Joshua 22–24
1 Then Joshua summoned the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. 2 He said to them, “You have done everything that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you and have obeyed me in everything that I have commanded you. 3 You have not left your brothers these many days down to this day, and you have observed the obligations of the commandment of the Lord your God. 4 Now the Lord your God has given rest to your brothers, as He had said to them. So now, turn and go to your homes, to the land of your possession, which Moses the servant of the Lord gave you on the other side of the Jordan. 5 Only carefully obey the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to obey His commandments, to cling to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and soul.”
6 Joshua blessed them and sent them off, and they went to their tents. 7 Moses had assigned land in Bashan to half the tribe of Manasseh, and to the other half Joshua assigned land among their brothers on the west side of the Jordan. When Joshua sent them also to their homes and blessed them, 8 he said, “Return home with great wealth, much livestock, silver, gold, copper, iron, and great quantities of clothing. Divide the spoil of your enemies among your brothers.”
9 So the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh left the children of Israel at Shiloh in the land of Canaan to go to the land of Gilead, the land of their possession, according to the word of the Lord through Moses.
10 The tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh came near the Jordan in the land of Canaan and built a very large altar by the Jordan. 11 The children of Israel heard someone say, “The tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have built an altar by the land of Canaan by the Jordan on the Israelite side.” 12 When the children of Israel heard this, they assembled the whole congregation of the children of Israel at Shiloh to go up against them in war.
13 Then the children of Israel sent Phinehas, son of Eleazar the priest, to the sons of Reuben, to the sons of Gad, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh, into the land of Gilead, 14 and with him ten chiefs, one chief each for each father’s household of every tribe of Israel; and each one of them was the head of his father’s house among the thousands of Israel.
15 They came to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh in the land of Gilead and said to them, 16 “The whole congregation of the Lord says, ‘What is this trespass you have committed against the God of Israel? Today you have turned from following the Lord by building yourselves an altar to rebel against Him! 17 Is the sin of Peor, from which we have still not purified ourselves even today, not enough for us, which brought a plague upon the congregation of the Lord 18 that today you have turned away from following the Lord?
“‘If today you are rebelling against the Lord, then tomorrow He will be angry with the whole congregation of Israel! 19 If indeed your own land is unclean, then cross over to the land of the Lord where the tabernacle of the Lord stands and take land among us. Yet do not rebel against the Lord or rebel against us by building an altar other than the altar of the Lord our God. 20 Did not Achan son of Zerah commit a trespass in the things under the ban, and wrath fall on all the congregation of Israel? And that man did not perish alone in his iniquity.’”
21 Then the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh answered and said to the heads of the Israelite clans, 22 “The Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, He knows, and may Israel know—if we have acted in rebellion or disloyalty against the Lord, do not spare us today. 23 If we have built an altar to turn away from following the Lord, to offer burnt offerings and grain offerings or make peace offerings upon it, may the Lord Himself demand an account.
24 “We did this deed because we were worried that in the future your descendants might say, ‘What have you to do with the Lord God of Israel? 25 The Lord made the Jordan a boundary between us and you, the descendants of Reuben and Gad. You have no share in the Lord!’ In this way your descendants might make our descendants to stop worshipping the Lord.
26 “So we said to each other, ‘Let us build this altar, not for burnt offering or sacrifice, 27 but as a witness for us, for you, and for the generations after us, that we may perform the service of the Lord before Him with our burnt offerings, sacrifices, and peace offerings, and in the future your descendants will not be able to say to our descendants, “You have no share in the Lord!”’
28 “Therefore we said, ‘In the future, if they say this to us or to our descendants, we will say, “Look at the replica of the altar of the Lord that our fathers made, not for burnt offerings or sacrifices, but as a witness between you and us.”’
29 “God forbid that we should rebel against the Lord by turning from following the Lord today by building an altar for burnt offerings, grain offerings, and sacrifices other than the altar of the Lord God that stands before His tabernacle!”
30 When Phinehas the priest, the leaders of the congregation, and the heads of the Israelite clans who were with him heard what the descendants of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh said, it pleased them. 31 Phinehas son of Eleazar the priest said to the descendants of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, “Today we know that the Lord is in our midst because you did not violate your obligations to the Lord in this matter. Indeed, you have delivered the children of Israel from the judgment of the Lord.”
