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 before you, so we were in great fear for our lives because of you and did this thing.^(A)

¹⁵ Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of these nations here. ¹⁶ But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.^{(A) 17} Indeed, you shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded,

A Chosen People

7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy and he clears away many nations before you—the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you^(A)— ² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.^(B)

²⁸ Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one 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 whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides; they shall trouble you in the land where you are settling.^{(A) 56} And I will do to you as I thought to do to them.”

³¹ I will set your borders from the Red Sea^[a] to the sea of the Philistines and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out before you.^{(A) 32} You shall make no covenant with them and their gods.^{(B) 33} They shall not live in your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”^(C)

⁴ Then the accuser^[a] answered the Lord, “Skin for skin! All that the man has he will give for his life.

⁹ They said to him, “Your servants have come from a very far country because of the name of the Lord your God, for we have heard a report of him, of all that he did in Egypt^(A)

²³ But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great panic until they are destroyed. ²⁴ He will hand their kings over to you, and you shall blot out their name from under heaven; no one will be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them.^(A)

⁵¹ “Speak to the Israelites, and say to them: When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, ⁵² you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their figured stones, destroy all their cast images, and demolish all their high places.^(A)