The Continuing Conquest of Canaan

Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, “Who shall be first to go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against them?”

And the Lord said, “Judah shall go up. Indeed I have delivered the land into his hand.”

Then Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand; and they killed ten thousand men at Bezek.

So the Lord was with Judah. And they drove out the mountaineers, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the lowland, because they had chariots of iron.

And the house of Joseph also went up against Bethel, and the Lord was with them.

Israel’s Disobedience

Then the Angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said: “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you.

So it was, when the Angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voices and wept.

Then they called the name of that place Bochim; and they sacrificed there to the Lord.

Death of Joshua

So 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 works of the Lord which He had done for Israel.

Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died when he was one hundred and ten years old.

When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel.

Israel’s Unfaithfulness

Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals;

and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger.

They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies.

Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed.

Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those who plundered them.

Yet they would not listen to their judges, but they played the harlot with other gods, and bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked, in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do so.

And when the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed them and harassed them.

Then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not heeded My voice,

so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the Lord, to walk in them as their fathers kept them, or not.”

Therefore the Lord left those nations, without driving them out immediately; nor did He deliver them into the hand of Joshua.

The Nations Remaining in the Land

Now these are the nations which the Lord left, that He might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan

namely, five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who dwelt in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal Hermon to the entrance of Hamath.

And they were left, that He might test Israel by them, to know whether they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.