Joshua 24
Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve
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The Covenant Assembly at Shiloh
24:1Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shiloh. He summoned their elders, scribes, and judges and made them stand before God.
From Abraham to the Land
24:2Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘From the beginning your fathers lived beyond the River—Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor—and they served other gods.
24:3I took your father Abraham from beyond the River, led him through all the land, multiplied his offspring, and gave him Isaac,
24:4and to Isaac, Jacob and Esau. I gave Mount Seir to Esau as his inheritance, and Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt and became there a great, numerous, and mighty nation.’
24:5The Egyptians afflicted them, and the Lord struck Egypt by what He did to them; afterward He brought you out
24:6of Egypt, and you entered the Red Sea. The Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horses into the Red Sea,
24:7and we cried out to the Lord. He placed a cloud and thick darkness between us and the Egyptians, brought the sea over them, and covered them. Your eyes saw all that the Lord did in the land of Egypt. You were in the wilderness many days.
24:8He brought you into the land of the Amorites living beyond the Jordan. They arrayed themselves against you, and the Lord handed them into your hands. You inherited their land and destroyed them before you.
24:9Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and arrayed himself against Israel. He sent and called Balaam to curse you.
24:10But the Lord your God was unwilling to destroy you. He blessed you abundantly, rescued you from their hands, and handed them over.
24:11You crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The inhabitants of Jericho fought against you—the Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Hittites, and Girgashites—and the Lord handed them into your hands.
24:12He sent the swarm of wasps ahead of you, and it drove them out before you, twelve kings of the Amorites—not by your sword and not by your bow.
24:13He gave you a land for which you did not labor and cities you did not build, and you were settled in them. You shall eat from vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.
Choose Whom You Will Serve
24:14Now fear the Lord and serve Him with uprightness and righteousness. Remove the foreign gods your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
24:15If it does not please you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: the gods of your fathers beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites among whom you live in their land. But I and my household will serve the Lord, because He is holy.”
The People Answer
24:16The people answered and said, “May it never be that we abandon the Lord to serve other gods.
24:17The Lord our God—He is God. He brought us and our fathers up from Egypt and guarded us on all the way we traveled and among all the nations through whom we passed.
24:18The Lord drove out before us the Amorites and all the nations living in the land. We too will serve the Lord, for He is our God.”
24:19Joshua said to the people, “You certainly cannot serve the Lord, for He is a holy God, and being jealous He will not remit your sins and your lawless deeds.
24:20Whenever you abandon the Lord and serve other gods, He will come upon you, harm you, and consume you in return for the good He has done you.”
24:21The people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”
24:22Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve Him.
24:23Now remove the foreign gods among you and direct your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
24:24The people said to Joshua, “The Lord we will serve, and His voice we will obey.”
The Covenant and the Stone of Witness
24:25Joshua made a covenant with the people on that day and gave them law and judgment at Shiloh before the tent of the God of Israel.
24:26He wrote these words in a scroll, the law of God. Joshua took a great stone and set it beneath the terebinth before the Lord.
24:27Joshua said to the people, “Look, this stone shall be among you as a testimony, for it has heard everything spoken to it by the Lord, what He spoke to us today. It shall be among you as a testimony at the last of the days, whenever you deal falsely with the Lord my God.”
24:28Joshua sent the people away, and each went to his own place.
The Death of Joshua
24:29Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who lived on after Joshua and saw all the works the Lord had done for Israel.
24:30After those things Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred ten years.
24:31They buried him by the borders of his lot at Thamnathasachara in the mountain of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.
24:31aThere they placed with him in the tomb in which they buried him the stone knives with which he circumcised the sons of Israel at Gilgal, when he brought them out of Egypt, as the Lord commanded them. They are there to this very day.
Joseph’s Bones and the Death of Eleazar
24:32The sons of Israel brought Joseph’s bones up from Egypt and buried them at Shechem in the portion of the field that Jacob acquired from the Amorites living at Shechem for one hundred ewe lambs; he gave it to Joseph as a portion.
24:33After these things Eleazar son of Aaron, the high priest, died and was buried at Gabaath of Phinehas his son, which he had given him in the mountain of Ephraim.
24:33aOn that day the sons of Israel took the ark of God and carried it about among themselves. Phinehas served as priest in place of Eleazar his father until he died and was buried at his own Gabaath.
24:33bThe sons of Israel went away, each to his own place and his own city. The sons of Israel revered Astarte and Ashtaroth and the gods of the nations around them. The Lord handed them into the hands of Eglom king of Moab, and he ruled over them for eighteen years.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.