And now the Lord said to Josue, No need for terror and shrinking back. Take thy whole strength of fighting men with thee, and set about the conquest of Hai; king and people, city and territory, I mean to put them all in thy power.

City and king must be treated as thou didst treat city and king of Jericho; but here you may take the spoil and the cattle for yourselves. Lay an ambush on the further side of the city, and it is thine.

So Josue and all the fighting men set about the conquest of Hai. At nightfall, he sent out thirty thousand, picked men all of them,

with these orders: Lie in ambush on the further side of the city, no long distance away, ready for battle.

I myself, commanding the rest of the army, will make a direct assault on it; and when they come out to engage us, we will turn our backs in flight, as we did before,

so as to draw them further and further away from the city in pursuit of us, routed (they will think) a second time.

Our flight, and their pursuit, is the signal for you to rise from your ambush and storm the city; the Lord your God will make you masters of it.

Once in possession, you will set fire to it. Be sure that you carry out these orders faithfully.

So he sent them on their way, and they reached the place where they were to lie in wait, halting to the west of Hai, between it and Bethel. Josue himself spent that night with the main body of his army,

and when day dawned he called the muster-roll; then he went to the attack, he and the elders marching in the van, with their body-guard about them.

They climbed the heights opposite the city, and halted there to the north of it, with a valley in between.

(Josue had now chosen out five thousand of his men for the ambush west of Hai, towards Bethel,

and all the rest of them marched to the north, so that only the rearguard of that great host were near the western part of the city. That night Josue moved away, and took up his station half-way across the valley.)✻

The king of Hai, upon seeing this, hastened to the attack while the day was young, marching out with all his forces towards the desert, with no suspicion that there was an ambush in the rear.

Josue and the Israelites, in feigned alarm, left their ground and took to flight along the road that leads to the desert.

And the enemy, raising a great hue and cry, went in pursuit of them a long distance away from the city.

At last there was not a man left either in Hai itself or in Bethel who had not joined in the pursuit of the Israelites; and in sallying out they had left the gates of both towns open.

With that, the Lord said to Josue, Lift up the shield on thy arm, pointing towards the city of Hai; it lies in thy power.

And when he lifted his shield towards it, the men who lay there in ambush rose up all at once and made for the city, captured it and set it on fire.

And now the defenders looked back from their pursuit of Josue, and saw the smoke rising up to heaven. Refuge was none before or behind; at an end, now, the feigned flight and the retreat towards the desert; everywhere the pursuers met with resistance.

Josue and the main army had turned back to engage the men of Hai when they saw the city captured and the smoke going up,

and now the troops that had taken the city and burnt it came out to meet them, enclosing the enemy in between and cutting him down. Thus, attacking from both sides, they did not let a single man out of all that multitude escape;

the king of Hai himself was captured alive and brought to Josue.

So died all those who had pursued Israel on the desert road, slain on the field of battle; then the Israelites went back and made an end of the city.

In that one day all the citizens of Hai perished, men and women, to the number of twelve thousand;

Josue did not lower that arm of his which held up the shield till there were no more left dwelling at Hai.

The Israelites divided up the cattle and the spoil, in pursuance of the command Josue had received;

the city itself he left to burn, and become a ruin for ever,

and the king he left hanging on a gibbet until evening came and the sun set. At Josue’s bidding, they took his body down and laid it at the entrance of the city, covering it with a great heap of stones, which remains there to this day.

Then Josue built an altar to the Lord God of Israel on mount Hebal,

in pursuance of the command given to Israel by God’s servant Moses, when he wrote down the law; an altar of unpolished stones, that no iron tool had touched. On this he offered the Lord burnt-sacrifice, and slew victims by way of welcome-offering.

He also inscribed on stone tablets that copy of the law which Moses wrote down in the presence of the people.

And now all the people, with their elders, chieftains and judges, stood up in the presence of the priests that bore the ark, with its record of the Lord’s covenant, some on this side, some on that, native Israelites and alien-born alike. In obedience to Moses’ command half of them were on the side of mount Hebal, half on the side of mount Garizim. First Josue blessed the people of Israel,✻

and then he read aloud all the terms of the blessing and the curse, and all else that the book of the law contains.

No command Moses gave was passed over, he repeated them all in the presence of Israel there assembled, with their wives and the children and the aliens who dwelt among them.