So Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh went back, parting from the children of Israel at Shiloh in the land of Canaan, to go to the land of Gilead, to the land of their heritage which had been given to them by the Lord's order to Moses.

Then all the meeting of the children of Israel, hearing this, came together at Shiloh to go up against them to war.

This is what all the meeting of the people of the Lord has said, What is this wrong which you have done against the God of Israel, turning back this day from the Lord and building an altar for yourselves, and being false to the Lord?

God, even God the Lord, God, even God the Lord, he sees, and Israel will see--if it is in pride or in sin against the Lord,

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?

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.

Then Phinehas the priest and the chiefs of the meeting and the heads of the families of Israel who were with him, hearing what the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the children of Manasseh said, were pleased.

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.

You have seen everything the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you; for it is the Lord your God who has been fighting for you.

The Lord your God will send them away by force, driving them out before you; and you are to take their land for your heritage, as the Lord your God said to you.

So be very strong to keep and do whatever is recorded in the book of the law of Moses, not turning away from it to the right or to the left;

For the Lord has sent out from before you nations great and strong: and they have all given way before you till this day.

One man of you is able to put to flight a thousand; for it is the Lord your God who is fighting for you, as he has said to you.

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.

Then Joshua got all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem; and he sent for the responsible men of Israel and their chiefs and their judges and their overseers; and they took their place before God.

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

I took your fathers out of Egypt: and you came to the Red Sea; and the Egyptians came after your fathers to the Red Sea, with their war-carriages and their horsemen.

And at their cry, the Lord made it dark between you and the Egyptians, and made the sea go over them, covering them with its waters; your eyes have seen what I did in Egypt: then for a long time you were living in the waste land.

And I sent the hornet before you, driving out the two kings of the Amorites before you, not with your sword and your bow.

And if it seems evil to you to be the servants of the Lord, make the decision this day whose servants you will be: of the gods whose servants your fathers were across the River, or of the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living: but I and my house will be the servants of the Lord.

For it is the Lord our God who has taken us and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house, and who did all those great signs before our eyes, and kept us safe on all our journeys, and among all the peoples through whom we went:

And the Lord sent out from before us all the peoples, the Amorites living in the land: so we will be the servants of the Lord, for he is our God.

And Joshua put these words on record, writing them in the book of the law of God; and he took a great stone, and put it up there under the oak-tree which was in the holy place of the Lord.

And Joshua said to all the people, See now, this stone is to be a witness against us; for all the words of the Lord have been said to us in its hearing: so it will be a witness against you if you are false to the Lord your God.

And Israel was true to the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the older men who were still living after Joshua's death, and had seen what the Lord had done for Israel.

Then the children of Judah made an attack on Jerusalem, and took it, burning down the town after they had put its people to the sword without mercy.

And Caleb said, I will give Achsah, my daughter, as wife to the man who overcomes Kiriath-sepher and takes it.

And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it; so he gave him his daughter Achsah for his wife.

Now when she came to him, he put into her mind the idea of requesting a field from her father: and she got down from her ass; and Caleb said to her, What is it?

Now Hobab the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, had come up out of the town of palm-trees, with the children of Judah, into the waste land of Arad; and he went and was living among the Amalekites;

And Judah went with Simeon, his brother, and overcame the Canaanites living in Zephath, and put it under the curse; and he gave the town the name of Hormah.

And the Lord was with Judah; and he took the hill-country for his heritage; but he was unable to make the people of the valley go out, for they had war-carriages of iron.

And they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had said; and he took the land of the three sons of Anak, driving them out from there.

And the children of Judah did not make the Jebusites who were living in Jerusalem go out; the Jebusites are still living with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem.

And the watchers saw a man coming out of the town, and said to him, If you will make clear to us the way into the town, we will be kind to you.

So he made clear to them the way into the town, and they put it to the sword; but they let the man and all his family get away safe.

And he went into the land of the Hittites, building a town there and naming it Luz: which is its name to this day.

