20. Now the men of Ai looked back and saw, behold, the smoke of the city rising up to the sky! They had no place to flee this way or that, since the people who had been fleeing to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers.
21. When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had captured the city and that the smoke of the city rose up, they turned back and struck down the men of Ai.
22. The others also came out of the city against them, so they were surrounded by Israel, some on this side and some on that side. They struck them down until not one survivor or fugitive was left.
23. But they captured the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.
24. After Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the field in the wilderness where they pursued them, and all of them were fallen by the edge of the sword until they were consumed, 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 12,000—all the people of Ai.
26. For Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.
27. Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took as their plunder, according to the word of Adonai which He had commanded Joshua.
28. So Joshua burnt Ai and made it a permanent heap of desolation to this day.
29. Then he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. At sunset Joshua commanded that they take his carcass down from the tree, cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and piled over it a great heap of stones, which remains to this day.
30. Then Joshua built an altar to Adonai, God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
31. as Moses the servant of Adonai had commanded Bnei-Yisrael, as written in the scroll of the Torah of Moses, an altar of uncut stones on which no man had wielded any iron tool. They offered on it burnt offerings to Adonai and sacrificed fellowship offerings.
32. There on the stones he wrote a copy of the Torah of Moses, which he had written, in the presence of Bnei-Yisrael.
33. Then all Israel, with their elders and officials, and their judges, were standing on both sides of the ark facing the Levitical kohanim carrying the ark of the covenant of Adonai—the outsider as well as the native-born. Half of them stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal—just as Moses the servant of Adonai had commanded before—in order to bless the people of Israel.
34. Then afterward he read all the words of the Torah—the blessing and the curse—according to all that is written in the book of the Torah.