Joshua 8:20-34
English Standard Version
Chapter 8
20So 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 who fled to the wilderness turned back against the pursuers. 21And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city, and that the smoke of the city went up, then they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. 22And the others came out from the city against them, so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side. And Israel struck them down, until there was left none that survived or escaped. 23But the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him near to Joshua.
24When Israel had finished killing 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 struck it down with the edge of the sword.
25And all who fell that day, both men and women, were 12,000, all the people of Ai.
26But Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction.
27Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as their plunder, according to the word of the Lord that he commanded Joshua.
28So Joshua burned Ai and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day.
29And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. And at sunset 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 over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day.
30At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
31just 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 uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool." And they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings.
32And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written.
33And all Israel, sojourner as well as native born, 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 Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel.
34And 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.