And Manasseh did not take away the land of the people of Beth-shean and its daughter-towns, or of Taanach and its daughter-towns, or of the people of Dor and its daughter-towns, or of the people of Ibleam and its daughter-towns, or of the people of Megiddo and its daughter-towns, driving them out; but the Canaanites would go on living in that land.

And whenever Israel became strong, they put the Canaanites to forced work, without driving them out completely.

And Ephraim did not make the Canaanites who were living in Gezer go out; but the Canaanites went on living in Gezer among them.

Zebulun did not make the people of Kitron or the people of Nahalol go out; but the Canaanites went on living among them and were put to forced work.

And Asher did not take the land of the people of Acco, or Zidon, or Ahlab, or Achzib, or Helbah, or Aphik, or Rehob, driving them out;

But the Asherites went on living among the Canaanites, the people of the land, without driving them out.

Naphtali did not take the land of the people of Beth-shemesh or of Beth-anath, driving them out; but he was living among the Canaanites in the land; however, the people of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath were put to forced work.

Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, *** I took you out of Egypt, guiding you into the land which I gave by an oath to your fathers; and I said, My agreement with you will never be broken by me:

And you are to make no agreement with the people of this land; you are to see that their altars are broken down: but you have not given ear to my voice: what have you done?

And so I have said, I will not send them out from before you; but they will be a danger to you, and their gods will be a cause of falling to you.

And they gave up the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had taken them out of the land of Egypt, and went after other gods, the gods of the peoples round about them, worshipping them and moving the Lord to wrath.

Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had taken his oath it would be; and things became very hard for them.

From now on I will not go on driving out from before them any of the nations which at the death of Joshua were still living in this land;

In order to put Israel to the test, and see if they will keep the way of the Lord, walking in it as their fathers did, or not.

So the Lord let those nations go on living in the land, not driving them out quickly, and did not give them up into the hands of Joshua.

Only because of the generations of the children of Israel, for the purpose of teaching them war--only those who up till then had no experience of it;

And the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and put out of their minds the Lord their God, and became servants to the Baals and the Astartes.

So the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia; and the children of Israel were his servants for eight years.

And the spirit of the Lord came on him and he became judge of Israel, and went out to war, and the Lord gave up Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hands and he overcame him.

So Ehud made himself a two-edged sword, a cubit long, which he put on at his right side under his robe.

But he himself, turning back from the stone images at Gilgal, said, I have something to say to you in secret, O king. And he said, Let there be quiet. Then all those who were waiting before him went out.

And Ehud put out his left hand, and took the sword from his right side, and sent it into his stomach;

And the hand-part went in after the blade, and the fat was joined up over the blade; for he did not take the sword out of his stomach. And he went out into the ...

Then Ehud went out into the covered way, shutting the doors of the summer-house on him and locking them.

Now when he had gone, the king's servants came, and saw that the doors of the summer-house were locked; and they said, It may be that he is in his summer-house for a private purpose.

And they went on waiting till they were shamed, but the doors were still shut; so they took the key, and, opening them, saw their lord stretched out dead on the floor.

And when he came there, he had a horn sounded in the hill-country of Ephraim, and all the children of Israel went down with him from the hill-country, and he at their head.

At that time they put about ten thousand men of Moab to the sword, every strong man and every man of war; not a man got away.

Now Deborah, a woman prophet, the wife of Lapidoth, was judge of Israel at that time.

And I will make Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his war-carriages and his forces, come against you at the river Kishon, where I will give him into your hands.

Then Deborah said to Barak, Up! for today the Lord has given Sisera into your hands: has not the Lord gone out before you? So Barak went down from Mount Tabor and ten thousand men after him.

And Jael went out to Sisera, and said to him, Come in, my lord, come in to me without fear. So he went into her tent, and she put a cover over him.

And he said to her, Take your place at the door of the tent, and if anyone comes and says to you, Is there any man here, say, No.

Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a tent-pin and a hammer and went up to him quietly, driving the pin into his head, and it went through his head into the earth, for he was in a deep sleep from weariness; and so he came to his end.

