15. Joshua 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. They pursued Joshua, 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. They left the city open, and pursued Israel.
18. Yahweh said to Joshua, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.” Joshua 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. They hurried and 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. The people who fled to the wilderness turned back on the pursuers.
21. When Joshua 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 out of the city against them, so they were in the middle of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side. They struck them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.
23. They captured the king of Ai alive, and brought him to Joshua.
24. When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness in which they pursued them, and they had all 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.
25. All that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.
26. For Joshua didn’t draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.
27. Israel took for themselves only the livestock and the goods of that city, according to Yahweh’s word which he commanded Joshua.
28. So Joshua burned Ai, and made it a heap forever, even a desolation, to this day.
29. He hanged the king of Ai on a tree until the evening, and at sundown Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, and threw 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 Joshua built an altar to Yahweh, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
31. as Moses the servant of Yahweh commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of uncut stones, on which no one had lifted up any iron. They offered burnt offerings on it to Yahweh and sacrificed peace offerings.
32. He wrote there on the stones a copy of Moses’ law, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel.
33. All Israel, their elders and officers, and their judges, stood on both sides of the ark before the priests the Levites, who carried the ark of Yahweh’s covenant, the foreigner as well 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 Yahweh had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel.