Joshua’s Charge to Leaders
And it was, many days after the LORD had given rest to Israel from all their enemies all around, and Joshua was old, advanced in days,
that Joshua called all Israel — its elders, and its heads, and its judges, and its officers — and said to them: “I am old, advanced in days.
And you have seen all that the LORD your God has done to all these nations before you — for the LORD your God, he is the one who fights for you.
See, I have allotted to you these nations that remain as an inheritance for your tribes, from the Jordan — with all the nations that I have cut off — to the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun.
And the LORD your God, he will push them out from before you and dispossess them from before you; and you shall possess their land, as the LORD your God spoke to you.
And be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the instruction of Moses, so as not to turn aside from it, right or left —
so as not to come among these nations, these that remain with you. You shall not invoke the name of their gods, and you shall not swear by them, and you shall not serve them, and you shall not bow down to them.
But to the LORD your God you shall hold fast, as you have done to this day.
And the LORD has dispossessed from before you nations great and mighty; and as for you, not a man has stood before you to this day.
One man of you pursues a thousand — for the LORD your God, he is the one who fights for you, as he spoke to you.
So be very careful, for your souls’ sake, to love the LORD your God.
For if you turn back at all, and hold fast to the remnant of these nations, these that remain with you, and intermarry with them, and go in among them and they among you —
know surely that the LORD your God will not continue to dispossess these nations from before you; and they will become for you a snare and a trap, and a whip on your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the LORD your God has given you.
And look — today I am going the way of all the earth. And you know with all your heart and with all your soul that not one word has fallen of all the good words that the LORD your God spoke concerning you. They have all come to pass for you; not one word of them has fallen.
And it shall be, just as every good word that the LORD your God spoke to you has come upon you, so the LORD will bring upon you every evil word, until he has destroyed you from off this good ground that the LORD your God has given you —
when you cross the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and you will perish quickly from off the good land that he has given you.”