me out against us, we will flee before them. They
will come out after us, until we have drawn them away from the town; for
they will say, 'They are fleeing before us.' Then you shall rise up from
where you are hiding, and take the town. When you have captured it, set
it on fire."

So Joshua sent them out, and they went to the place where they were to
hide and placed themselves on the west side of Ai. Joshua spent that
night among the people, and rose early the next morning and gathered
them, and he went up, together with the rulers of Israel, before the
people to Ai. And the warriors who were with him went up and came before
the town. When the king of Ai saw it, the men of the town quickly rose
up and went out to fight against the Israelites, but the king did not
know that men were hiding behind the town to rise up and attack him.

Then Joshua and the Israelites pretended to be beaten and fled toward
the wilderness; and all the people that were in the town were called
together to pursue them. So they left the town unguarded and pursued the
Israelites. Then the men who were hiding rose quickly out of their place
and set the town on fire. When the men of Ai looked back, they saw the
smoke of the town rising to heaven; and they had no chance to flee this
way or that, for the Israelites who had been fleeing to the wilderness
turned back upon those who were following them. When the smoke of the
town rose up, the rest of the Israelites came out of the town against
them; so they were surrounded by the Israelites, some on this side, and
some on that, so that they let none of the people of Ai remain or
escape.

WOMEN WHO SAVED A NATION

Later Sisera, who had nine hundred iron chariots, cruelly oppressed the
Israelites for twenty years. Then the prophetess Deborah, the wife of
Lappidoth, delivered Israel. She used to sit under the palm-tree of
Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the highlands of Ephraim; and the
Israelites went to her to have her decide their disputes.

She sent and called Barak, the son of Abinoam, from Kadesh Naphtali and
said to him, "Does not Jehovah the God of Israel command you: 'Go, march
to Mount Tabor and take with you ten thousand of the Naphtalites and of
the Zebulunites? Then I will draw out to you at the brook Kishon Sisera
with his chariots and his troops, and I will deliver him into your
hands.'" Barak said to her, "If you will go with me, I will go, but if
you will not go with me, I will no