Yusha 24

Yusha gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God. ²Yusha said to all the people, Thus says Allah, the God of Israel, Your fathers lived of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father of Ibrahim, and the father of Nahor: and they worshiped other gods. ³I took your father Ibrahim from beyond the River, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Ishaq. ⁴I gave Yaqub and Esau to Ishaq: and I gave Mount Seir to Esau, to possess it: and Yaqub and his children went down into Egypt. ⁵I sent Musa and Harun, and I plagued Egypt, according to that which I did in the midst of it: and afterward I brought you out. ⁶I brought your fathers out of Egypt: and you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued after your fathers with chariots and with horsemen to the Red Sea. ⁷When they cried out to Allah, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and brought the sea on them, and covered them; and your eyes saw what I did in Egypt: and you lived in the wilderness many days. ⁸I brought you into the land of the Amorites, that lived beyond the Jordan: and they fought with you; and I gave them into your hand, and you possessed their land; and I destroyed them from before you. ⁹Then Balak Ibn Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel: and he sent and called Balaam Ibn Beor to curse you; ¹⁰but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you still: so I delivered you out of his hand. ¹¹You went over the Jordan, and came to Jericho: and the men of Jericho fought against you, the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Girgashite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; and I delivered them into your hand. ¹²I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; not with your sword, nor with your bow. ¹³I gave you a land whereon you had not laboured, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell therein; of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant do you eat. ¹⁴Now therefore fear Allah, and worship him in sincerity and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers worshiped beyond the River, and in Egypt; and worship Allah. ¹⁵If it seem evil to you to worship Allah, choose you this day whom you will worship; whether the gods which your fathers worshiped that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell: but as for me and my house, we will worship Allah. ¹⁶The people answered, Far be it from us that we should forsake Allah, to worship other gods; ¹⁷for Allah our God, he it is who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way in which we went, and among all the peoples through the midst of whom we passed; ¹⁸and Allah drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land: therefore we also will worship Allah; for he is our God. ¹⁹Yusha said to the people, You cannot worship Allah; for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your disobedience nor your sins. ²⁰If you forsake Allah, and worship foreign gods, then he will turn and do you evil, and consume you, after that he has done you good. ²¹The people said to Yusha, No; but we will worship Allah. ²²Yusha said to the people, You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen you Allah, to worship him. They said, We are witnesses. ²³Now therefore put away, said he, the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to Allah, the God of Israel. ²⁴The people said to Yusha, Allah our God will we worship, and to his voice will we listen. ²⁵So Yusha made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. ²⁶Yusha wrote these words in the Book of the Taurat of God; and he took a great stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of Allah. ²⁷Yusha said to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us; for it has heard all the words of Allah which he spoke to us: it shall be therefore a witness against you, lest you deny your God. ²⁸So Yusha sent the people away, every man to his inheritance. ²⁹It happened after these things, that Yusha bin Nun, the servant of Allah, died, being one hundred ten years old. ³⁰They buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnathserah, which is in the hill-country of Ephraim, on the north of the mountain of Gaash. ³¹Israel worshiped Allah all the days of Yusha, and all the days of the elders who outlived Yusha, and had known all the work of Allah, that he had worked for Israel. ³²The bones of Yusuf, which Bani-Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in the parcel of ground which Yaqub bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money: and they became the inheritance of the children of Yusuf. ³³Eleazar Ibn Harun died; and they buried him in the hill of Phinehas his son, which was given him in the hill-country of Ephraim.