32 Then Phinehas son of Eleazar the priest and the leaders returned from meeting the descendants of Reuben and Gad in the land of Gilead to the children of Israel in the land of Canaan. They brought back a report. 33 This report was good in the eyes of the children of Israel, and the children of Israel blessed God. They decided not to make war against the descendants of Reuben and Gad to ruin the land in which they lived.
34 The descendants of Reuben and Gad named the altar Witness, “For it is a witness between us that the Lord is God.”
Chapter 23
1 A long time later, after the Lord had given Israel rest from all their enemies around them, Joshua was old and advanced in years. 2 Joshua called for all Israel, their elders, clan heads, judges, and officials, and said to them, “I am old and advanced in years. 3 You have seen all that the Lord your God did to all these peoples before you, for it is the Lord your God who has waged war for you. 4 See, I have allotted to you as an inheritance the land of these peoples who remain, along with the land of the peoples whom I defeated, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 5 The Lord your God will drive them out and dispossess them from before you, and you will inherit their land, as the Lord your God told you.
6 “Now be very strong to observe and enact all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, so that you do not deviate from it to the right or the left. 7 Do not assimilate with these peoples remaining among you. Do not invoke the names of their gods, nor swear by, serve, or worship them. 8 Instead, cling to the Lord your God, as you have done until today.
9 “For the Lord has dispossessed before you great and mighty peoples, and as for you, not a single man has been able to stand against you until today. 10 One man from among you can make a thousand flee, for it is the Lord your God who wages war for you, as He told you. 11 Now be careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God!
12 “For if you should turn and cling to the remainder of these peoples who are left with you, and you intermarry and assimilate with them, and they with you, 13 know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations from before you. But they shall be snares and traps to you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.
14 “Now, I am going the way of all the earth. You know in all your hearts and souls that not a single word has failed out of all the good things that the Lord your God has said concerning you. All came true for you. Not a single word among them failed. 15 So just as every good thing that the Lord your God said to you came to be, even so the Lord can bring every bad thing upon you until He has destroyed you from this good land that the Lord your God gave you. 16 If you break the covenant of the Lord your God that He commanded you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land that He gave you.”
Chapter 24
1 Joshua called for all the Israelite tribes at Shechem and summoned the elders, clan heads, judges, and officials of Israel. They presented themselves before God.
2 Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Long ago your fathers—Terah father of Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. 3 I took your father Abraham from beyond the Euphrates, brought him through all the land of Canaan, and gave him many descendants. To him I gave Isaac. 4 To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau, and to Esau I gave Mount Seir for his inheritance, but Jacob and his descendants went down into Egypt.
5 “I sent Moses and Aaron, I struck Egypt down with all I did in their midst, and afterward I brought you out. 6 I brought your fathers out of Egypt, then you came to the sea. The Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. 7 Your fathers cried out to the Lord, and He placed darkness between you and the Egyptians. He made the sea come upon them and cover them. Your own eyes saw what I did to Egypt, and you lived in the wilderness a long time.
8 “I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They waged war against you, but I gave them into your hand so that you might inherit their land, and I destroyed them before you. 9 Then Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and waged war against Israel. He called for Balaam son of Beor to curse you, 10 but I refused to listen to Balaam. Therefore he blessed you still, and I delivered you out of his hand.
11 “You crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The leaders of Jericho, along with the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites, and Jebusites, waged war against you, but I gave them into your hand. 12 I sent the hornet and drove out the two Amorite kings from before you, but not with your sword or your bow. 13 I gave you a land for which you did not work, and cities that you did not build. You live in them, and you are eating from the produce of vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.
14 “Now fear the Lord, and serve Him with sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. 15 If it is displeasing to you to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve, if it should be the gods your fathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites’ land where you are now living. Yet as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
16 The people answered and said, “God forbid that we forsake the Lord and serve other gods! 17 For it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers out from slavery in the land of Egypt and performed these great signs in our sight and guarded us all the way that we went and among all the peoples through whom we passed. 18 The Lord drove out before us all the people, even the Amorites, who lived in the land. So we will indeed serve the Lord, for He is our God.”
19 Then Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God, and He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. 20 If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn, bring disaster upon you, and finish you off, after having been good to you.”
21 The people said to Joshua, “No, we will serve the Lord!”
22 Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves, that you have chosen the Lord, to serve Him.”
