Joshua
8
- Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Do not
be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up
and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people,
his city and his land.
- You shall do to Ai and its king as you did
to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock
for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city."
- So Joshua and the whole army moved out to
attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them
out at night
- with these orders: "Listen carefully.
You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don't go very far from it. All of
you be on the alert.
- I and all those with me will advance on
the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will
flee from them.
- They will pursue us until we have lured
them away from the city, for they will say, 'They are running away from us
as they did before.' So when we flee from them,
- you are to rise up from ambush and take
the city. The LORD your God will give it into your hand.
- When you have taken the city, set it on
fire. Do what the LORD has commanded. See to it; you have my orders."
- Then Joshua sent them off, and they went
to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west
of Ai -- but Joshua spent that night with the people.
- Early the next morning Joshua mustered his
men, and he and the leaders of Israel marched before them to Ai.
- The entire force that was with him marched
up and approached the city and arrived in front of it. They set up camp north
of Ai, with the valley between them and the city.
- Joshua had taken about five thousand men
and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city.
- They had the soldiers take up their positions
-- all those in the camp to the north of the city and the ambush to the west
of it. That night Joshua went into the valley.
- When the king of Ai saw this, he and all
the men of the city hurried out early in the morning to meet Israel in battle
at a certain place overlooking the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush
had been set against him behind the city.
- Joshua and all Israel let themselves be
driven back before them, and they fled toward the desert.
- All the men of Ai were called to pursue
them, and they pursued Joshua and were lured away from the city.
- Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did
not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.
- Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Hold
out toward Ai the javelin that is in your hand, for into your hand I will
deliver the city." So Joshua held out his javelin toward Ai.
- As soon as he did this, the men in the ambush
rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city
and captured it and quickly set it on fire.
- The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke
of the city rising against the sky, but they had no chance to escape in any
direction, for the Israelites who had been fleeing toward the desert had turned
back against their pursuers.
- For when Joshua and all Israel saw that
the ambush had taken the city and that smoke was going up from the city, they
turned around and attacked the men of Ai.
- The men of the ambush also came out of the
city against them, so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites
on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives.
- But they took the king of Ai alive and brought
him to Joshua.
- When Israel had finished killing all the
men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and
when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned
to Ai and killed those who were in it.
- Twelve thousand men and women fell that
day -- all the people of Ai.
- For Joshua did not draw back the hand that
held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai.
- But Israel did carry off for themselves
the livestock and plunder of this city, as the LORD had instructed Joshua.
- So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent
heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day.
- He hung the king of Ai on a tree and left
him there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take his body from
the tree and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised
a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.
- Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar
to the LORD, the God of Israel,
- as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded
the Israelites. He built it according to what is written in the Book of the
Law of Moses -- an altar of uncut stones, on which no iron tool had been used.
On it they offered to the LORD burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings.
- There, in the presence of the Israelites,
Joshua copied on stones the law of Moses, which he had written.
- All Israel, aliens and citizens alike, with
their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark
of the covenant of the LORD, facing those who carried it -- the priests, who
were Levites. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half
of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had formerly
commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel.
- Afterward, Joshua read all the words of
the law--the blessings and the curses -- just as it is written in the Book
of the Law.
- There was not a word of all that Moses had
commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including
the women and children, and the aliens who lived among them.
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