One other person, place or group in the registry answers to the name Ai. Every Ai in the Bible
- verses
- 33
- first named
- Genesis 12:8
- last named
- Isaiah 10:28
- feature
- settlement
- coordinates
- 31.92°N · 35.26°E
Et Tell (OpenBible)
Scholarship offers 7 identifications for this place. The leading one is shown; the others are recorded in the gazetteer.
Description
Ai in the text
Ai was a Canaanite city located near Bethel, east of Jerusalem. It is first mentioned in Genesis 12:8 and 13:3, where Abraham built an altar between Bethel and Ai. During the conquest of Canaan, Joshua sent spies to Ai, who reported that the city was small and could be easily defeated (Joshua 7:2-3). However, the Israelites were initially defeated because of Achan's sin (Joshua 7:4-5).
After dealing with Achan, Joshua set an ambush and conquered Ai, killing its inhabitants and burning the city (Joshua 8). The king of Ai was hanged, and a heap of stones was raised over his body (Joshua 8:29). The conquest of Ai opened the way for the Israelites to advance into the heart of Canaan (Joshua 9:3; 10:1-2). Ai is listed among the cities defeated by Joshua (Joshua 12:9).
After the Babylonian exile, some people from Ai returned to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:28; Nehemiah 7:32). Ai was resettled by the Benjamites (Nehemiah 11:31). The city is also mentioned in Isaiah 10:28 as part of a prophetic description of the Assyrian invasion of Judah. The exact location of Ai is debated, but it is generally identified with et-Tell, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) southeast of Bethel.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
The pattern
Where Ai is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
33 verses across 5 of 66 books; 61 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (2), Joshua (27), Ezra (1), Nehemiah (2) and Isaiah (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 33, across 5 books. The name is written 39 times in them.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
What happened here
Atlas's reading of each chapter this place appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources