13 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.
But they were joined to the nations, learning their works. And they gave worship to images; which were a danger to them: They even made offerings of their sons and their daughters to evil spirits, And gave the blood of their sons and their daughters who had done no wrong, offering them to the images of Canaan; and the land was made unclean with blood. So they became unclean through their works, going after their evil desires.
And I will make your towns waste and send destruction on your holy places; I will take no pleasure in the smell of your sweet perfumes; And I will make your land a waste, a wonder to your haters living in it. And I will send you out in all directions among the nations, and my sword will be uncovered against you, and your land will be without any living thing, and your towns will be made waste. Then will the land take pleasure in its Sabbaths while it is waste and you are living in the land of your haters; then will the land have rest. All the days while it is waste will the land have rest, such rest as it never had in your Sabbaths, when you were living in it.
And the children of Israel went on with all the sins which Jeroboam did; they did not keep themselves from them; Till the Lord put Israel away from before his face, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was taken away from their land to Assyria, to this day.
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 as the Lord took delight in doing you good and increasing you, so the Lord will take pleasure in cutting you off and causing your destruction, and you will be uprooted from the land which you are about to take as your heritage. And the Lord will send you wandering among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other: there you will be servants to other gods, of wood and stone, gods of which you and your fathers had no knowledge. And even among these nations there will be no peace for you, and no rest for your feet: but the Lord will give you there a shaking heart and wasting eyes and weariness of soul: Your very life will be hanging in doubt before you, and day and night will be dark with fears, and nothing in life will be certain: In the morning you will say, If only it was evening! And at evening you will say, If only morning would come! Because of the fear in your hearts and the things which your eyes will see. And the Lord will take you back to Egypt again in ships, by the way of which I said to you, You will never see it again: there you will be offering yourselves as men-servants and women-servants to your haters for a price, and no man will take you.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Joshua 23
Commentary on Joshua 23 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 23
In this and the following chapter we have two farewell sermons, which Joshua preached to the people of Israel a little before his death. Had he designed to gratify the curiosity of succeeding ages, he would rather have recorded the method of Israel's settlement in their new conquests, their husbandry, manufacturers, trade, customs, courts of justice, and the constitutions of their infant commonwealth, which one would wish to be informed of; but that which he intended in the registers of this book was to entail on posterity a sense of religion and their duty to God; and therefore, overlooking these things which are the usual subjects of a common history, he here transmits to his reader the methods he took to persuade Israel to be faithful to their covenant with their God, which might have a good influence on the generations to come who should read those reasonings, as we may hope they had on that generation which then heard them. In this chapter we have,
Jos 23:1-10
As to the date of this edict of Joshua,
Jos 23:11-16
Here,