Only take heart and be very strong; take care to do all the law which Moses my servant gave you, not turning from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may do well in all your undertakings.

Let this book of the law be ever on your lips and in your thoughts day and night, so that you may keep with care everything in it; then a blessing will be on all your way, and you will do well.

And said to them, It is clear to me that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has come on us;

So now, will you give me your oath by the Lord, that, because I have been kind to you, you will be kind to my father's house,

And that you will keep safe my father and mother and my brothers and sisters and all they have, so that death may not come on us?

But let there be a space between you and it of about two thousand cubits: come no nearer to it, so that you may see the way you have to go, for you have not been over this way before.

And the Lord said to Joshua, From now on I will give you glory in the eyes of all Israel, so that they may see that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

And Joshua said, By this you will see that the living God is among you, and that he will certainly send out from before you the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Hivite and the Perizzite and the Girgashite and the Amorite and the Jebusite.

So that this may be a sign among you; when your children say to you in time to come, What is the reason for these stones?

That day the Lord made Joshua great in the eyes of all Israel; and all the days of his life they went in fear of him, as they had gone in fear of Moses.

So that all the peoples of the earth may see that the hand of the Lord is strong; and that they may go in fear of the Lord your God for ever.

At that time the Lord said to Joshua, Make yourself stone knives and give the children of Israel circumcision a second time.

For the children of Israel were wandering in the waste land for forty years, till all the nation, that is, all the fighting-men, who had come out of Egypt, were dead, because they did not give ear to the voice of the Lord: to whom the Lord said, with an oath, that he would not let them see the land which the Lord had given his word to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey.

And the Lord said to Joshua, Today the shame of Egypt has been rolled away from you. So that place was named Gilgal, to this day.

And there was no more manna from the day after they had for their food the produce of the land; the children of Israel had manna no longer, but that year the produce of the land of Canaan was their food.

Then on the seventh day they got up early, at the dawn of the day, and went round the town in the same way, but that day they went round it seven times.

And as for you, keep yourselves from the cursed thing, for fear that you may get a desire for it and take some of it for yourselves, and so be the cause of a curse and great trouble on the tents of Israel.

So the people gave a loud cry, and the horns were sounded; and on hearing the horns the people gave a loud cry, and the wall came down flat, so that the people went up into the town, every man going straight before him, and they took the town.

Then Joshua gave the people orders with an oath, saying, Let that man be cursed before the Lord who puts his hand to the building up of this town: with the loss of his first son will he put the first stone of it in place, and with the loss of his youngest son he will put up its doors.

O Lord, what am I to say now that Israel have given way before their attackers?

And over him they put a great mass of stones, which is there to this day; then the heat of the Lord's wrath was turned away. So that place was named, The Valley of Achor, to this day.

So Joshua sent them out: and they took up a secret position between Beth-el and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Joshua kept with the people that night.

So all the people were in their places, the army on the north side of the town and the secret force on the west; and that night Joshua went down into the valley.

Now when the king of Ai saw it, he got up quickly and went out to war against Israel, he and all his people, to the slope going down to the valley; but he had no idea that a secret force was waiting at the back of the town.

Then the men of Ai, looking back, saw the smoke of the town going up to heaven, and were unable to go this way or that: and the people who had gone in flight to the waste land were turned back on those who were coming after them.

And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the town had been taken by the surprise attack, and that the smoke of the town had gone up, turning round they overcame the men of Ai.

Then the other force came out of the town against them, so that they were being attacked on this side and on that: and Israel overcame them and let not one of them get away with his life.

On that day twelve thousand were put to death, men and women, all the people of Ai.

But the cattle and the goods from that town, Israel took for themselves, as the Lord had given orders to Joshua.

And the men of Israel said to the Hivites, It may be that you are living among us; how then may we make an agreement with you?

So Joshua made peace with them, and made an agreement with them that they were not to be put to death: and the chiefs of the people took an oath to them.

Now three days after, when they had made this agreement with them, they had word that these men were their neighbours, living near them.

This is what we will do to them: we will not put them to death, for fear that wrath may come on us because of our oath to them.

And, answering Joshua, they said, Because it came to the ears of your servants that the Lord your God had given orders to his servant Moses to give you all this land, and to send destruction on all the people living in it, because of you; so, fearing greatly for our lives because of you, we have done this.

And that day Joshua made them servants, cutting wood and getting water for the people and for the altar of the Lord, in the place marked out by him, to this day.

Now when it came to the ears of Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, that Joshua had taken Ai, and had given it up to the curse (for as he had done to Jericho and its king, so he had done to Ai and its king); and that the people of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were living among them;

It was on the day when the Lord gave up the Amorites into the hands of the children of Israel that Joshua said to the Lord, before the eyes of Israel, Sun, be at rest over Gibeon; and you, O moon, in the valley of Aijalon.

And there was no day like that, before it or after it, when the Lord gave ear to the voice of a man; for the Lord was fighting for Israel.

And word was given to Joshua that the five kings had been taken in a hole in the rock at Makkedah.

