the morrow. If these accounts do not appear so wholly conformable to the text as the other, they seem to have greatly the advantage in point of arrangement. It is left to the reader to form his judgment of them. We shall only observe, that an ambuscade of thirty thousand men must have been very strong; and that the reason alleged by Bishop Patrick, to prove that the whole army of Israel marched before Ai, appears not to be substantial. "It was," says he, "in order that all the Israelites might partake of the spoil:" but then this learned prelate had forgotten what he judiciously observes elsewhere; (see Numbers 31:25; Numbers 31:54.) namely, that those who remained in the camp had a suitable proportion of the booty, as well as those who were commanded on an expedition; and that God himself had ordered matters in this manner.