1 The Lord said to Yeshua, Do not 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;
2 You shall do to Ai and her king as you did to Jericho and her king: except you shall take its goods and its livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush for the city behind it.
3 So Yeshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up to Ai: and Yeshua chose out thirty thousand men, the mighty men of valor, and sent them forth by night.
4 He commanded them, saying, Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city; do not go very far from the city, but be all ready:
5 and I, and all the people who are with me, will approach to the city. It shall happen, when they come out against us, like the first time, that we will flee before them;
6 and they will come out after us, until we have drawn them away from the city; for they will say, They flee before us, like the first time: so we will flee before them;
7 and you shall rise up from the ambush, and take possession of the city: for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand.
8 It shall be, when you have seized on the city, that you shall set the city on fire; according to the word of the Lord shall you do: behold, I have commanded you.
9 Yeshua sent them forth; and they went to set up the ambush, and stayed between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Yeshua lodged that night among the people.
10 Yeshua arose up early in the morning, and mustered the people, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai.
11 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.
12 He took about five thousand men, and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.
13 So they set the people, even all the host who was on the north of the city, and their ambush who were on the west of the city; and Yeshua went that night into the middle of the valley.
14 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.
15 Yeshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness.
16 All the people who were in the city were called together to pursue after them: and they pursued after Yeshua, and were drawn away from the city.
17 There was not a man left in Ai or Beth El, who didn't go out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel.
18 The Lord said to Yeshua, Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai; for I will give it into your hand. Yeshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city.
19 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 quickly set the city on fire.
20 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.
21 When Yeshua 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.
22 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.
23 The king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Yeshua.
24 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.
25 All that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.
26 For Yeshua didn't draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.
27 Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for plunder for themselves, according to the word of the Lord which he commanded Yeshua.
28 So Yeshua burnt Ai, and made it a heap forever, even a desolation, to this day.
29 The king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the evening: and at the going down of the sun Yeshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised a great heap of stones on it that remains to this day.
30 Then Yeshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, in Mount Ebal,
31 as Moses the servant of the Lord 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 man had lifted up any iron: and they offered thereon burnt offerings to the Lord, and sacrificed peace-offerings.
32 He wrote there on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote, in the presence of the people of Israel.
33 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 the Lord, 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 the Lord had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel.
34 Afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the book of the law.
35 There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Yeshua didn't read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the foreigners who were among them.