1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
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.
