²⁴ So they answered Joshua and said, “Because your servants were clearly told that the Lord your God ^(A)commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; therefore ^(B)we were very much afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing.

¹⁵ Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.

¹⁶ “But ^(A)of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you,

A Chosen People^(A)

7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to ^(B)possess, and has cast out many ^(C)nations before you, ^(D)the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God delivers ^(E)them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. ^(F)You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.

^28 (A)And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather ^(B)fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in ^[a]hell.

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