CHAPTER 23

¹And it happened many years after the LORD had granted rest to Israel from all their enemies round about that Joshua grew old, advanced in years. ²And Joshua called to all Israel, to its elders and to its chieftains and to its judges and to its overseers. And he said to them, “I have grown old, advanced in years. ³As for you, you have seen all that the LORD your God has done to all these nations before you, for the LORD your God, it is He who did battle for you. ⁴See, I have made all these remaining nations fall to you in estate according to your tribes, and all the nations that I cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea where the sun goes down. ⁵And the LORD your God, it is He Who will drive them back before you and dispossess them before you, and you will take hold of their land as the LORD your God has spoken to you. ⁶And you must be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the book of Moses’s teaching, not to swerve from it to the right or to the left, ⁷not to come among these nations that remain alongside you, nor to invoke the name of their gods nor swear by them nor worship them and bow to them. ⁸But to the LORD your God you shall cling as you have done till this day. ⁹And the LORD has dispossessed before you great and mighty nations, and you—no man has stood before you till this day. ¹⁰One man of you pursues a thousand, for the LORD your God, it is He Who does battle for you as He spoke to you. ¹¹And you must be very careful for your own sake to love the LORD your God. ¹²For should you indeed turn back and cling to the rest of these remaining nations alongside you and intermarry with them and come among them, and they among you, ¹³you must surely know that the LORD your God will no longer dispossess these nations before you, and they will become a trap and a snare for you and a whip against your side and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good country that the LORD your God has given you. ¹⁴And, look, I am about to go today on the way of all the earth, and you know with all your heart and with all your being that not a single thing has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God has spoken about you. Everything has befallen you, not a single thing of it has failed. ¹⁵And it shall be, just as every good thing that the LORD your God has spoken of you has befallen you, so shall the LORD bring upon you every evil thing until He destroys you from this good country that the LORD your God has given you. ¹⁶When you overturn the pact of the LORD your God that He charged you and you go and worship other gods and bow to them, the wrath of the LORD will flare against you, and you will perish swiftly from the good land that He has given you.