Yahweh said to Joshua, Don't be afraid, neither be dismayed: take all the people of war with you, and arise, go up to Ai; behold, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land;
You shall do to Ai and her king as you did to Jericho and her king: only the spoil of it, and the cattle of it, shall you take for a prey to yourselves: set you an ambush for the city behind it.
So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up to Ai: and Joshua chose out thirty thousand men, the mighty men of valor, and sent them forth by night.
and I, and all the people who are with me, will approach to the city. It shall happen, when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them;
and they will come out after us, until we have drawn them away from the city; for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first: so we will flee before them;
It shall be, when you have seized on the city, that you shall set the city on fire; according to the word of Yahweh shall you do: behold, I have commanded you.
Joshua sent them forth; and they went to set up the ambush, and stayed between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Joshua lodged that night among the people.
All the people, even the men of war who were with him, went up, and drew near, and came before the city, and encamped on the north side of Ai: now there was a valley between him and Ai.
So they set the people, even all the host who was on the north of the city, and their liers-in-wait who were on the west of the city; and Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley.
It happened, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hurried and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at the time appointed, before the Arabah; but he didn't know that there was an ambush against him behind the city.
Yahweh said to Joshua, Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai; for I will give it into your hand. Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city.
The ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand, and entered into the city, and took it; and they hurried and set the city on fire.
When the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and, behold, the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that way: and the people who fled to the wilderness turned back on the pursuers.
When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and killed the men of Ai.
The others came forth out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they struck them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.
It happened, when Israel had made an end of killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness in which they pursued them, and they were all fallen by the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all Israel returned to Ai, and struck it with the edge of the sword.
The king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the evening: and at the going down of the sun Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised thereon a great heap of stones, to this day.
as Moses the servant of Yahweh commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of uncut stones, on which no man had lifted up any iron: and they offered thereon burnt offerings to Yahweh, and sacrificed peace-offerings.
All Israel, and their elders and officers, and their judges, stood on this side of the ark and on that side before the priests the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, as well the foreigner as the native; half of them in front of Mount Gerizim, and half of them in front of Mount Ebal; as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel.
There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua didn't read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the foreigners who were among them.