so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.

All the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done all this to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’

Restoration Promised

“So it will be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have placed before you, and you call them to mind in all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you,

It is the Lord your God who is going to cross ahead of you; He Himself will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who is going to cross ahead of you, just as the Lord has spoken.

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of mankind, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel.

Rejoice, you nations, with His people; For He will avenge the blood of His servants, And will return vengeance on His adversaries, And will atone for His land and His people.”

And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you, for the Lord your God is He who has been fighting for you.

See, I have apportioned to you these nations which remain as an inheritance for your tribes, with all the nations which I have eliminated, from the Jordan even to the Great Sea toward the west.

so that you will not associate with these nations, these which remain with you, or mention the name of their gods, or make anyone swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them.

For the Lord has driven out great and mighty nations from before you; and as for you, no one has stood against you to this day.

For if you ever go back and cling to the rest of these nations, these which remain with you, and intermarry with them, so that you associate with them and they with you,

know with certainty that the Lord your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you; but they will be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land which the Lord your God has given you.

I in turn will no longer drive out from them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died,

So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and He did not hand them over to Joshua.

Idolatry Leads to Servitude

Now these are the nations that the Lord left, to test Israel by them (that is, all the Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan;

These nations are: the five governors of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath.

and they said to him, “Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint us a king to judge us like all the nations.”

so that we also may be like all the nations, and our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

And what one nation on the earth is like Your people Israel, whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people, and to make a name for Himself, and to do a great thing for You and awesome things for Your land, because of Your people whom You have redeemed for Yourself from Egypt, from other nations and their gods?

King David also consecrated these gifts to the Lord, with the silver and gold that he had consecrated from all the nations which he had subdued:

You have also saved me from the contentions of my people; You have kept me as head of the nations; A people I have not known serve me.

Therefore I will give thanks to You, Lord, among the nations, And I will sing praises to Your name.

For he was wiser than all other people, more than Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was known in all the surrounding nations.

People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.

from the nations of which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you; they will certainly turn your heart away to follow their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love.