Ai Captured by a Stratagem and Destroyed

8 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not fear or be dismayed; take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai; see, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land; ² and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king; only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves; lay an ambush against the city, behind it.”

³ So Joshua arose, and all the fighting men, to go up to Ai; and Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty men of valor, and sent them forth by night. ⁴ And he commanded them, “Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind it; do not go very far from the city, but hold yourselves all in readiness; ⁵ and I, and all the people who are with me, will approach the city. And when they come out against us, as before, we shall flee before them; ⁶ and they will come out after us, till we have drawn them away from the city; for they will say, ‘They are fleeing from us, as before.’ So we will flee from them; ⁷ then you shall rise up from the ambush, and seize the city; for the Lord your God will give it into your hand. ⁸ And when you have taken the city, you shall set the city on fire, doing as the Lord has bidden; see, I have commanded you.” ⁹ So Joshua sent them forth; and they went to the place of ambush, and lay between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai; but Joshua spent that night among the people.

¹⁰ And Joshua arose early in the morning and mustered the people, and went up, with the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai. ¹¹ And all the fighting men who were with him went up, and drew near before the city, and encamped on the north side of Ai, with a ravine between them and Ai. ¹² And he took about five thousand men, and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. ¹³ So they stationed the forces, the main encampment which was north of the city and its rear guard west of the city. But Joshua spent that night in the valley. ¹⁴ And when the king of Ai saw this he and all his people, the men of the city, made haste and went out early to the descent^[a] toward the Arabah to meet Israel in battle; but he did not know that there was an ambush against him behind the city. ¹⁵ And Joshua and all Israel made a pretense of being beaten before them, and fled in the direction of the wilderness. ¹⁶ So all the people who were in the city were called together to pursue them, and as they pursued Joshua they were drawn away from the city. ¹⁷ There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel, who did not go out after Israel; they left the city open, and pursued Israel.

¹⁸ Then the Lord 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. ¹⁹ And the ambush rose quickly out of their place, and as soon as he had stretched out his hand, they ran and entered the city and took it; and they made haste to set the city on fire. ²⁰ So when the men of Ai looked back, behold, the smoke of the city went up to heaven; and they had no power to flee this way or that, for the people that fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers. ²¹ And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city went up, then they turned back and smote the men of Ai. ²² And the others came forth from the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side; and Israel smote them, until there was left none that survived or escaped. ²³ But the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

²⁴ When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. ²⁵ And all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai. ²⁶ For Joshua did not 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 as their booty, according to the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua. ²⁸ So Joshua burned Ai, and made it for ever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day. ²⁹ And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening; and at the going down of the sun Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day.

Joshua Renews the Covenant

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar on Mount Ebal to the Lord, the God of Israel, ³¹ as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, “an altar of unhewn stones, upon which no man has lifted an iron tool”; and they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord, and sacrificed peace offerings. ³² And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. ³³ And all Israel, sojourner as well as homeborn, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark before the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Geri′zim 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 And 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 Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.

The Gibeonites Save Themselves by Trickery

9 When all the kings who were beyond the Jordan in the hill country and in the lowland all along the coast of the Great Sea toward Lebanon, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per′izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb′usites, heard of this, ² they gathered together with one accord to fight Joshua and Israel.

³ But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, ⁴ they on their part acted with cunning, and went and made ready provisions, and took worn-out sacks upon their asses, and wineskins, worn-out and torn and mended, ⁵ with worn-out, patched sandals on their feet, and worn-out clothes; and all their provisions were dry and moldy. ⁶ And they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel, “We have come from a far country; so now make a covenant with us.” ⁷ But the men of Israel said to the Hivites, “Perhaps you live among us; then how can we make a covenant with you?” ⁸ They said to Joshua, “We are your servants.” And Joshua said to them, “Who are you? And where do you come from?” ⁹ They said to him, “From a very far country your servants have come, because of the name of the Lord your God; for we have heard a report of him, and all that he did in Egypt, ¹⁰ and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og king of Bashan, who dwelt in Ash′taroth. ¹¹ And our elders and all the inhabitants of our country said to us, ‘Take provisions in your hand for the journey, and go to meet them, and say to them, “We are your servants; come now, make a covenant with us.”’ ¹² Here is our bread; it was still warm when we took it from our houses as our food for the journey, on the day we set forth to come to you, but now, behold, it is dry and moldy; ¹³ these wineskins were new when we filled them, and behold, they are burst; and these garments and shoes of ours are worn out from the very long journey.” ¹⁴ So the men partook of their provisions, and did not ask direction from the Lord. ¹⁵ And Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them, to let them live; and the leaders of the congregation swore to them.

¹⁶ At the end of three days after they had made a covenant with them, they heard that they were their neighbors, and that they dwelt among them. ¹⁷ And the people of Israel set out and reached their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Gibeon, Chephi′rah, Be-er′oth, and Kir′iath-je′arim. ¹⁸ But the people of Israel did not kill them, because the leaders of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. Then all the congregation murmured against the leaders. ¹⁹ But all the leaders said to all the congregation, “We have sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. ²⁰ This we will do to them, and let them live, lest wrath be upon us, because of the oath which we swore to them.” ²¹ And the leaders said to them, “Let them live.” So they became hewers of wood and drawers of water for all the congregation, as the leaders had said of them.

²² Joshua summoned them, and he said to them, “Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell among us? ²³ Now therefore you are cursed, and some of you shall always be slaves, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.” ²⁴ They answered Joshua, “Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the Lord your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; so we feared greatly for our lives because of you, and did this thing. ²⁵ And now, behold, we are in your hand: do as it seems good and right in your sight to do to us.” ²⁶ So he did to them, and delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel; and they did not kill them. ²⁷ But Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, to continue to this day, in the place which he should choose.

A Harvest of Joy

A Song of Ascents.