Joshua said, Alas, Lord Yahweh, why have you at all brought this people over the Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to cause us to perish? would that we had been content and lived beyond the Jordan!
One scholar argued for et-Tell being the Ai of Abraham’s time, el-Maqatir being the Ai of Joshua’s time, and still another close site being the Ai of Nehemiah’s time (Ezra 2:28; Nehemiah 7:32). El-Maqatir is less than a mile west of et-Tell. [Note: Peter Briggs, "Testing the Factuality of the Conquest of Ai Narrative in the Book of Joshua," a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Colorado Springs, Colo., Nov. 15, 2001.] 