For they will come out after us,.... Of which there could be no doubt, when they should see them run from them:
till we have drawn them from the city; some distance from it, that they could not return soon enough to save it from the ambush, or prevent their entrance into it, and burning it:
for they will say, they will flee before us, as at the first; they run away as they did before, and let us pursue them and smite them as we did then:
therefore we will flee before them; to draw them out of the city, and make your way easy to get into it,