Judges 2

²“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

⁷I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

⁸And to you and your descendants I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as an eternal possession; and I will be their God.”

²⁰Behold, I am sending an angel before you to protect you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.

⁴²then I will remember My covenant with Jacob and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.

⁴⁴He gave them the lands of the nations, that they might inherit the fruit of others’ labor,

⁴⁵that they might keep His statutes and obey His laws. Hallelujah!

¹⁴The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

²and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.

³Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,

³⁶How impulsive you are, constantly changing your ways! You will be disappointed by Egypt just as you were by Assyria.

⁵This is what the Lord says: “What fault did your fathers find in Me that they strayed so far from Me? They followed worthless idols, and became worthless themselves.

¹After these things had been accomplished, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the surrounding peoples whose abominations are like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites.

²Indeed, the Israelites have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed has been mixed with the people of the land. And the leaders and officials have taken the lead in this unfaithfulness!”

¹⁶You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God will deliver to you. Do not look on them with pity. Do not worship their gods, for that will be a snare to you.

⁵²you must drive out before you all the inhabitants of the land, destroy all their carved images and cast idols, and demolish all their high places.

⁵³You are to take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess.

¹³know for sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become for you a snare and a trap, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the Lord your God has given you.

⁵⁵But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land before you, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides; they will harass you in the land where you settle.

³⁶They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them.

³³They must not remain in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

⁶And they took the daughters of these people in marriage, gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

¹⁶You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God will deliver to you. Do not look on them with pity. Do not worship their gods, for that will be a snare to you.

¹⁰Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

⁹Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom.

¹⁰Then I will pour out on the house of David and on the people of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and prayer, and they will look on Me, the One they have pierced. They will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

¹While Ezra prayed and made this confession, weeping and falling facedown before the house of God, a very large assembly of Israelites—men, women, and children—gathered around him, and the people wept bitterly as well.

¹⁰A rebuke cuts into a man of discernment deeper than a hundred lashes cut into a fool.

⁶When they had gathered at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the Lord. On that day they fasted, and there they confessed, “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel judged the Israelites at Mizpah.

⁸Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel. So Jacob named it Allon-bacuth.

⁹Then Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. He cried out to the Lord on behalf of Israel, and the Lord answered him.

¹⁹Then Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the Lord. And as Manoah and his wife looked on, the Lord did a marvelous thing.

²⁶And they heaped over Achan a large pile of rocks that remains to this day. So the Lord turned from His burning anger. Therefore that place is called the Valley of Achor to this day.

²⁴So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it The Lord Is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

²⁸Then Joshua sent the people away, each to his own inheritance.

²⁹Some time later, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110.

⁶So Joshua blessed them and sent them on their way, and they went to their homes.

¹²Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

³¹Israel had served the Lord throughout the days of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had experienced all the works that the Lord had done for Israel.

²And Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days he was instructed by Jehoiada the priest.

¹⁴When they were finished, they brought the rest of the money to the king and Jehoiada, and with it were made articles for the house of the Lord—utensils for the service and for the burnt offerings, dishes, and other objects of gold and silver. Throughout the days of Jehoiada, burnt offerings were presented regularly in the house of the Lord.

¹⁵When Jehoiada was old and full of years, he died at the age of 130.

²And Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.

²⁹Some time later, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110.

³⁰And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

⁵⁰as the Lord had commanded. They gave him the city of Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, as he requested. He rebuilt the city and settled in it.

³⁰And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

¹²Now the sons of Eli were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord

¹⁶They profess to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed.

²But Pharaoh replied, “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.”

⁹As for you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve Him wholeheartedly and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands the intent of every thought. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.

³⁴No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”

³⁶For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep. His body was buried with his fathers and saw decay.

⁶And again the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord. They served the Baals, the Ashtoreths, the gods of Aram, Sidon, and Moab, and the gods of the Ammonites and Philistines. Thus they forsook the Lord and did not serve Him.

¹After Ehud died, the Israelites again did evil in the sight of the Lord.

⁷So the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

¹Again the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord; so He delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years,

¹⁸“I have not troubled Israel,” Elijah replied, “but you and your father’s house have, for you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the Baals.

³³And as soon as Gideon was dead, the Israelites turned and prostituted themselves with the Baals, and they set up Baal-berith as their god.

⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

⁵Such a prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he has advocated rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way in which the Lord your God has commanded you to walk. So you must purge the evil from among you.

²⁵And the people will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.

¹⁴Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you.

¹⁵For the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God. Otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth.

¹⁸Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit,

⁹You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

⁶And again the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord. They served the Baals, the Ashtoreths, the gods of Aram, Sidon, and Moab, and the gods of the Ammonites and Philistines. Thus they forsook the Lord and did not serve Him.

³⁶They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them.

⁷So the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

²⁰No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons.

²¹You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot partake in the table of the Lord and the table of demons too.

¹⁰They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shan.

⁵Solomon followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

⁴⁰So the anger of the Lord burned against His people, and He abhorred His own inheritance.

⁴¹He delivered them into the hand of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them.

