¹¹Then the people of Israel sinned against the Lord and began to serve the Baals. ¹²They stopped worshipping the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the God who had brought them out of Egypt, and they began to worship other gods, the gods of the peoples round them. They bowed down to them and made the Lord angry. ¹³They stopped worshipping the Lord and served the Baals and the Astartes. ¹⁴And so the Lord became furious with Israel and let raiders attack and rob them. He let enemies all around overpower them, and the Israelites could no longer protect themselves. ¹⁵Every time they went into battle, the Lord was against them, just as he had said he would be. They were in great distress.

¹⁶Then the Lord gave the Israelites leaders who saved them from the raiders. ¹⁷But the Israelites paid no attention to their leaders. Israel was unfaithful to the Lord and worshipped other gods. Their fathers had obeyed the Lord’s commands, but this new generation soon stopped doing so. ¹⁸Whenever the Lord gave Israel a leader, the Lord would help that leader and would save the people from their enemies as long as that leader lived. The Lord would have mercy on them because they groaned under their suffering and oppression. ¹⁹But when the leader died, the people used to return to the old ways and behave worse than the previous generation. They would serve and worship other gods, and refused to give up their own evil ways. ²⁰Then the Lord would become furious with Israel and say, “This nation has broken the covenant that I commanded their ancestors to keep. Because they have not obeyed me, ²¹I will no longer drive out any of the nations that were still in the land when Joshua died. ²²I will use them to find out whether or not these Israelites will follow my ways, as their ancestors did.” ²³So the Lord allowed those nations to remain in the land; he did not give Joshua victory over them, nor did he drive them out soon after Joshua’s death.

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