1 The LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid or discouraged. Take the whole army with you and go up and attack Ai. See, I have handed over to you the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land.
2 Treat Ai and its king as you treated Jericho and its king, except that you may take its spoil and livestock as plunder for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city."
3 So Joshua and the whole army set out to attack Ai. Joshua picked thirty thousand valiant warriors and sent them out at night
4 with these orders: "Listen. You are to lie in ambush behind the city. Do not go very far from it, and all of you stay alert.
5 I and all the troops with me will advance on the city, and when its men come out against us as they did before, we will run from them.
6 They will chase us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will think, 'They are running from us as they did the first time.' While we are running from them,
7 you are to rise from your ambush and take the city. The LORD your God will hand it over to you.
8 When you have captured the city, set it on fire. Do what the LORD has said. Those are my orders to you."
9 Joshua sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and took up position between Bethel and Ai, west of Ai. Joshua himself spent that night with the troops.
10 Early the next morning Joshua mustered the troops, and he and the elders of Israel marched at their head up to Ai.
11 All the fighting men with him went up and advanced until they reached the front of the city. They camped north of Ai, with the valley between them and the city.
12 He had taken about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, west of the city.
13 So they positioned the forces, the main camp north of the city and the ambush west of it. That night Joshua went into the middle of the valley.
14 When the king of Ai saw this, he and all his army, the men of the city, hurried out early in the morning to engage Israel in battle at the appointed place facing the Arabah. He did not know that an ambush had been set against him behind the city.
15 Joshua and all Israel pretended to be beaten by them and fled along the road to the wilderness.
16 All the men in the city were called out to chase them, and as they pursued Joshua they were drawn away from the city.
17 Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. They left the city wide open and went in pursuit of Israel.
18 Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Hold out toward Ai the javelin in your hand, for I will hand the city over to you." So Joshua held out the javelin in his hand toward the city.
19 As soon as he stretched out his hand, the men in ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city, captured it, and quickly set it on fire.
20 When the men of Ai looked back, they saw the smoke of the city rising to the sky. They had no chance to escape in any direction, for the troops who had been fleeing toward the wilderness turned around on their pursuers.
21 When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that smoke was rising from it, they turned around and attacked the men of Ai.
22 Those in the city also came out against them, so the men of Ai were caught in the middle, with Israel on both sides. Israel cut them down until not one survivor or fugitive was left.
23 But they captured the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.
24 When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open country, in the wilderness where they had chased them, and every one of them had fallen by the sword until they were wiped out, all Israel returned to Ai and put it to the sword.
25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that day, all the people of Ai.
26 Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction.
27 Israel kept only the livestock and the spoil of that city as plunder for themselves, as the LORD had instructed Joshua.
28 So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day.
29 He hanged the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening. At sunset Joshua ordered them to take the body down from the tree. They threw it down at the entrance of the city gate and piled a large heap of stones over it, which is still there today.
30 Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel,
31 just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the children of Israel and as written in the book of the law of Moses: an altar of whole stones, on which no iron tool had been used. On it they offered burnt offerings to the LORD and sacrificed peace offerings.
32 There on the stones, in the presence of the children of Israel, Joshua wrote a copy of the law of Moses, which Moses had written.
33 All Israel, sojourner and native-born alike, with their elders, officials, and judges, stood on both sides of the ark, facing the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD. Half of them stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had earlier commanded, to bless the people of Israel.
34 After that Joshua read aloud all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, just as it is all written in the book of the law.
35 There was not one word of everything Moses had commanded that Joshua failed to read before the whole assembly of Israel, including the women, the children, and the sojourners who lived among them.