Joshua 23 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Around 1370 to 1350 BC by the earlier dating, or around 1180 BC by the later dating, many years after the land had been divided and near the end of Joshua's life
Location
Somewhere in the settled land, with Israel's elders, judges and officers summoned to hear Joshua, who was living at Timnath Serah in the hills of Ephraim
Audience
Israelites of a later generation, reading a warning that their hold on the land depended on their loyalty
Situation
Joshua, now old, calls the nation's leaders together and gives a farewell address. He reminds them that God fought for them, urges them to keep the law of Moses without turning aside, and warns that intermarriage and alliance with the remaining peoples will end in losing the land.
Key Background
A farewell speech from an aging leader was a standard literary form in the ancient world, used to fix the leader's teaching as binding after his death. Marriage alliances between neighboring groups were the ordinary way to secure treaties and trade, which is why Joshua's ban on them was a political instruction as much as a religious one, since a wife brought her household gods and their rites with her. The land was held on the terms of a covenant, so the same power that gave it could take it back, and that threat frames the whole speech.
A long time after Yahweh had given Israel from all their on every side, Joshua — now old and well along in years —
called together all of Israel — their leaders, and officials — and said to them: "I'm old now. I've lived a long life.
You've seen with your own eyes everything Yahweh your God has done to all these nations for your sake. Yahweh your God — He's the one who for you.
Look — I've allotted to you as an for your tribes all the territory of the nations that are left, along with all the nations I've already from the Jordan to the in the west.
Yahweh your God — He will them out ahead of you and drive them away from you. And you will take over their land, just as Yahweh your God promised you.
So be very strong — hold tight to everything written in the book of the of Moses, and do everything it says. from it to the or to the
Don't up with these nations that are still among you. Don't the of their don't swear by them, don't serve them, and don't down to them.
Instead, on to Yahweh your God — exactly as you've been doing up to today.
Yahweh has out great and powerful nations ahead of you. To this day, no one has been able to you.
One man among you can a to because Yahweh your God — He's the one fighting for you, just as He promised.
So — Yahweh God.
But if you do turn away and to what's left of these nations — the ones still living among you — and if you with them and mix in with them and they with you,
then know for certain that Yahweh God will no longer drive these nations out ahead of you. Instead, they'll become a and a for you, a on and in until you disappear from this good land that Yahweh God has given you.
"Look — today I'm the of all the And you know — in and in every single one of you knows — that not one good thing out of everything Yahweh God promised you has failed to happen. Every single one came true for you. Not one word has failed.
But just as every good thing Yahweh your God promised you has come true, Yahweh can also bring every on you until He's you this good land that Yahweh your God has given you.
If you break the of Yahweh your God that He commanded you to keep, and go serve other gods and bow down to them, then will against you, and you'll quickly from the good land He's given you."