To LIE IN WAIT — to set an ambush, wait hidden for a person. Deuteronomy 19:11 uses it for the single act that turns a manslayer into a murderer and cancels his sanctuary: he hates, he lies in wait, he rises, he strikes. Premeditation is not defined in the chapter; it is staged, exactly as the accident is staged six verses earlier. ⚠ This is not the arav already in this dictionary. That one begins with an ayin and means to stand surety for a debt — Judah pledging himself for Benjamin. This one begins with an aleph. Once the vowel points come off, the two look identical in transliteration and are unrelated roots, which is why the library carries them as two entries; the same discipline Deuteronomy 18 applied to kashaph. ⭐ The root gives Hebrew its noun for an ambush party, and its densest patch anywhere is the taking of Ai: it stands in six verses of Joshua 8 (vv2, 4, 9, 12, 14, 21), of the men set behind the city. → first discussed at Deut 19:11