7 Have nothing to do with these nations who still are living among you; let not their gods be named by you or used in your oaths; do not be their servants or give them worship:
Take note of all these things which I have said to you, and let not the names of other gods come into your minds or from your lips.
Their sorrows will be increased who go after another god: I will not take drink offerings from their hands, or take their names on my lips.
How is it possible for you to have my forgiveness for this? your children have given me up, taking their oaths by those who are no gods: when I had given them food in full measure, they were false to their wives, taking their pleasure in the houses of loose women.
Let them not go on living in your land, or they will make you do evil against me: for if you give worship to their gods, it will certainly be a cause of sin to you.
And when the Lord has given them up into your hands and you have overcome them, give them up to complete destruction: make no agreement with them, and have no mercy on them: Do not take wives or husbands from among them; do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons.
You may not go down on your faces before them or give them worship: for I, the Lord your God, am a God who will not give his honour to another; and I will send punishment on the children for the wrongdoing of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation of my haters;
And Nebo and Baal-meon, (their names being changed,) and Sibmah: and they gave other names to the towns they made.
Do not go in the road of sinners, or be walking in the way of evil men.
For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and never again will she say their names.
Do not keep company with those who have not faith: for what is there in common between righteousness and evil, or between light and dark? And what agreement is there between Christ and the Evil One? or what part has one who has faith with one who has not? And what agreement has the house of God with images? for we are a house of the living God; even as God has said, I will be living among them, and walking with them; and I will be their God, and they will be my people. For which cause, Come out from among them, and be separate, says the Lord, and let no unclean thing come near you; and I will take you for myself,
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,