Josué 8

An ambush against Ai

¹Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid or lose heart. Take the whole army with you and go up against Ai. See, I have handed the king of Ai over to you, with his people, his city and his land. ²Do to Ai and its king what you did to Jericho and its king, except that this time you may take its spoil and its livestock as plunder for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.” ³So Joshua and the whole army set out to go up against Ai. Joshua chose 30,000 of his best fighting men and sent them off at night.^{a 4}He gave them these orders: “Listen. You are to lie in wait against the city from behind it. Do not go very far from the city, and all of you be ready. ⁵I will advance on the city with all the troops who are with me. When its men march out to fight us, just as before, we will turn and run from them. ⁶They will come after us until we have drawn them away from the city, because they will think, ‘They are running from us just as before.’ So we will keep running from them. ⁷Then you will rise from your hiding place and seize the city. The LORD your God will hand it over to you. ⁸As soon as you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the LORD has said. Those are my orders to you.” ⁹Then Joshua sent them off. They went to their hiding place and waited between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai, while Joshua spent that night with the army. ¹⁰Early the next morning Joshua mustered the troops, and he and the elders of Israel led them up to Ai. ¹¹All the fighting men with him went up, drew near and arrived in front of the city. They camped north of Ai, with the valley between them and the town. ¹²He took about 5,000 men and posted them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, west of the city.^{b 13}So the troops took their positions: the main camp north of the city and the rear guard west of it. That night Joshua went down into the middle of the valley.^{c 14}When the king of Ai saw this, he and all his people, the men of the city, hurried out early to meet Israel in battle at the place set for it, facing the Arabah. He did not know that an ambush was waiting for him behind the city.^{d 15}Joshua and all Israel pretended to be beaten by them and fled toward the wilderness. ¹⁶All the people in Ai were called out to chase them. They pursued Joshua and were drawn away from the city. ¹⁷Not one man stayed behind in Ai or Bethel; every one of them went out after Israel. They left the city wide open as they chased Israel.^e

Ai is taken

¹⁸Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Hold out the javelin in your hand toward Ai, for I will hand the city over to you.” So Joshua held out the javelin in his hand toward the city.^{f 19}As soon as he held out his hand, the men in ambush rose quickly from their position and ran forward. They entered the city, captured it and quickly set it on fire. ²⁰The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of their city rising into the sky. They had no chance to escape in any direction, and the Israelites who had been running toward the wilderness turned around against their pursuers. ²¹Joshua and all Israel saw the smoke going up from the city and knew that the ambush had captured it. Then they turned back and attacked the men of Ai. ²²The men of the ambush came out of the city against them, so the men of Ai were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel struck them down until not one survivor or fugitive was left. ²³But they seized the king of Ai alive and led him to Joshua. ²⁴When Israel had finished killing all the people of Ai in the open country and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and every one of them had fallen by the sword until none were left, all Israel went back to Ai and put it to the sword. ²⁵On that day 12,000 fell, men and women alike, the whole population of Ai. ²⁶Joshua did not lower the hand that held out his javelin until he had devoted all the people of Ai to destruction.^{g 27}Israel kept for themselves only the livestock and the spoil of that city, as the LORD had commanded Joshua. ²⁸So Joshua burned Ai and left it a ruin mound for all time, a desolate place, as it still is today. ²⁹He hung the king of Ai on a tree until evening. At sunset Joshua gave the order, and they took the body down from the tree and threw it down at the entrance of the city gate. They raised over it a large heap of stones, which is there to this day.^h

An altar on Mount Ebal

³⁰Then Joshua built an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,^{i 31}following the command that Moses the servant of the LORD had given the Israelites, as the book of the law of Moses records: an altar of uncut stones that no iron tool had touched. On it they offered burnt offerings to the LORD and sacrificed peace offerings. ³²There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses.^{j 33}All Israel, with its 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. Outsiders stood there as well as native Israelites. Half of them stood facing Mount Gerizim and half facing Mount Ebal. Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded this earlier, so that the people of Israel would be blessed.^{k 34}After that, Joshua read aloud all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, just as they are written in the book of the law. ³⁵There was not a single word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read aloud before the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and children and the outsiders who lived among them.