Then Jael went out, and meeting Barak going after Sisera, said to him, Come, and I will let you see the man you are searching for. So he came into her tent and saw, and there was Sisera stretched out dead with the tent-pin in his head.

At that time Deborah and Barak, the son of Abinoam, made this song, saying:

Lord, when you went out from Seir, moving like an army from the field of Edom, the earth was shaking and the heavens were troubled, and the clouds were dropping water.

Let them give thought to it, who go on white asses, and those who are walking on the road.

Out of Ephraim they came down into the valley; after you, Benjamin, among your tribesmen; from Machir came down the captains, and from Zebulun those in whose hand is the ruler's rod.

Your chiefs, Issachar, were with Deborah; and Naphtali was true to Barak; into the valley they went rushing out at his feet. In Reuben there were divisions, and great searchings of heart.

It was the people of Zebulun who put their lives in danger, even to death, with Naphtali on the high places of the field.

She put out her hand to the tent-pin, and her right hand to the workman's hammer; and she gave Sisera a blow, crushing his head, wounding and driving through his brow.

Bent at her feet he went down, he was stretched out; bent at her feet he went down; where he was bent down, there he went down in death.

Looking out from the window she gave a cry, the mother of Sisera was crying out through the window, Why is his carriage so long in coming? When will the noise of his wheels be sounding?

So may destruction come on all your haters, O Lord; but let your lovers be like the sun going out in his strength. And for forty years the land had peace.

The Lord sent a prophet to the children of Israel, who said to them, The Lord the God of Israel, has said, I took you up from Egypt, out of the prison-house;

And I took you out of the hands of the Egyptians and out of the hands of all who were cruel to you, and I sent them out by force from before you and gave you their land;

Now the angel of the Lord came and took his seat under the oak-tree in Ophrah, in the field of Joash the Abiezrite; and his son Gideon was crushing grain in the place where the grapes were crushed, so that the Midianites might not see it.

Then Gideon said to him, O my lord, if the Lord is with us why has all this come on us? And where are all his works of power, of which our fathers have given us word, saying, Did not the Lord take us out of Egypt? But now he has given us up, handing us over to the power of Midian.

So he said to him, If now I have grace in your eyes, then give me a sign that it is you who are talking to me.

Do not go away till I come with my offering and put it before you. And he said, I will not go away before you come back.

Then Gideon went in and made ready a young goat, and with an ephah of meal he made unleavened cakes: he put the meat in a basket and the soup in which it had been cooked he put in a pot, and he took it out to him under the oak-tree and gave it to him there.

And the angel of God said to him, Take the meat and the unleavened cakes and put them down on the rock over there, draining out the soup over them. And he did so.

Then the angel of the Lord put out the stick which was in his hand, touching the meat and the cakes with the end of it; and a flame came up out of the rock, burning up the meat and the cakes: and the angel of the Lord was seen no longer.

Then Gideon made an altar there to the Lord, and gave it the name Yahweh-shalom; to this day it is in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

Make an altar to the Lord your God on the top of this rock, in the ordered way and take the ox and make a burned offering with the wood of the holy tree which has been cut down.

Then Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord had said to him; but fearing to do it by day, because of his father's people and the men of the town, he did it by night.

And the men of the town got up early in the morning, and they saw the altar of Baal broken down, and the holy tree which was by it cut down, and the ox offered on the altar which had been put up there.

Then the men of the town said to Joash, Make your son come out to be put to death, for pulling down the altar of Baal and cutting down the holy tree which was by it.

But Joash said to all those who were attacking him, Will you take up the cause of Baal? will you be his saviour? Let anyone who will take up his cause be put to death while it is still morning: if he is a god, let him take up his cause himself because of the pulling down of his altar.

But the spirit of the Lord came on Gideon; and at the sound of his horn all Abiezer came together after him.

See, I will put the wool of a sheep on the grain-floor; if there is dew on the wool only, while all the earth is dry, then I will be certain that it is your purpose to give Israel salvation by my hand as you have said.