1Then Yahweh said to Joshua, “Do not fear, and do not be dismayed. Take with you all the fighting people, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai and his people and his city and his land.
2You shall do to Ai and her king as you did to Jericho and her king. Only its spoil and its cattle you may plunder for yourselves. Set an ambush against the city, behind it.”
3So Joshua arose, and all the fighting people, to go up to Ai. And Joshua chose thirty thousand men, mighty warriors, and sent them out by night.
4He commanded them, saying, “See, you are to ambush the city, from behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, and all of you be ready.
5As for me and all the people who are with me, we will draw near to the city. And when they come out to meet us as at the first, we will flee before them.
6They 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.’ So we will flee before them,
7and you shall rise up from the ambush and take possession of the city, for Yahweh your God will give it into your hand.
8And when you have seized the city, you shall set the city on fire. According to the word of Yahweh you shall act. See, I have commanded you.”
9So Joshua sent them out, and they went to the ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai. But Joshua spent that night among the people.
10Joshua rose early in the morning and mustered the people, and he went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai.
11And all the fighting people who were with him went up and drew near and came before the city, and they encamped on the north side of Ai, with the valley between them and Ai.
12He took about five thousand men and set them as an ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city.
13So the people set the whole camp that was north of the city, with its rear guard 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 the men of the city hurried and rose early and went out to meet Israel in battle, he and all his people, to the appointed place facing the Arabah. But he did not know that there was an ambush against him behind the city.
15And Joshua and all Israel let themselves be beaten before them, and they fled by the way of the wilderness.
16And all the people who were in the city were called together to pursue after them, and they pursued after Joshua and were drawn away from the city.
17Not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. They left the city open and pursued after Israel.
18Then Yahweh said to Joshua, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for into your hand I will give it.” So Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city.
19And the ambush rose quickly from its place, and they ran as soon as he stretched out his hand, and they came into the city and captured it, and they hurried and set the city on fire.
20When the men of Ai turned behind them and looked, behold, the smoke of the city was going up to the sky, and they had no strength to flee this way or that. And the people who had been fleeing 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 was going up, they turned back and struck down the men of Ai.
22And these came out of the city to meet them, so that they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side and some on that side. And they struck them down until no survivor or fugitive was left to them.
23But the king of Ai they took alive, and they brought him near to Joshua.
24And it happened, when Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open 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, that all Israel turned back to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword.
25And all who fell on that day, from man to woman, were twelve thousand — all the people of Ai.
26For Joshua did not draw back his hand, which he had stretched out with the javelin, until he had devoted to destruction all the inhabitants of Ai.
27Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel plundered for themselves, according to the word of Yahweh that he had commanded Joshua.
28And Joshua burned Ai and made it a perpetual mound of ruins, a desolation to this day.
29And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the time of evening. But at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his corpse down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and they raised over it a great heap of stones, which remains to this day.
30Then Joshua built an altar to Yahweh, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
31as 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, over which no iron tool had been wielded. And they offered up on it burnt offerings to Yahweh, and they sacrificed peace offerings.
32And there, upon 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, were standing on this side and on that side of the ark, facing the priests, the Levites, who carry the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, both the sojourner and the native-born alike; half of them toward Mount Gerizim and half of them toward Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded, to bless the people of Israel first.
34And afterward he read aloud 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 aloud before all the assembly of Israel, including the women, the little ones, and the sojourner who walked in their midst.
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