# Joshua 8

> Lumin Translation

Source: https://www.lumin.faith/read/joshua/8

Lumin’s own translation, drafted with AI from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, checked verse by verse against them, and approved by Lumin. Brackets mark verses not found in the earliest manuscripts.

How it was made: https://www.lumin.faith/lumin-translation.md

1. Yahweh said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid or dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and get up and go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land.
2. You are to do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may take its plunder and its livestock as spoil for yourselves. Set an ambush against the city, behind it.”
3. So Joshua and all the fighting men set out to go up to Ai. Joshua chose thirty thousand mighty warriors and sent them out by night.
4. He commanded them, “Listen. You are to lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, and all of you be ready.
5. I and all the people with me will approach the city. When they come out against us as they did the first time, we will flee before them.
6. They will come out after us until we have drawn them away from the city, for they will say, ‘They are fleeing from us as they did the first time.’ So we will flee before them.
7. Then you are to rise up from the ambush and take possession of the city. Yahweh your God will give it into your hand.
8. When you have seized the city, set the city on fire. Do as Yahweh has said. See, I have given you your orders.”
9. So Joshua sent them out, and they went to the place of ambush and waited between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai. But Joshua spent that night among the people.
10. Joshua got up early in the morning and mustered the people, and he and the elders of Israel went up ahead of the people to Ai.
11. All the fighting men who were with him went up and drew near until they came in front of the city. They camped north of Ai, with the valley between them and Ai.
12. He took about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, west of the city.
13. So they stationed the people, the whole army north of the city and its rear guard west of the city. That night Joshua went into the middle of the valley.
14. When the king of Ai saw this, the men of the city hurried and got up early and went out to meet Israel in battle, he and all his people, at the appointed place facing the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush was waiting for him behind the city.
15. Joshua and all Israel let themselves be beaten back before them and fled toward the wilderness.
16. All the people who were in Ai were called out to pursue them, and they pursued Joshua and were drawn away from the city.
17. Not a man was left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. They left the city open and pursued Israel.
18. Then Yahweh said to Joshua, “Stretch out the javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.” So Joshua stretched out the javelin in his hand toward the city.
19. As soon as he stretched out his hand, the men in ambush rose quickly from their position and ran. They entered the city, captured it, and quickly set the city on fire.
20. When the men of Ai looked back, they saw the smoke of the city going up into the sky, and they had no power to flee this way or that, for the people who had been fleeing toward the wilderness turned back against the pursuers.
21. When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city was going up, they turned around and struck down the men of Ai.
22. The men in ambush came out of the city against them, so the men of Ai were caught in the middle of Israel, some on this side and some on that. Israel struck them down until no survivor or fugitive was left.
23. But they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.
24. When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open country, in the wilderness where they had pursued them, and all of them to the last one had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword.
25. All who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai.
26. Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction.
27. Israel took only the livestock and the plunder of that city as spoil for themselves, according to the word of Yahweh that he had commanded Joshua.
28. So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day.
29. He hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. At sunset Joshua gave the command, and they took his body down from the tree and threw it down at the entrance of the city gate. They raised over it a great heap of stones, which is there to this day.
30. Then Joshua built an altar to Yahweh, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
31. just as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded the Israelites, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses: an altar of uncut stones, on which no one had used an iron tool. On it they offered burnt offerings to Yahweh and sacrificed fellowship offerings.
32. There he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the Israelites.
33. All Israel, with their elders, officers, and judges, stood on both sides of the ark, facing the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, foreigners as well as native-born. Half of them stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel.
34. After that, Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to everything written in the book of the law.
35. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read before the whole assembly of Israel, including the women, the little children, and the foreigners who lived among them.

## Nearby chapters

[Joshua 7](https://www.lumin.faith/read/joshua/7.md)
[Joshua 9](https://www.lumin.faith/read/joshua/9.md)

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