Joshua 8:2-22

Living Bible

² You shall do to them as you did to Jericho and her king; but this time you may keep the loot and the cattle for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.”

^3-4 Before the main army left for Ai, Joshua sent thirty thousand of his bravest troops to hide in ambush close behind the city, alert for action.

⁵ “This is the plan,” he explained to them. “When our main army attacks, the men of Ai will come out to fight as they did before, and we will run away. ⁶ We will let them chase us until they have all left the city; for they will say, ‘The Israelis are running away again just as they did before!’ ⁷ Then you will jump up from your ambush and enter the city, for the Lord will give it to you. ⁸ Set the city on fire, as the Lord has commanded. You now have your instructions.”

⁹ So they left that night and lay in ambush between Bethel and the west side of Ai; but Joshua and the rest of the army remained in the camp at Jericho. ¹⁰ Early the next morning Joshua roused his men and started toward Ai, accompanied by the elders of Israel, ^11-13 and stopped at the edge of a valley north of the city. That night Joshua sent another five thousand men^[a] to join the troops in ambush on the west side of the city. He himself spent the night in the valley.

¹⁴ The king of Ai, seeing the Israelis across the valley, went out early the next morning and attacked at the plain of the Arabah. But of course he didn’t realize that there was an ambush behind the city. ¹⁵ Joshua and the Israeli army fled across the wilderness as though badly beaten, ¹⁶ and all the soldiers in the city were called out to chase after them; so the city was left defenseless; ¹⁷ there was not a soldier left in Ai or Bethel, and the city gates were left wide open.

¹⁸ Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Point your spear toward Ai, for I will give you the city.” Joshua did. ¹⁹ And when the men in ambush saw his signal, they jumped up and poured into the city and set it on fire. ^20-21 When the men of Ai looked behind them, smoke from the city was filling the sky, and they had nowhere to go. When Joshua and the troops who were with him saw the smoke, they knew that their men who had been in ambush were inside the city, so they turned upon their pursuers and began killing them. ²² Then the Israelis who were inside the city came out and began destroying the enemy from the rear. So the men of Ai were caught in a trap and all of them died; not one man survived or escaped,