Judges 2:7-3:6

Good News Translation

⁷ As long as Joshua lived, the people of Israel served the Lord, and even after his death they continued to do so as long as the leaders were alive who had seen for themselves all the great things that the Lord had done for Israel. ⁸ The Lord's servant Joshua son of Nun died at the age of a hundred and ten. ^9 (A)He was buried in his own part of the land at Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim north of Mount Gaash. ¹⁰ That whole generation also died, and the next generation forgot the Lord and what he had done for Israel.

Israel Stops Worshiping the Lord

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

¹⁶ Then the Lord gave the Israelites leaders who saved them from the raiders. ¹⁷ But the Israelites paid no attention to their leaders. Israel was unfaithful to the Lord and worshiped other gods. Their fathers had obeyed the Lord's commands, but this new generation soon stopped doing so. ¹⁸ Whenever 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. ¹⁹ But when the leader died, the people would return to the old ways and behave worse than the previous generation. They would serve and worship other gods, and stubbornly continue their own evil ways. ²⁰ Then 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, ²¹ I will no longer drive out any of the nations that were still in the land when Joshua died. ²² I will use them to find out whether or not these Israelites will follow my ways, as their ancestors did.” ²³ So the Lord allowed these 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.

The Nations Remaining in the Land

3 So then, the Lord left some nations in the land to test the Israelites who had not been through the wars in Canaan. ² He did this only in order to teach each generation of Israelites about war, especially those who had never been in battle before. ³ Those left in the land were the five Philistine cities, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived in the Lebanon Mountains from Mount Baal Hermon as far as Hamath Pass. ⁴ They were to be a test for Israel, to find out whether or not the Israelites would obey the commands that the Lord had given their ancestors through Moses. ⁵ And so the people of Israel settled down among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁶ They intermarried with them and worshiped their gods.