24:14 Now 5 obey 6 the Lord and worship 7 him with integrity and loyalty. Put aside the gods your ancestors 8 worshiped 9 beyond the Euphrates 10 and in Egypt and worship 11 the Lord.
24:1 Joshua assembled all the Israelite tribes at Shechem. He summoned Israel’s elders, rulers, judges, and leaders, and they appeared before God.
1 tn The participle καπηλεύοντες (kaphleuonte") refers to those engaged in retail business, but with the negative connotations of deceptiveness and greed – “to peddle for profit,” “to huckster” (L&N 57.202). In the translation a noun form (“hucksters”) has been used in combination with the English verb “peddle…for profit” to convey the negative connotations of this term.
2 tn Or “in the presence of.”
3 tn Or “persons of pure motives.”
4 tn Grk “by means of the eagerness of others.”
5 sn Joshua quotes the
6 tn Heb “fear.”
7 tn Or “and serve.”
8 tn Heb “your fathers.”
9 tn Or “served.”
10 tn Heb “the river,” referring to the Euphrates. This has been specified in the translation for clarity; see v. 3.
11 tn Or “and serve.”
12 sn The four participles fastening… putting on…fitting…taking up… indicate the means by which believers can take their stand against the devil and his schemes. The imperative take in v. 17 communicates another means by which to accomplish the standing, i.e., by the word of God.
13 tn Grk “girding your waist with truth.” In this entire section the author is painting a metaphor for his readers based on the attire of a Roman soldier prepared for battle and its similarity to the Christian prepared to do battle against spiritually evil forces. Behind the expression “with truth” is probably the genitive idea “belt of truth.” Since this is an appositional genitive (i.e., belt which is truth), the author simply left unsaid the idea of the belt and mentioned only his real focus, namely, the truth. (The analogy would have been completely understandable to his 1st century readers.) The idea of the belt is supplied in the translation to clarify the sense in English.