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

And the ambush rose up quickly from their place and ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand, and they entered the city and captured it; and they hurried and set the city on fire.

And when the men of Ai turned to see behind them, they looked, and there it was — the smoke of the city going up to heaven; and they had no way to flee this way or that way when the people who had fled into the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers.

When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that the smoke of the city was rising, they turned and slew the men of Ai.

And the others came out from the city to meet them, so that they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side and some on that side. And they struck them, so that no one was left to survive or escape.

But they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.

And when Israel had finished slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness where they had pursued them, and all of them had fallen by the edge of the sword until they were consumed, all Israel returned to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword.

And all those who fell that day, both of men and of women, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai.

And Joshua did not withdraw his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for themselves as plunder, according to the word of Jehovah, which He commanded Joshua.

So Joshua burned Ai and made it a heap forever; it is a desolation to this day.

And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening time. And when the sun set, Joshua commanded, and they took his corpse down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the city gate, and they erected over him a great heap of stones, which is there to this day.

Then Joshua built an altar to Jehovah the God of Israel on Mount Ebal,

As Moses the servant of Jehovah had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of unhewn stones upon which no one had lifted up an iron tool. And they offered upon it burnt offerings to Jehovah, and they sacrificed peace offerings.

And there he wrote upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written in the presence of the children of Israel.

And all Israel and their elders and their officers and their judges stood on either side of the Ark in front of the Levitical priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant of Jehovah, both sojourner and native alike: half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of Jehovah had first commanded, to bless the people of Israel.

And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that was written in the book of the law.

There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read before all the congregation of Israel and the women and the little ones and the sojourners who went among them.

And when all the kings who were across the Jordan in the hill country and in the lowland and on all the shore of the Great Sea toward Lebanon, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, heard of this,

They gathered themselves together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord.