Joshua 8

8 ¹ Then our Father said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid, and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you and go up to Ai. I have handed over to you the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land." ² Do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, but you may take the plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush for the city behind it."

³ So Joshua rose, and all the fighting men with him, to go up to Ai. Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty warriors and sent them out by night. ⁴ He commanded them, "Lie in ambush behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, and all of you stay ready. ⁵ My men and I will advance toward the city. And when they come out against us as before, we will flee before them. ⁶ 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 before.' So we will flee from them. ⁷ Then spring up from the ambush and seize the city, for your Father will hand it over to you. ⁸ And when you have captured the city, set it on fire. Do as our Father has commanded. You have your orders."

⁹ So Joshua sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and waited between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai. But Joshua spent that night among the people. ¹⁰ Joshua rose early in the morning and mustered the people, and he and the elders of Israel led them up to Ai. ¹¹ All the fighting men with him advanced until they were directly opposite the city and camped on the north side of Ai, with the valley between them and Ai. ¹² He took about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. ¹³ So they positioned the people—the whole camp north of the city and its rear guard west of the city. And that night Joshua went into the middle of the valley. ¹⁴ When the king of Ai saw this, the men of the city hurried out early to meet Israel in battle—he and all his people, at the appointed place facing the Arabah. But he did not know there was an ambush set against him behind the city. ¹ 1 v14 The Arabah is the deep Jordan Valley depression running south from the Sea of Galilee toward the Dead Sea. ¹⁵ Joshua and all Israel let themselves be driven back and fled toward the wilderness. ¹⁶ So all the people in the city were called out to chase them, and they pursued Joshua and were drawn away from the city. ¹⁷ Not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. They left the city wide open and pursued Israel.

¹⁸ Then our Father said to Joshua, "Stretch out the javelin in your hand toward Ai, for I will hand it over to you." So Joshua stretched out the javelin in his hand toward the city.

¹⁹ The moment he stretched out his hand, the men in ambush sprang up from their positions, rushed into the city, captured it, and hurried to set it on fire. ²⁰ When the men of Ai looked back, they saw the smoke of the city rising to the sky, and they had nowhere to run, for the people who had fled to the wilderness now turned back on their pursuers. ²¹ When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that its smoke was rising, they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. ²² The others came out of the city against them, so the men of Ai were caught in the middle of Israel, with Israelites on both sides. Israel struck them down until not one survivor or fugitive was left. ²³ But the king of Ai they took alive and brought to Joshua.

²⁴ When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open field, in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had fallen by the sword, all Israel returned to Ai and put it to the sword. ²⁵ All who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand—all the people of Ai. ²⁶ Joshua kept his javelin raised until he had devoted to destruction all the inhabitants of Ai. ²⁷ Only the livestock and the plunder of that city did Israel keep for themselves, as our Father had commanded Joshua. ²⁸ So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolation to this day. ²⁹ He hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening, and at sunset Joshua gave the order, and they took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the city gate. Over it they raised a great heap of stones, which stands to this day.

Israel Renews the Father's Covenant

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar to our Father, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, ³¹ just as Moses the servant of our Father had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses: an altar of uncut stones, on which no one had used an iron tool. On it they offered burnt offerings to our Father and sacrificed peace offerings. ³² There, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses that Moses had written. ³³ All Israel—both the foreigner and the native-born—with their elders, officers, and judges, stood on both sides of the ark, facing the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of our Father. Half of them stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of our Father had earlier commanded, to bless the people of Israel. ³⁴ Afterward he read aloud all the words of the law—the blessing and the curse—exactly as it is written in the Book of the Law. ³⁵ There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read before the whole assembly of Israel, including the women, the children, and the foreigners who lived among them.