Joshua 24:19-32

¹⁹Joshua replied to the people, “ I think that you are not able to serve/worship Yahweh, because he is a holy God. He will not forgive your sinning and rebelling against him. He demands that you serve/worship only him IDM.

²⁰He has been good to you in the past*, but if you turn away from him and serve/worship foreign/other gods, he will turn against you and he will cause you to experience disasters. He will punish IDM you severely!”

²¹But the people replied to Joshua, “No, we will not turn away from worshiping/serving Yahweh We will serve/worship Yahweh!”

²²Then Joshua said, “You yourselves are saying that you have decided to serve/worship Yahweh.” They replied, “Yes, we are saying that.”

²³Then Joshua said, “Since you have decided that, you must throw away all the other gods/idols that you have among you. You must also promise that you will wholeheartedly give yourselves to Yahweh, the God whom we Israelis serve/worship.”

²⁴The people replied, “We will serve/worship Yahweh, our God, and obey him.”

²⁵That day, Joshua established an agreement between the people and Yahweh. He wrote for them all the laws that they were required to obey.

²⁶He wrote all those laws on a scroll. He called it ❛The laws of God❜. Then he told some men to set up a large stone there at Shechem, under the large oak tree near the place where they worshiped Yahweh.

²⁷He said to all the people, “Look! It is as though this stone has heard everything that Yahweh said to you and that you promised Yahweh. It will serve as a witness against you if you rebel against your God!”

²⁸Then Joshua sent the people away, and all of them returned to their own areas/homes.

²⁹Some time after that, Nun's son Joshua, the faithful servant of Yahweh, died. He was 110 years old when he died.

³⁰The Israeli people buried his body on his own property in Timnath-Serah town town. It is north of Gaash Mountain in the hilly area of the tribe who were descendants of Ephraim.

³¹The Israeli people served/worshiped Yahweh as long as Joshua was alive. After Joshua died, they continued serving/worshiping Yahweh while the elders who had experienced everything that Yahweh had done for the Israeli people were still alive.

³²Joseph's bones, which the Israeli people had brought with them from Egypt, were also buried at Shechem. The people buried them in the piece of land that Jacob had bought long ago for a hundred pieces of silver from Hamor, the father of Shechem. That piece of land was in the area that was given to the people who were descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph's sons.