Then they said, “We are witnesses.”
23 “Now then,” he said, “put away the foreign gods in your midst, and stretch out your hearts to the Lord God of Israel!”
24 The people said to Joshua, “It is the Lord our God we will serve, and His voice that we will obey.”
25 So that day Joshua made a covenant for the people and established regulations and laws for them at Shechem. 26 Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. He took a large stone and set it up under the oak by the sanctuary of the Lord.
27 Joshua said to all the people, “See, this stone will be a witness for us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord that He spoke to us. It will be a witness for us, lest you deny your God.”
28 Then Joshua sent the people away, each man to his inheritance.
29 After these events took place, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten. 30 They buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath Serah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim north of Mount Gaash.
31 Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the deeds that the Lord had done for Israel.
32 They buried the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought out of Egypt, in Shechem in the part of the field that Jacob bought from the descendants of Hamor the father of Shechem for one hundred pieces of silver. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.
33 Eleazar son of Aaron died, and they buried him at Gibeah, the town of Phinehas his son, which was in the hill country of Ephraim.
Luke 3
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Caesar Tiberius, Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip was tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Traconitis, and Lysanias was the tetrarch of Abilene. 2 Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He came into the region surrounding the Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying:
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make His paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled
and every mountain and hill shall be brought low;
and the crooked shall be made straight
and the rough ways shall be made smooth;
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
7 Then he said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You children of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Therefore bear fruit worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 9 Even now the axe is put to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
10 The people asked him, “What then must we do?”
11 John answered, “He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none. And he who has food, let him do likewise.”
12 Then tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what must we do?”
13 He said to them, “Collect no more than what is appointed you.”
14 Then the soldiers likewise demanded of him, “And what must we do?”
He said to them, “Do no violence to anyone nor accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages.”
15 As the people were in expectation, and everyone reflected in their hearts upon John, whether he might be the Christ or not, 16 John answered them all, “I indeed baptize you with water. But One mightier than I is coming, the strings of whose shoes I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 17 His fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing floor, and will gather the wheat into His granary. But He will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 Then he preached many other things in his exhortation to the people.
19 But Herod the tetrarch, being rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, 20 added also this above them all: He locked John up in prison.
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove on Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, “You are My beloved Son. In You I am well pleased.”
23 Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph,
who was the son of Heli, 24 who was the son of Matthat,
who was the son of Levi, who was the son of Melchi,
who was the son of Jannai, who was the son of Joseph,
25 who was the son of Mattathias, who was the son of Amos,
who was the son of Nahum, who was the son of Esli,
who was the son of Naggai, 26 who was the son of Maath,
who was the son of Mattathias, who was the son of Semein,
who was the son of Josech, who was the son of Joda,
27 who was the son of Joanan, who was the son of Rhesa,
who was the son of Zerubbabel, who was the son of Shealtiel,
who was the son of Neri, 28 who was the son of Melchi,
who was the son of Addi, who was the son of Cosam,
who was the son of Elmadam, who was the son of Er,
29 who was the son of Joshua, who was the son of Eliezer,
who was the son of Jorim, who was the son of Matthat,
who was the son of Levi, 30 who was the son of Simeon,
who was the son of Judah, who was the son of Joseph,
who was the son of Jonan, who was the son of Eliakim,
31 who was the son of Melea, who was the son of Menna,
who was the son of Mattatha, who was the son of Nathan,
who was the son of David, 32who was the son of Jesse,
who was the son of Obed, who was the son of Boaz,
who was the son of Salmon, who was the son of Nahshon,
33 who was the son of Amminadab, who was the son of Ram,
who was the son of Hezron, who was the son of Perez,
who was the son of Judah, 34 who was the son of Jacob,
who was the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham,
who was the son of Terah, who was the son of Nahor,
35 who was the son of Serug, who was the son of Reu,
who was the son of Peleg, who was the son of Eber,
who was the son of Shelah, 36 who was the son of Cainan,
who was the son of Arphaxad, who was the son of Shem,
who was the son of Noah, who was the son of Lamech,
37 who was the son of Methuselah, who was the son of Enoch,
who was the son of Jared, who was the son of Mahalalel,
who was the son of Cainan, 38 who was the son of Enosh,
who was the son of Seth, who was the son of Adam,
who was the son of God.