Now pay attention to all the commandments I am giving you today, so that you may be strong enough to enter and possess the land where you are headed,

Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore, I am commanding you to do this thing today.

Now this is the law pertaining to one who flees there in order to live, if he has accidentally killed another without hating him at the time of the accident.

If there is someone among you who is impure because of some nocturnal emission, he must leave the camp; he may not reenter it immediately.

As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives.

You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God – the heads of your tribes, your elders, your officials, every Israelite man,

Then if you and your descendants turn to the Lord your God and obey him with your whole mind and being just as I am commanding you today,

He has done this so all the nations of the earth might recognize the Lord’s power and so you might always obey the Lord your God.”

So Joshua made sure they marched the ark of the Lord around the city one time. Then they went back to the camp and spent the night there.

The Lord did as he asked. When he got up the next morning, he squeezed the fleece, and enough dew dripped from it to fill a bowl.

Now Abimelech son of Jerub-Baal went to Shechem to see his mother’s relatives. He said to them and to his mother’s entire extended family,

There was a man named Manoah from Zorah, from the Danite tribe. His wife was infertile and childless.

So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he met the man, he said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” He said, “Yes.”

However, she got angry at him and went home to her father’s house in Bethlehem in Judah. When she had been there four months,

They said, “Why, O Lord God of Israel, has this happened in Israel?” An entire tribe has disappeared from Israel today!”

So Naomi returned, accompanied by her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth, who came back with her from the region of Moab. (Now they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.)

After some time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, thinking, “I asked the Lord for him.

You will see trouble in my dwelling place! Israel will experience blessings, but there will not be an old man in your house for all time.

The Philistines were scared because they thought that gods had come to the camp. They said, “Too bad for us! We’ve never seen anything like this!

So the Philistines fought. Israel was defeated; they all ran home. The slaughter was very great; thirty thousand foot soldiers fell in battle.