²⁴ They answered Joshua, “Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the Lord your God had ^(A)commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you—so ^(B)we feared greatly for our lives because of you and did this thing.

¹⁵ Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. ¹⁶ But ^(A)in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, ¹⁷ but ^(B)you shall devote them to complete destruction,^[a] the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded,

A Chosen People

7 “When the ^(A)Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, ^(B)the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations ^(C)more numerous and mightier than you, ^2 (D)and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must ^(E)devote them to complete destruction.^{[a] (F)}You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

²⁸ And ^(A)do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him ^(B)who can destroy both soul and body in hell.^[a]

⁵⁵ But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as ^(A)barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell. ⁵⁶ And I will do to you ^(B)as I thought to do to them.”