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Then the
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So Joshua and all the fighting men set out to go up against Ai. Joshua chose thirty thousand warriors and sent them out by night
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with the command, "You shall lie in ambush against the city, behind it; do not go very far from the city, but all of you stay alert.
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I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. When they come out against us, as before, we shall flee from them.
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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 before.' While we flee from them,
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you shall rise up from the ambush and seize the city; for the
10 In the morning Joshua rose early and mustered the people, and went up, with the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai. 11 All the fighting men who were with him went up, and drew near before the city, and camped on the north side of Ai, with a ravine between them and Ai. 12 Taking about five thousand men, he set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. 13 So they stationed the forces, the main encampment that was north of the city and its rear guard west of the city. But Joshua spent that night in the valley. 14 When the king of Ai saw this, he and all his people, the inhabitants of the city, hurried out early in the morning to the meeting place facing the Arabah to meet Israel in battle; but he did not know that there was an ambush against him behind the city. 15 And Joshua and all Israel made a pretense of being beaten before them, and fled in the direction of the wilderness. 16 So all the people who were in the city were called together to pursue them, and as they pursued Joshua they were drawn away from the city. 17 There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel; they left the city open, and pursued Israel.
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Then the
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When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and when all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and attacked it with the edge of the sword.
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The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand--all the people of Ai.
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For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the sword, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.
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Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word of the
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Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the