Judges 2:6–3:6

Joshua Dies

⁶Then Joshua sent the people back to their land. ⁷The people served the Lord during the lifetime of Joshua and during the lifetimes of the elders who lived after Joshua and who had seen what great things the Lord had done for Israel. ⁸Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred ten. ⁹They buried him in his own land at Timnath Serah in the mountains of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

The People Disobey

¹⁰After those people had died, their children grew up and did not know the Lord or what he had done for Israel. ¹¹So they did what the Lord said was wrong, and they worshiped the Baal idols. ¹²They quit following the Lord, the God of their ancestors who had brought them out of Egypt. They began to worship the gods of the people who lived around them, and that made the Lord angry. ¹³The Israelites quit following the Lord and worshiped Baal and Ashtoreth. ¹⁴The Lord was angry with the people of Israel, so he handed them over to robbers who took their possessions. He let their enemies who lived around them defeat them; they could not protect themselves. ¹⁵When the Israelites went out to fight, they always lost, because the Lord was not with them. The Lord had sworn to them this would happen. So the Israelites suffered very much.

God Chooses Judges

¹⁶Then the Lord chose leaders called judges, ⁿ who saved the Israelites from the robbers. ¹⁷But the Israelites did not listen to their judges. They were not faithful to God but worshiped other gods instead. Their ancestors had obeyed the Lord’s commands, but they quickly turned away and did not obey. ¹⁸When their enemies hurt them, the Israelites cried for help. So the Lord felt sorry for them and sent judges to save them from their enemies. The Lord was with those judges all their lives. ¹⁹But when the judges died, the Israelites again sinned and worshiped other gods. They became worse than their ancestors. The Israelites were very stubborn and refused to change their evil ways.

²⁰So the Lord became angry with the Israelites. He said, “These people have broken the agreement I made with their ancestors. They have not listened to me. ²¹I will no longer defeat the nations who were left when Joshua died. ²²I will use them to test Israel, to see if Israel will keep the Lord’s commands as their ancestors did.” ²³In the past the Lord had permitted those nations to stay in the land. He did not quickly force them out or help Joshua’s army defeat them.

3These are the nations the Lord did not force to leave. He wanted to test the Israelites who had not fought in the wars of Canaan. ²(The only reason the Lord left those nations in the land was to teach the descendants of the Israelites who had not fought in those wars how to fight.) ³These are the nations: the five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the people of Sidon, and the Hivites who lived in the Lebanon mountains from Mount Baal Hermon to Lebo Hamath. ⁴Those nations were in the land to test the Israelites—to see if they would obey the commands the Lord had given to their ancestors by Moses.

⁵The people of Israel lived with the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. ⁶The Israelites began to marry the daughters of those people, and they allowed their daughters to marry the sons of those people. Israel also served their gods.