Joshua 8

1Then Yahweh said to Joshua, “Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take with you all the fighting men, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land.”

2And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock you may plunder for yourselves. Set an ambush for yourself behind the city.

3So Joshua and all the fighting people rose to go up against Ai, and Joshua chose thirty thousand men, mighty men of valor, and sent them out by night.

4And he commanded them, saying, “Look, you are to lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, and all of you must be ready.”

5And I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. And when they come out to meet us, as before, we will flee before them.

6And they will come out after us until we have drawn them away from the city, for they will say, ‘They are fleeing before us as at the first,’ and we will flee before them.

7Then you shall rise up from the ambush and take the city, for Yahweh your God will give it into your hand.

8And when you have taken the city, you shall set the city on fire. According to the word of Yahweh, you shall do. See, I have commanded you.

9So Joshua sent them, and they went to the ambush and stayed between Bethel and Ai, west of Ai. And Joshua spent that night among the people.

10Joshua rose early in the morning and mustered the people, and he and the elders of Israel went up before the people to Ai.

11And all the fighting people who were with him went up and approached, and they came before the city and camped north of Ai, with the valley between him and Ai.

12And he took about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, west of the city.

13So the people positioned the whole camp that was north of the city, with its rear west of the city, and Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley.

14And it happened, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hurried and rose early, and the men of the city went out to meet Israel for battle, he and all his people, at the appointed place before the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush was against him behind the city.

15And Joshua and all Israel let themselves be beaten before them and fled by the way of the wilderness.

16And all the people who were in the city were called out to pursue them, and they pursued Joshua and were drawn away from the city.

17And not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel, and they left the city open and pursued Israel.

18Then Yahweh said to Joshua, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.” So Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city.

19Then the ambush rose quickly from its place and ran as soon as he stretched out his hand; they entered the city, captured it, and quickly set the city on fire.

20Then the men of Ai turned behind them and looked, and behold, the smoke of the city was going up to the sky, and there was no power in them to flee this way or that. And the people who had fled to the wilderness turned back against the pursuer.

21When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city had gone up, they turned back and struck down the men of Ai.

22And these came out from the city to meet them, so that they were in the midst of Israel, these on one side and those on the other; and they struck them down until he left for him not a survivor or a fugitive.

23But they captured the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.

24And it happened that when Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness where they had pursued them, and all of them had fallen by the edge of the sword until they were finished off, then all Israel returned to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword.

25And all who fell that day, from man to woman, were twelve thousand—all the people of Ai.

26And Joshua did not draw back his hand, which he had stretched out with the javelin, until he had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction.

27Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as plunder for themselves, according to the word of Yahweh that he had commanded Joshua.

28So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent mound, a desolation to this day.

29And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. And at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his corpse down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the city gate, and they raised over him a large heap of stones that remains to this day.

30Then Joshua built an altar to Yahweh, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal.

31just as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded the sons of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, on which no iron tool had been wielded; and they offered up burnt offerings on it to Yahweh and sacrificed peace offerings.

32And there, on the stones, he wrote a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written before the sons of Israel.

33And all Israel, with its elders, officers, and judges, was standing on this side and on that side of the ark, opposite the Levitical priests carrying the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, both the sojourner and the native-born alike. Half of them were in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel.

34And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law.

35There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, the little children, and the sojourner who walked among them.