²⁰So the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel. He afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of plunderers, until He had banished them from His presence.

³⁰How could one man pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the Lord had given them up?

¹⁷On that day My anger will burn against them, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, so that they will be consumed, and many troubles and afflictions will befall them. On that day they will say, ‘Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is no longer with us?’

¹⁸And on that day I will surely hide My face because of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods.

²So the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his forces was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim.

¹⁶But they mocked the messengers of God, despising His words and scoffing at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord against His people was stirred up beyond remedy.

¹⁵But just as every good thing the Lord your God promised you has come to pass, likewise the Lord will bring upon you the calamity He has threatened, until He has destroyed you from this good land He has given you.

¹⁶If you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from this good land He has given you.”

¹⁵If, however, you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

¹⁶You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

¹⁴If, however, you fail to obey Me and to carry out all these commandments,

¹⁵and if you reject My statutes, despise My ordinances, and neglect to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant,

⁸But if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I will relent of the disaster I had planned to bring.

⁶And David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of every man grieved for his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God.

²⁴Now the men of Israel were in distress that day, for Saul had placed the troops under an oath, saying, “Cursed is the man who eats any food before evening, before I have taken vengeance on my enemies.” So none of the troops tasted any food.

²⁰All this took about 450 years. After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet.

⁴³Many times He rescued them, but they were bent on rebellion and sank down in their iniquity.

⁴⁴Nevertheless He heard their cry; He took note of their distress.

¹¹So the Lord sent Jerubbaal, Barak, Jephthah, and Samuel, and He delivered you from the hands of your enemies on every side, and you dwelt securely.

²⁷So You delivered them into the hands of enemies who oppressed them, and in their time of distress they cried out to You. From heaven You heard them, and in Your great compassion You gave them deliverers who saved them from the hands of their enemies.

¹⁵And again they cried out to the Lord, and He raised up Ehud son of Gera, a left-handed Benjamite, as their deliverer. So they sent him with tribute to Eglon king of Moab.

⁵And she would sit under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, where the Israelites would go up to her for judgment.

¹²And the Lord said to me, “Get up and go down from here at once, for your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. How quickly they have turned aside from the way that I commanded them! They have made for themselves a molten image.”

⁶I am amazed how quickly you are deserting the One who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—

⁷And the people served the Lord throughout the days of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him, who had seen all the great works that the Lord had done for Israel.

²Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

¹Then one of the seven angels with the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.

²The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and those who dwell on the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her immorality.”

³⁹They defiled themselves by their actions and prostituted themselves by their deeds.

³⁶For the Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants when He sees that their strength is gone and no one remains, slave or free.

⁵No one shall stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so will I be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.

²⁴So God heard their groaning, and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁴⁴Nevertheless He heard their cry; He took note of their distress.

⁴⁵And He remembered His covenant with them, and relented by the abundance of His loving devotion.

⁸How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!

²²And Hazael king of Aram oppressed Israel throughout the reign of Jehoahaz.

²³But the Lord was gracious to Israel and had compassion on them, and He turned toward them because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And to this day, the Lord has been unwilling to destroy them or cast them from His presence.

³³And as soon as Gideon was dead, the Israelites turned and prostituted themselves with the Baals, and they set up Baal-berith as their god.

¹After Ehud died, the Israelites again did evil in the sight of the Lord.

¹¹So the land had rest for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died.

¹²Once again the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord. So He gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord.

¹⁷After the death of Jehoiada, however, the officials of Judah came and paid homage to the king, and he listened to them.

¹⁸They abandoned the house of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherah poles and idols. So wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs.

³²Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your fathers.

¹⁷They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord says that you will have peace,’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, ‘No harm will come to you.’

¹⁴Then the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of those who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist.

¹⁶If you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from this good land He has given you.”

³⁷I will make you pass under the rod and will bring you into the bond of the covenant.

³When Moses came and told the people all the words and ordinances of the Lord, they all responded with one voice: “All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do.”

⁴And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. Early the next morning he got up and built an altar at the base of the mountain, along with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.

⁸Then the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim king of Aram-naharaim, and the Israelites served him eight years.

¹⁰All of you are standing today before the Lord your God—you leaders of tribes, elders, officials, and all the men of Israel,

¹¹your children and wives, and the foreigners in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water—

¹³know for sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become for you a snare and a trap, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the Lord your God has given you.

³So now I tell you that I will not drive out these people before you; they will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a snare to you.”

²⁴For they did not practice My ordinances, but they rejected My statutes and profaned My Sabbaths, fixing their eyes on the idols of their fathers.

³the five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived in the mountains of Lebanon from Mount Baal-hermon to Lebo-hamath.

²Remember that these forty years the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments.

¹⁶He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers had not known, in order to humble you and test you, so that in the end He might cause you to prosper.

³you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

³A crucible for silver and a furnace for gold, but the Lord is the tester of hearts.

¹Some time later God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered.

¹These are the nations that the Lord left to test all the Israelites who had not known any of the wars in Canaan,

²if only to teach warfare to the subsequent generations of Israel, especially to those who had not known it formerly: