8 “‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
10 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
21 “‘And you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.’
16 “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.
17 You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you.
18 And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers
19 by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has promised.
“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers.
14 then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,
15 who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water,
4 “Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’
whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you.
6 “Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.
7 Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.
13 “Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stubborn people.
14 Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’
12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you,
but to fear the Lord your God,
to walk in all his ways,
to love him,
to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today
for your good?
18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
19 Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
20 You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.
21 He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.
22 Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.
Someone else may say to you, “Let’s worship other gods.” That person may be your best friend, your brother or sister, your son or daughter, or your own dear wife or husband.
But you must not listen to people who say such things. Instead, you must stone them to death.
You must be the first to throw the stones, then others from the community will finish the job.
Don’t show any pity.
The gods worshiped by other nations have never done anything for you or your ancestors.
People who ask you to worship other gods are trying to get you to stop worshiping the Lord, who rescued you from slavery in Egypt.
So put to death anyone who asks you to worship another god.
3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him.
5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil[a] from your midst.
16 You were asking for a prophet the day you were gathered at Mount Sinai[e] and said to the Lord, “Please don’t let us hear your voice or see this terrible fire again?if we do, we will die!”
17 Then the Lord told me:
Moses, they have said the right thing.
18 So when I want to speak to them, I will choose one of them to be a prophet like you. I will give my message to that prophet, who will tell the people exactly what I have said.
19 Since the message comes from me, anyone who doesn’t obey the message will have to answer to me.
20 But if I haven’t spoken, and a prophet claims to have a message from me, you must kill that prophet, and you must also kill any prophet who claims to have a message from another god.
21 You may be asking yourselves, “How can we tell if a prophet’s message really comes from the Lord?”
22 You will know, because if the Lord says something will happen, it will happen. And if it doesn’t, you will know that the prophet was falsely claiming to speak for the Lord. Don’t be afraid of any prophet whose message doesn’t come from the Lord.
“At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release.
2 And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's release has been proclaimed.
3 Of a foreigner you may exact it, but whatever of yours is with your brother your hand shall release.
4 But there will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess?
5 if only you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today.
6 For the Lord your God will bless you, as he promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.
“If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold[b] to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you.
13 And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed.
14 You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him.
15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.
Before you attack a town that is far from your land, offer peace to the people who live there.
If they surrender and open their town gates, they will become your slaves.
But if they reject your offer of peace and try to fight, surround their town and attack.
Then, after the Lord helps you capture it, kill all the men. Take the women and children as slaves and keep the livestock and everything else of value.
Whenever you capture towns in the land the Lord your God is giving you, be sure to kill all the people and animals.
17 He has commanded you to completely wipe out the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
18 If you allow them to live, they will persuade you to worship their disgusting gods, and you will be unfaithful to the Lord.
19 When you are attacking a town, don’t chop down its fruit trees, not even if you have had the town surrounded for a long time.
Fruit trees aren’t your enemies, and they produce food that you can eat, so don’t cut them down.
20 You may need wood to make ladders and towers to help you get over the walls and capture the town.
But use only trees that you know are not fruit trees.
“You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or a sheep in which is a blemish, any defect whatever, for that is an abomination to the Lord your God.
2 “If there is found among you, within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant,
3 and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden,
4 and it is told you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel,
5 then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.
9 “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.
10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering,[e] anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer
11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead,
12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.
10 “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it.
11 And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you.
18 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them,
19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives,
20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’
21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
22 “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,
23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
15 “You shall not give up to his master a slave[a] who has escaped from his master to you.
16 He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.
“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house,
2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife,
3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife,
4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it,
2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name to dwell there.
3 And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.’
4 Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God.
5 “And you shall make response before the Lord your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.
6 And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor.
7 Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
8 And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror,[a] with signs and wonders.
9 And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
10 And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which you, O Lord, have given me.’ And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God.
12 “When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled,
13 then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them.
16 “This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul.
17 You have declared today that the Lord is your God, and that you will walk in his ways, and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules, and will obey his voice.
18 And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments,
19 and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.”
15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.
16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God[a] that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules,[b]
then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them,
18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,
20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
16 And the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them.
16 And the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them.
17 Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured.
25 Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord,
26 “Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.
27 For I know how rebellious and stubborn you are.
28 Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears and call heaven and earth to witness against them.
29 For I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly and turn aside from the way that I have commanded you. And in the days to come evil will befall you, because you will do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger through the work of your hands.”
7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success[a] wherever you go.
8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
And Joshua the son of Nun sent[a] two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there.
12 Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign
13 that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.”
14 And the men said to her, “Our life for yours even to death! If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the Lord gives us the land we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.”
5 And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel,
6 that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’
7 then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.”
17 And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction.[b] Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent.
8 O Lord, what can I say, when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies!
9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your great name?”
11 Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings.
12 Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction.[a] I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you.
22 Joshua summoned them, and he said to them,
“Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell among us?
23 Now therefore you are cursed,
and some of you shall never be anything but servants, cutters of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.”
24 They answered Joshua,
“Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the Lord your God had commanded his servant Moses
to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you
so we feared greatly for our lives because of you and did this thing.
25 And now, behold, we are in your hand.
Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.”
10 As soon as Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction,[a] doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king,
and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them,
2 he[b] feared greatly,
because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were warriors.
6 And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying,
“Do not relax your hand from your servants.
Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.”
9 The inheritance of the people of Simeon formed part of the territory of the people of Judah.
Because the portion of the people of Judah was too large for them,
the people of Simeon obtained an inheritance in the midst of their inheritance.
51 These are the inheritances that Eleazar the priest
and Joshua the son of Nun
and the heads of the fathers' houses of the tribes of the people of Israel
distributed by lot at Shiloh before the Lord,
at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
So they finished dividing the land.
Then the Lord said to Joshua,
2 “Say to the people of Israel,
‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses,
3 that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there.
They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood.
4 He shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city
and explain his case to the elders of that city.
Then they shall take him into the city and give him a place,
and he shall remain with them.
5 And if the avenger of blood pursues him,
they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand,
because he struck his neighbor unknowingly, and did not hate him in the past.
6 And he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgment,
until the death of him who is high priest at the time.
Then the manslayer may return to his own town and his own home, to the town from which he fled.’”
11 And the people of Israel heard it said,
“Behold, the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh have built the altar
at the frontier of the land of Canaan, in the region about the Jordan,
on the side that belongs to the people of Israel.”
12 And when the people of Israel heard of it,
the whole assembly of the people of Israel gathered at Shiloh
to make war against them.
21 Then the people of Reuben, the people of Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh said in answer to the heads of the families of Israel,
22 “The Mighty One, God, the Lord! The Mighty One, God, the Lord!
He knows; and let Israel itself know!
If it was in rebellion or in breach of faith against the Lord,
do not spare us today 23 for building an altar to turn away from following the Lord.
Or if we did so to offer burnt offerings or grain offerings or peace offerings on it,
may the Lord himself take vengeance.
24 No, but we did it from fear that in time to come
your children might say to our children,
‘What have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel?
25 For the Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you,
you people of Reuben and people of Gad.
You have no portion in the Lord.’
So your children might make our children cease to worship the Lord.
26 Therefore we said,
‘Let us now build an altar, not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice,
27 but to be a witness between us and you, and between our generations after us,
that we do perform the service of the Lord in his presence with our burnt offerings and sacrifices and peace offerings,
so your children will not say to our children in time to come,
“You have no portion in the Lord.”’
28 And we thought,
‘If this should be said to us or to our descendants in time to come,
we should say,
“Behold, the copy of the altar of the Lord, which our fathers made,
not for burnt offerings, nor for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you.”’
29 Far be it from us that we should rebel against the Lord and turn away this day from following the Lord
by building an altar for burnt offering, grain offering, or sacrifice,
other than the altar of the Lord our God that stands before his tabernacle!”
5 The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight.
And you shall possess their land,
just as the Lord your God promised you.
6 Therefore, be very strong
to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses,
turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left,
7 that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you
or make mention of the names of their gods
or swear by them
or serve them
or bow down to them,
8 but you shall cling to the Lord your God
just as you have done to this day.
12 For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them,
so that you associate with them and they with you,
13 know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you,
but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes,
until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.
15 But just as all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you have been fulfilled for you,
so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things,
until he has destroyed you from off this good land that the Lord your God has given you,
16 if you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you,
and go and serve other gods
and bow down to them.
Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you,
and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you.”
16 Then the people answered,
“Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods,
17 for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. 18 And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land.
Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”
19 But Joshua said to the people,
“You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.
He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.
20 If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.”
1 After the death of Joshua,
the people of Israel inquired of the Lord,
“Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?”
2 The Lord said,
“Judah shall go up;
behold, I have given the land into his hand.”
3 And Judah said to Simeon his brother,
“Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites.
And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you.”
So Simeon went with him.
7 And Adoni-bezek said,
“Seventy kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off
used to pick up scraps
under my table.
As I have done, so God has repaid me.”
And they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.
22 The house of Joseph also went up against Bethel,
and the Lord was with them.
23 And the house of Joseph scouted out Bethel. (Now the name of the city was formerly Luz.)
24 And the spies saw a man coming out of the city,
and they said to him,
“Please show us the way into the city,
and we will deal kindly with you.”
25 And he showed them the way into the city.
And they struck the city with the edge of the sword,
but they let the man and all his family go.
26 And the man went to the land of the Hittites and built a city and called its name Luz. That is its name to this day.
Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim.
And he said,
“I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers.
I said,
‘I will never break my covenant with you,
2 and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land;
you shall break down their altars.’
But you have not obeyed my voice.
What is this you have done?
3 So now I say,
I will not drive them out before you,
but they shall become thorns in your sides,
and their gods shall be a snare to you.”
6 When Joshua dismissed the people,
the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land.
7 And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua,
and all the days of the elders
who outlived Joshua,
who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.
8 And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years.
9 And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres,
in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.
10 And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers.
And there arose another generation after them
who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.
4 They were for the testing of Israel,
to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord,
which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
9 But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord,
the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel,
who saved them, Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother.
10 The Spirit of the Lord was upon him,
and he judged Israel.
He went out to war,
and the Lord gave Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand.
And his hand prevailed over Cushan-rishathaim.
11 So the land had rest forty years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz died.
5 For they would come up with their livestock and their tents;
they would come like locusts in number
- both they and their camels could not be counted -
so that they laid waste the land as they came in.
6 And Israel was brought very low because of Midian.
And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord.
“The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand,
lest Israel boast over me,
saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’
3 Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people,
saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.’”
Then 22,000 of the people returned, and 10,000 remained.
