Judges 2 · The Lantern

Israel Rebuked at Bochim

And the angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said: “I brought you up from Egypt, and I brought you into the land that I swore to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.

And you — you shall cut no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; their altars you shall tear down.’ But you have not listened to my voice. What is this you have done?

And I also said, ‘I will not drive them out from before you; and they will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a snare to you.’”

And it was, when the angel of the LORD spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept.

And they called the name of that place Bochim; and they sacrificed there to the LORD.

Joshua’s Death and Burial

And Joshua sent the people away, and the sons of Israel went each to his inheritance, to possess the land.

And the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who lived long after Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD that he had done for Israel.

And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, a hundred and ten years old.

And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance, at Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

Israel’s Unfaithfulness

And all that generation too were gathered to their fathers; and another generation rose after them that did not know the LORD, or the work that he had done for Israel.

And the sons of Israel did the evil in the eyes of the LORD, and served the Baals.

And they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they went after other gods, from the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them; and they provoked the LORD.

And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.

And the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he gave them into the hand of plunderers, who plundered them; and he sold them into the hand of their enemies all around, and they could no longer stand before their enemies.

Wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had spoken and as the LORD had sworn to them; and they were in very great distress.

Judges Raised Up

And the LORD raised up judges, and they saved them from the hand of their plunderers.

But they did not listen to their judges either — for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked, listening to the commandments of the LORD; they did not do so.

And when the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge, and saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge — for the LORD relented because of their groaning before those who pressed them and crushed them.

And it was, when the judge died, that they turned back and acted more corruptly than their fathers, going after other gods, to serve them and to bow down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn way.

And the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he said: “Because this nation has crossed my covenant, which I commanded their fathers, and has not listened to my voice,

I also will no longer dispossess before them a single one of the nations that Joshua left when he died —

in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the LORD, to walk in it as their fathers kept it, or not.”