Joshua 8:1-35
8 And Jehovah said to Joshuaʽ “Do not be afraid nor dismayed; take with you all the fighting people, and up with you to the Ghai; see, I have given into your hands the king of the Ghai and his people and his city and his country,
2 and you shall do to the Ghai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king; only its booty and cattle you shall plunder for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the Ghai in its rear.”
3 And Joshuaʽ and all the fighting people set out for the Ghai; and Joshuaʽ chose thirty thousand stalwart men and sent them by night,
4 and gave them the order “See, you will be in ambush for the city in the rear of the city; do not get very far from the city; and all of you be ready,
5 and I and all the people I have with me will come up to the city, and when they come out to meet us as they did the first time we will run before them
6 and they will come out after us till we break them away from the city, because they will think ‘Running before us the same as the first time’;
7 * and you shall rise from the ambush and take possession of the city, and Jehovah will give it into your hands,
8 and when you capture the city you shall set the city on fire. This is what you are to do; you have your orders.”
9 And Joshuaʽ sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and sat down between Bethel and the Ghai, westward of the Ghai.And Joshuaʽ spent that night among the people.
10 And the first thing in the morning Joshuaʽ mustered the people and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to the Ghai;
11 ** and all the people he had with him went up and approached and came before the city and camped northward of the Ghai, with the valley between him and the Ghai.
12 And he took about five thousand men and stationed them as an ambush between Bethel and the Ghai, west of the Ghai.
13 ** And they stationed the people, all the camp northward of the city, and its heel west of the city; and Joshuaʽ went in the middle of the vale that night.
14 *** And when the king of the Ghai saw it the men of the city went out in haste the first thing in the morning to meet the Israelites in battle, he and all his people, to the assigned place facing the Rift Valley, he not knowing that he had an ambush waiting for him behind the city.
15 * And Joshuaʽ and all Israel were beaten by them, and ran toward the wilderness;
16 and all the people in the city turned out to pursue them, and pursued Joshuaʽ and broke away from the city,
17 * and there did not remain men in the Ghai who had not gone out after the Israelites; and they left the city open and pursued the Israelites.
18 And Jehovah said to Joshuaʽ “Stretch out the javelin in your hand toward the Ghai, because I will give it into your hands”; and Joshuaʽ stretched out the javelin in his hand toward the city.
19 And the ambush rose instantly from its place and ran, when he stretched out his hand, and entered the city and took it, and instantly set the city on fire.
20 * And the men of the city turned their heads back and saw the smoke of the city was going up to the sky, and became helpless, running away this way and that; and the people that had been running away to the wilderness turned round upon the pursuers.
21 And Joshuaʽ and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that the smoke of the city had gone up, and turned back and cut down the men of the Ghai,
22 and these came out of the city to meet them, and Israel had them in the middle, these on one side and those on the other; and they cut them down till they did not leave survivor or refugee of them.
23 And the king of the Ghai they captured alive and brought him to Joshuaʽ.
24 * And when the Israelites had finished killing all the inhabitants of the Ghai out on the range, in the wilderness they pursued them in, and they had all been put to the sword till they were all gone, all Israel came back to the Ghai and put it to the sword;
25 and of all who fell that day, men and women, there were twelve thousand, all the men of the Ghai.
26 And Joshuaʽ did not draw back his hand that he had stretched out with the javelin till he had destroyed all the inhabitants of the Ghai without quarter.
27 Only the cattle, and the booty of that city, the Israelites plundered for themselves, in accordance with the orders Jehovah had given Joshuaʽ.
28 And Joshuaʽ burned the city and made a permanent ruin of it, a desolation to this day.
29 * And the king of the Ghai he hanged on a tree till the hour of evening; and when the sun was going down Joshuaʽ gave orders and they took his carcass down off the tree and threw it down at the gate of the city and raised a great cairn of stones over it, which is there to this day.
30 Then Joshuaʽ built an altar to Israel’s God Jehovah on the side of Mount ʽEbal
31 as Jehovah’s servant Moses had commanded the sons of Israel, in accordance with what is written in the book of Moses’s code, an altar of natural stones to which he had not put iron, and offered on it burnt-offerings to Jehovah and sacrificed welfare-sacrifices.
32 * And there he inscribed on the stones a copy of the code of Moses which he had written before the sons of Israel,
33 while all Israel, and their elders and marshals and judges, stood on this side of the ark and on that facing the Levite priests who carried the ark of Jehovah’s covenant, the native and the naturalized alike, half toward Mount Gerizzim and half toward Mount ʽEbal as Jehovah’s servant Moses had commanded for blessing the people Israel, first;
34 and after that he read all the articles of the code, the blessing and the curse, just as was written in the book of the code.
35 There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshuaʽ did not read in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, the men and the women and the children and the naturalized aliens who were going among them.
Footnotes
^ 8:7 Var. and approach the city
^ 8:11 Codd. have a mixture of all the people and all the fighting people
^ 8:11-13 Var. came before the city on the east, while the ambush was west of the city. And when the king
^ 8:13-14 Susp.
^ 8:13 Var. spent that night in the middle of the vale
^ 8:14 Var. saw it he went out in haste to meet
^ 8:14 Conj. so far as to be facing
^ 8:14 Or place east of the ʽArabah, he not
^ 8:15 Codd. were touched by them
^ 8:17 Var. the Ghai and Bethel
^ 8:20 Or were helpless to run away this way or that
^ 8:24 Var. in the field and the mountain, on the downward road where they pursued them
^ 8:29 Or on a post . . . off the post
^ 8:32 Or which he wrote Var. code of Moses before the
