¹And Yahweh said to Joshua: Do not fear, and do not be dismayed; take with you all the people of war, and rise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land.

²And you shall do to Ai and to its king just as you did to Jericho and to its king; only its spoil and its livestock you shall plunder for yourselves. Set for yourself an ambush against the city, from behind it.

³And Joshua rose, and all the people of war, to go up to Ai; and Joshua chose thirty thousand men, mighty men of valor, and sent them out by night.

⁴And he commanded them, saying: See, you are lying in wait for the city, behind the city; do not go very far from the city, and all of you be ready.

⁵I and all the people who are with me will draw near to the city; and when they come out to meet us as at the first, we will flee before them.

⁶They will come out after us, until we have torn them away from the city, for they will say, “They are fleeing before us, as at the first.” So we will flee before them.

⁷You will rise from the ambush and will take possession of the city; and Yahweh your God will give it into your hand.

⁸And when you have seized the city, you will set the city on fire. You will do it according to the word of Yahweh; see, I have commanded you.

⁹Joshua sent them out, and they went to the ambush and remained between Bethel and Ai, on the sea side of Ai; and Joshua spent that night in the middle of the people.

¹⁰Joshua rose early in the morning and mustered the people; then he went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the face of the people to Ai.

¹¹All the people of war who were with him went up, drew near, and came in front of the city; they encamped north of Ai, with the valley between it and Ai.

¹²He took about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the sea side of the city.

¹³The people set all the camp that was north of the city, with its rear on the sea side of the city; and Joshua went that night into the middle of the vale.

¹⁴When the king of Ai saw it, the men of the city hurried, rose early, and went out to meet Israel for war, he and all his people, at the appointed place before the face of the Arabah; but he did not know that there was an ambush for him behind the city.

¹⁵Joshua and all Israel pretended to be beaten before them and fled along the road toward the wilderness.

¹⁶All the people who were in Ai were called together to run after them, and they ran after Joshua and were torn away from the city.

¹⁷Not a man was left in Ai and Bethel who had not gone out after Israel; they left the city wide open and ran after Israel.

¹⁸Yahweh said to Joshua, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.” Then Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city.

¹⁹The ambush rose quickly from its place, and they ran as he stretched out his hand; they went into the city and captured it, and they hurried and set the city on fire.

²⁰The men of Ai turned to look behind them, and they saw, and look, the smoke of the city was going up into the skies; and they had no strength to flee this way or that, for the people who had been fleeing toward the wilderness turned back against the pursuer.

²¹Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city, and that the smoke of the city was going up; so they turned back and struck the men of Ai.

²²And these came out of the city to meet them, and they were in the middle of Israel, these on this side, and those on that side; and they struck them down until no survivor or fugitive was left to them.

²³They seized the king of Ai alive and brought him near to Joshua.

²⁴When Israel had finished killing all who dwelled in Ai, in the field and in the wilderness where they had run after them, and all of them had fallen by the mouth of the sword until they were finished, all Israel turned back to Ai and struck it with the mouth of the sword.

²⁵All those who fell on that day, from man to woman, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai.

²⁶Joshua did not draw back his hand, which he had stretched out with the javelin, until he had devoted to destruction all who dwelled in Ai.

²⁷Only the livestock and the spoil of that city did Israel plunder for themselves, according to the word of Yahweh that he had commanded Joshua.

²⁸Joshua burned Ai and made it a mound forever, a wasteland to this day.

²⁹He hanged the king of Ai on the tree until the time of evening; and as the sun went in, Joshua gave the command, and they took his carcass down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and set up over it a great heap of stones, to this day.

³⁰Then Joshua built an altar to Yahweh, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal.

³¹Just as Moses, the slave of Yahweh, had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the scroll of the instruction of Moses: an altar of complete stones, on which no one has wielded iron. And they offered up burnt offerings on it to Yahweh and sacrificed peace offerings.

³²There he wrote on the stones a copy of the instruction of Moses, which he had written before the face of the children of Israel.

³³All Israel, with its elders, officials, and judges, stood on this side and on that side of the ark, in front of the priests, the Levites, who carried the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, sojourner and native-born alike, half of them facing Mount Gerizim and half of them facing Mount Ebal, just as Moses, the slave of Yahweh, had commanded to bless the people Israel at the first.

³⁴And after that, he read aloud all the words of the instruction, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the scroll of the instruction.

³⁵There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read aloud in front of the whole assembly of Israel, with the women, the children, and the sojourner who went along in their midst.