That day Joshua took Makkedah, and put it and its king to the sword; every soul in it he gave up to the curse without mercy: and he did to the king of Makkedah as he had done to the king of Jericho.

And that day they took it, putting it and every person in it to the sword, as he had done to Lachish.

At that time, Joshua went on to take Hazor and put its king to the sword: for in earlier times Hazor was the chief of all those kingdoms.

So Joshua took all that land, the hill-country and all the South, and all the land of Goshen, and the lowland and the Arabah, the hill-country of Israel and its lowland;

For the Lord made them strong in heart to go to war against Israel, so that he might give them up to the curse without mercy, and that destruction might come on them, as the Lord had given orders to Moses.

And Joshua came at that time and put an end to the Anakim in the hill-country, in Hebron, in Debir, in Anab, and in all the hill-country of Judah and Israel: Joshua gave them and their towns to the curse.

And the Arabah to the sea of Chinneroth, to the east, and to the sea of the Arabah, that is the Salt Sea, to the east, the way to Beth-jeshimoth; and on the south, under the slopes of Pisgah:

And on that day Moses took an oath, saying, Truly the land where your feet have been placed will become a heritage for you and your children for ever, because you have been true to the Lord your God with all your heart.

So now, give me this hill-country named by the Lord at that time; for you had an account of it then, how the Anakim were there, and great walled towns: it may be that the Lord will be with me, and I will be able to take their land, as the Lord said.

And to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, he gave a part among the children of Judah, as the Lord had given orders to Joshua, that is, Kiriath-arba, named after Arba, the father of Anak which is Hebron.

From there he went up against the people of Debir: (now the name of Debir before that was Kiriath-sepher.)

In Issachar and Asher, Manasseh had Beth-shean and its daughter-towns, and Ibleam and its daughter-towns, and the people of Dor and its daughter-towns, and the people of En-dor and its daughter-towns, and the people of Taanach and its daughter-towns, and the people of Megiddo and its daughter-towns, that is, the three hills.

But the children of Manasseh were not able to make the people of those towns go out; but the Canaanites would go on living in that land.

So that any man who in error and without design has taken the life of another, may go in flight to them: and they will be safe places for you from him who has the right of punishment for blood.

And he is to go on living in that town till he has to come before the meeting of the people to be judged; (till the death of him who is high priest at that time:) then the taker of life may come back to his town and to his house, to the town from which he had gone in flight.

These were the towns marked out for all the children of Israel and for the man from a strange country living among them, so that anyone causing the death of another in error, might go in flight there, and not be put to death by him who has the right of punishment for blood till he had come before the meeting of the people.

And said to them in Shiloh in the land of Canaan, The Lord gave orders by Moses that we were to have towns for living in, with their grass-lands for our cattle.

And to the rest of the Levites, that is, the families of the children of Merari, they gave from the tribe of Zebulun, Jokneam and Kartah with their grass-lands;

All these towns were given to the children of Merari by their families, that is, the rest of the families of the Levites; and their heritage was twelve towns.

That now you are turned back from the Lord? and, because you are false to him today, tomorrow his wrath will be let loose on all the people of Israel.

That we have made ourselves an altar, being false to the Lord, keep us not safe from death this day; and if for the purpose of offering burned offerings on it and meal offerings, or peace-offerings, let the Lord himself send punishment for it;

And if we have not, in fact, done this designedly and with purpose, having in our minds the fear that in time to come your children might say to our children, What have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel?

But to be a witness between us and you, and between the future generations, that we have the right of worshipping the Lord with our burned offerings and our offerings of beasts and our peace-offerings; so that your children will not be able to say to our children in time to come, You have no part in the Lord.

Never let it be said that we were false to the Lord, turning back this day from him and building an altar for burned offerings and meal offerings and offerings of beasts, in addition to the altar of the Lord our God which is before his House.

And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest, said to the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the children of Manasseh, Now we are certain that the Lord is among us, because you have not done this wrong against the Lord: and you have kept us from falling into the hands of the Lord.

And the children of Reuben and the children of Gad gave to that altar the name of Ed. For, they said, It is a witness between us that the Lord is God.

So keep watch on yourselves, and see that you have love for the Lord your God.

Then you may be certain that the Lord your God will not go on driving these nations out from before you; but they will become a danger and a cause of sin to you, a whip for your sides and thorns in your eyes, till you are cut off from this good land which the Lord your God has given you.

Now I am about to go the way of all the earth: and you have seen and are certain, all of you, in your hearts and souls, that in all the good things which the Lord said about you, he has kept faith with you; everything has come true for you

And you will see that, as all the good things which the Lord your God undertook to do for you, have come to you, so the Lord will send down on you all the evil things till he has made your destruction complete, and you are cut off from the good land which the Lord your God has given you.

And I sent Moses and Aaron, troubling Egypt by all the signs I did among them: and after that I took you out.

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.

So Joshua made an agreement with the people that day, and gave them a rule and a law in Shechem.