Joshua 8:22-35 ▼

22 And the others went out of the city to meet them; so the men of Ai were caught in the midst of Israel, some on this side and some on that side; and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

23 And they took the king of Ai alive, and brought him to Joshua.

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

25 And so it was, that twelve thousand men and women, all the inhabitants of Ai, fell that day.

26 For Joshua did not draw his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

27 Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey for themselves, according to the word of the LORD which he commanded Joshua.

28 And Joshua burned Ai, and made it a heap of ruins for ever to this day.

29 And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the evening; and when the sun was set, Joshua commanded, and they took his corpse down from the tree and cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised over it a heap of large stones that remains to this day.

30 Then Joshua built an altar to the LORD God of Israel in mount Gebal,

31 As Moses the servant of the LORD 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 man has lifted up any iron instrument; and they offered thereon burnt offerings to the LORD, and sacrificed peace offerings.

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

33 And all Israel and their elders and their scribes and their judges stood on this side of the ark, and on that side the priests and the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, the natives as well as the sojourners; half of them toward mount Gerizim, and half of them toward mount Gebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded, that they should bless the people of Israel as before.

34 And afterward Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursings, 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 congregation of Israel and before the women and the little ones and sojourners who were among them.