Judges 2

¹Then the Angel of the Lord

²And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this?

³Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.’ ”

⁴So it was, when the Angel of the Lord

⁵Then they called the name of that place Bochim; and they sacrificed there to the Lord

⁶And when Joshua had dismissed the people, the children of Israel went each to his own inheritance to possess the land.

⁷So the people served the Lord

⁸Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord

⁹And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Heres, in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash.

¹⁰When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord

¹¹Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord

¹²and they forsook the Lord

¹³They forsook the Lord

¹⁴And the anger of the Lord

¹⁵Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord

¹⁶Nevertheless, the Lord

¹⁷Yet they would not listen to their judges, but they played the harlot with other gods, and bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked, in obeying the commandments of the Lord

¹⁸And when the Lord

¹⁹And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they reverted and behaved more corruptly than their fathers, by following other gods, to serve them and bow down to them. They did not cease from their own doings nor from their stubborn way.

²⁰Then the anger of the Lord

²¹I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died,

²²so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the Lord

²³Therefore the Lord