[1] Then Joshua got all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem; and he
sent for the responsible men of Israel and their chiefs and their judges
and their overseers; and they took their place before God. [2] And Joshua
said to all the people, These are the words of the Lord, the God of Israel:
In the past your fathers, Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of
Nahor, were living on the other side of the River: and they were
worshipping other gods. [3] And I took your father Abraham from the other
side of the River, guiding him through all the land of Canaan; I made his
offspring great in number, and gave him Isaac. [4] And to Isaac I gave
Jacob and Esau: to Esau I gave Mount Seir, as his heritage; but Jacob and
his children went down to Egypt. [5] And I sent Moses and Aaron, troubling
Egypt by all the signs I did among them: and after that I took you out. [6]
I took your fathers out of Egypt: and you came to the Red Sea; and the
Egyptians came after your fathers to the Red Sea, with their war-carriages
and their horsemen. [7] And at their cry, the Lord made it dark between you
and the Egyptians, and made the sea go over them, covering them with its
waters; your eyes have seen what I did in Egypt: then for a long time you
were living in the waste land. [8] And I took you into the lands of the
Amorites on the other side of Jordan; and they made war on you, and I gave
them into your hands and you took their land; and I sent destruction on
them before you. [9] Then Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, went up
to war against Israel; and he sent for Balaam, the son of Beor, to put a
curse on you: [10] But I did not give ear to Balaam; and so he went on
blessing you; and I kept you safe from him. [11] Then you went over Jordan
and came to Jericho: and the men of Jericho made war on you, the Amorites
and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Girgashites
and the Hivites and the Jebusites: and I gave them up into your hands. [12]
And I sent the hornet before you, driving out the two kings of the Amorites
before you, not with your sword and your bow. [13] And I gave you a land on
which you had done no work, and towns not of your building, and you are now
living in them; and your food comes from vine-gardens and olive-gardens not
of your planting. [14] So now, go in fear of the Lord, and be his servants
with true hearts: put away the gods worshipped by your fathers across the
River and in Egypt, and be servants of the Lord. [15] And if it seems evil
to you to be the servants of the Lord, make the decision this day whose
servants you will be: of the gods whose servants your fathers were across
the River, or of the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living: but
I and my house will be the servants of the Lord. [16] Then the people in
answer said, Never will we give up the Lord to be the servants of other
gods; [17] For it is the Lord our God who has taken us and our fathers out
of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house, and who did all those great
signs before our eyes, and kept us safe on all our journeys, and among all
the peoples through whom we went: [18] And the Lord sent out from before us
all the peoples, the Amorites living in the land: so we will be the
servants of the Lord, for he is our God. [19] And Joshua said to the
people, You are not able to be the servants of the Lord, for he is a holy
God, a God who will not let his honour be given to another: he will have no
mercy on your wrongdoing or your sins. [20] If you are turned away from the
Lord and become the servants of strange gods, then turning against you he
will do you evil, cutting you off, after he has done you good. [21] And the
people said to Joshua, No! But we will be the servants of the Lord. [22]
And Joshua said to the people, You are witnesses against yourselves that
you have made the decision to be the servants of the Lord. And they said,
We are witnesses. [23] Then, he said, put away the strange gods among you,
turning your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel. [24] And the people
said to Joshua, We will be the servants of the Lord our God, and we will
give ear to his voice. [25] So Joshua made an agreement with the people
that day, and gave them a rule and a law in Shechem. [26] And Joshua put
these words on record, writing them in the book of the law of God; and he
took a great stone, and put it up there under the oak-tree which was in the
holy place of the Lord. [27] And Joshua said to all the people, See now,
this stone is to be a witness against us; for all the words of the Lord
have been said to us in its hearing: so it will be a witness against you if
you are false to the Lord your God. [28] Then Joshua let the people go
away, every man to his heritage. [29] Now after these things, the death of
Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, took place, he being then
a hundred and ten years old. [30] And they put his body in the earth in the
land of his heritage in Timnath-serah, in the hill-country of Ephraim, to
the north of Mount Gaash. [31] And Israel was true to the Lord all the days
of Joshua, and all the days of the older men who were still living after
Joshua's death, and had seen what the Lord had done for Israel. [32] And
the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had taken up from Egypt,
they put in the earth in Shechem, in the property which Jacob had got from
the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred shekels: and they
became the heritage of the children of Joseph. [33] Then the death of
Eleazar, the son of Aaron, took place; and his body was put in the earth in
the hill of Phinehas his son, which had been given to him in the
hill-country of Ephraim.

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