A summary of the battle

24 While they were fighting, the Israeli army pursued the men of Ai into the fields and into the desert, and killed all of them. Then they went to Ai and killed everyone who was there. 25 They killed 12,000 men and women. 26 Joshua continued to point his spear [LIT] toward Ai, until all the people in Ai had been killed. 27 The Israeli soldiers took for themselves the animals and the other things that had belonged to the people of Ai, just like Yahweh had told Joshua that they should do.

28 Joshua and his soldiers burned Ai city and caused it to become a pile of ruins. It is still like that today. 29 Joshua hanged the king of Ai on a tree and left his corpse hanging there until the evening. At sunset Joshua told his men to take the king’s corpse down from the tree and to throw it on the ground at the city gate. After they did that, they piled a lot of rocks on top of the corpse, and that pile of rocks is still there.