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CHAPTER 8
1 And the Lord said to Joshua, Neither dread thou, nor be thou afeared; take with thee all the multitude of fighting men, and rise thou, and go up into the city of Ai; lo, I have betaken into thine hand the king thereof, and the people, and the city, and the land.
2 And thou shalt do to the city of Ai, and to the king thereof, as thou didest to Jericho, and the king thereof; soothly ye shall take to you the prey, and all [the] living beasts, set [or put] thou ambushes, either ambushments, to the city behind it.
3 And Joshua rose, and all the host of fighting men with him, for to go up into Ai; and by night he sent thirty chosen thousand of strong men;
4 and he commanded to them, and said, Set [or Put] ye ambushments behind the city, and go ye not further; and all ye shall be ready;
5 forsooth I, and the tother multitude which is with me, shall come on the contrary side against the city; and when they shall go out against us, as we did before, we shall flee, and turn the backs,
6 till they pursue us, and be drawn away further from the city; for they shall guess, that we shall flee them as we did before. Then while we shall flee, and while they pursue,
7 ye shall rise from the ambushments, and shall waste the city; and your Lord God shall betake it into your hands.
8 And when ye have taken it, burn ye it; do ye all things, as I have commanded to you.
9 And Joshua let them go, and they went to the place of [the] ambushments, and sat betwixt Bethel and Ai, at the west coast of the city of Ai. Forsooth Joshua dwelled in that night in the midst of the people.
10 And he rose early, and numbered his fellows, and he went up with the elder men in the front of the host, and was compassed with the help of fighters.
11 And when they had come, and had gone up against the city, they stood at the north coast of the city, betwixt the which city and them a valley was in the midst.
12 And Joshua had chosen five thousand men, and he had set them in [the] ambushments betwixt Bethel and Ai, in the west part of the same city.
13 And all the tother host dressed the battle array to the north, so [that] the last men of the multitude reached to the west coast of the city. Then Joshua went in that night, and stood in the midst of [the] valley;
14 and when the king of Ai had seen this, he hasted early, and went out with all the host of the city, and he dressed battle array against the desert; and he wist not that ambushments were hid behind his back.
15 Forsooth Joshua and all the multitude of Israel gave place, feigning dread, and fleeing by the way of wilderness;
16 and the men cried together, and with gladness stirred themselves together, and they pursued the men of Israel. And when they had gone away from the city,
17 and soothly not one had [or was] left in the city of Ai and Bethel, that pursued not Israel, and they left the cities open, as they had broken out,
18 the Lord said to Joshua, Raise up the shield [or the sword] that is in thine hand, against the city of Ai; for I shall give it to thee. And when Joshua had raised up his banner or the shield [or the sword] against the city of Ai,
19 the ambushments, that were hid, rose up anon; and they went to the city, and took [it], and burnt it.
20 Forsooth the men of the city, that pursued Joshua, beheld, and saw the smoke of the city ascend [or go up] till to heaven; and they might no more flee hither and thither; mostly since they that had feigned flight, and went to wilderness, withstood strongliest against the pursuers.
21 And Joshua saw, and all Israel, that the city was taken, and that the smoke of the city went up; and he turned again, and killed the men of Ai.
22 And also those men that had taken and burnt the city, went out of the city against their enemies, and they began to smite the middle men of their enemies; and when their adversaries were slain behind and before, so that no man of so great [a] multitude was saved,
23 they took also the king of Ai living, and they brought him to Joshua.
24 Therefore, when all the men were slain, that pursued Israel fleeing to desert, and had fallen by sword in the same place, the sons of Israel turned again, and destroyed the city of Ai.
25 Forsooth they that felled down in the same day, from man till to woman, were twelve thousand of men, all men of the city of Ai.
26 For Joshua withdrew not his hand, which he had dressed on high holding up his banner or the shield [or the sword], till that all the dwellers of Ai were slain.
27 And the sons of Israel parted to themselves the work beasts, and the prey of the city, as the Lord com-manded to Joshua;
28 and Joshua burnt that city, and made it an everlasting burial.
29 And he hanged the king thereof in a gibbet, till to the eventide, and the going down of the sun. And Joshua commanded, and they putted down his dead body from the cross; and they casted forth him in that entering of the city, and gathered on him a great heap of stones, which heap dwelleth till into present day.
30 Then Joshua builded an altar to the Lord God of Israel in the hill of Ebal,
31 as Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded to the sons of Israel, and it is written in the book of Moses’ law, an altar of stones unpolished, that iron hath not touched. And he offered thereon burnt sacrifices to the Lord, and he offered also peaceable sacrifices;
32 and he wrote on the stones the Deuteronomy of Moses’ law, not all the book, but the ten behests only, which he had declared before the sons of Israel.
33 And all the people, and the greater men in birth, and dukes, and judges, stood on either side of the ark, in the sight of priests and deacons [or Levites], that bare the ark of the bond of peace of the Lord; as a comeling, so and a man born in the land; the half part of them stood beside the hill Gerizim, and the half part of them stood beside the hill Ebal, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded. And Joshua first blessed the people of Israel.
34 And after these things he read all the words of blessing and of cursing, and all things that were written in the book of law.
35 Joshua left nothing untouched of these things that Moses commanded; but he declared all things before all the multitude of Israel, to women, and little children, and to comelings that dwelled among them.

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© 2001,2010,2011,2012,2013,2015 Terry Noble