Joshua 8

1 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid and do not lose your nerve. Take with you all the fighting men, and rise and go up to Ai. Look, I have given into your hands the king of Ai and his land. 2 And you are to do to Ai as you did to Jericho and its king; and the plunder of its cattle you are to take as plunder for yourself. Now set for yourself an ambush against the city, behind it.”

3 So Joshua rose up, and all the fighting men, to go up to Ai. And Joshua picked out thirty thousand men mighty in strength and sent them off by night. 4 And he commanded them, “You are to lie in ambush behind the city. Do not go far from the city, and all of you be ready. 5 And I and all who are with me will draw near to the city; and when the people living in Ai come out to meet us, just as before, we will run from them. [a] 6 And when they come out after us, we will draw them away from the city; and they will say, ‘These men are running from us as they did before.’ 7 Then you are to rise up out of the ambush and go into the city. 8 You are to act according to this word. Look, I have commanded you.”

9 And Joshua sent them off, and they went to the ambush and took their place between Bethel and Ai, west of Ai. 10 And Joshua rose early in the morning and mustered the people; and he went up, he and the elders, in front of the people, to Ai. 11 And all the fighting men went up with him, and they advanced and came opposite the city, on the east, 12 and the ambush for the city was on the west. [b]

14 And when the king of Ai saw it, he hurried and went out to meet them, straight into the battle, he and all the people with him; and he did not know that there was an ambush set for him behind the city. 15 And Joshua and Israel saw them and drew back before them. 16 And they chased after the children of Israel, and they themselves went far from the city. 17 There was no one left in Ai who did not chase after Israel; and they left the city standing open and chased after Israel.

18 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Stretch out your hand with the javelin that is in your hand toward the city — for I have handed it over into your hands — and the men in ambush will rise up quickly out of their place.” And Joshua stretched out his hand, with the javelin, toward the city, [c] 19 and the men in ambush rose up quickly out of their place and came out as he stretched out his hand; and they came to the city and took it, and they hurried and burned the city with fire.

20 And when the people living in Ai looked around behind them, they saw the smoke going up from the city to heaven; and they no longer had anywhere to run, this way or that. 21 And Joshua and all Israel saw that the men in ambush had taken the city and that the smoke of the city was going up to heaven, and they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. 22 And these came out of the city to meet them, and the men of Ai were caught in the middle of Israel's camp, with Israelites on this side and on that; and they struck them down until not one of them was left who survived or got away. 23 And they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.

24 And when the children of Israel had finished killing everyone in Ai — those in the plains and those on the mountain at the descent, where they had chased them from the city to the very end — then Joshua turned back to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword. 25 And those who fell that day, from man to woman, were twelve thousand, all the people living in Ai. 27 Only the cattle and the spoils that were in the city, everything the children of Israel took as plunder for themselves, according to the decree of the Lord, as the Lord had ordered Joshua. [d]

28 And Joshua burned the city with fire. He made it a mound, with no one living in it, forever, and so it is to this day. 29 And he hanged the king of Ai on a double tree, and he was on the tree until evening; and as the sun was going down Joshua gave the order, and they took his body down from the tree and threw it into the pit, and set over him a heap of stones, which is there to this day. [e]