<p class="bodytext">&#8220;But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized<n id="1" /> him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die.

Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse<n id="1" /> must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked &#8211; that has never pulled with the yoke &#8211;

and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water,<n id="1" /> to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown.<n id="2" /> There at the wadi they are to break the heifer&#8217;s neck.

his body must not remain all night on the tree; instead you must make certain you bury<n id="1" /> him that same day, for the one who is left exposed<n id="2" /> on a tree is cursed by God.<n id="3" /> You must not defile your land which the <sc>Lordsc> your God is giving you as an inheritance.p>

The <sc>Lordsc> will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger<n id="1" /> will rage<n id="2" /> against that man; all the curses<n id="3" /> written in this scroll will fall upon him<n id="4" /> and the <sc>Lordsc> will obliterate his name from memory.<n id="5" />

The generation to come &#8211; your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places &#8211; will see<n id="1" /> the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the <sc>Lordsc> has brought on it.

<p class="bodytext">On the seventh day they were up at the crack of dawn<n id="1" /> and marched around the city as before &#8211; only this time they marched around it seven times.<n id="2" />

Then they erected over him a large pile of stones (it remains to this very day<n id="1" />) and the <sc>Lordsc>&#8217;s anger subsided. So that place is called the Valley of Disaster to this very day.p>

Joshua sent them away and they went to their hiding place<n id="1" /> west of Ai, between Bethel<n id="2" /> and Ai.<n id="3" /> Joshua spent that night with the army.<n id="4" />p>

<t /><p class="bodytext">That day Joshua captured Makkedah and put the sword to it and its king. He annihilated everyone who lived in it; he left no survivors. He did to its king what he had done to the king of Jericho.<n id="1" />p>

That day Moses made this solemn promise:<n id="1" /> &#8216;Surely the land on which you walked<n id="2" /> will belong to you and your descendants permanently,<n id="3" /> for you remained loyal to the <sc>Lordsc> your God.&#8217;

That entire generation passed away;<n id="1" /> a new generation grew up<n id="2" /> that had not personally experienced the <sc>Lordsc>&#8217;s presence or seen what he had done for Israel.<n id="3" />p>

<t /><p class="bodytext">That night the <sc>Lordsc> said to him, &#8220;Take the bull from your father&#8217;s herd, as well as a second bull, one that is seven years old.<n id="1" /> Pull down your father&#8217;s Baal altar and cut down the nearby Asherah pole.

Abimelech fought against the city all that day. He captured the city and killed all the people in it. Then he leveled<n id="1" /> the city and spread salt over it.<n id="2" />p>

<t /><p class="bodytext">In those days Israel had no king. And in those days the Danite tribe was looking for a place<n id="1" /> to settle, because at that time they did not yet have a place to call their own among the tribes of Israel.<n id="2" />

They went up and camped in Kiriath Jearim in Judah. (To this day that place is called Camp of Dan.<n id="1" /> It is west<n id="2" /> of Kiriath Jearim.)

That day the Benjaminites mustered from their cities twenty-six thousand sword-wielding soldiers, besides seven hundred well-trained soldiers from Gibeah.<n id="1" />

<p class="bodytext">So all the Israelites, the whole army,<n id="1" /> went up to<n id="2" /> Bethel.<n id="3" /> They wept and sat there before the <sc>Lordsc>; they did not eat anything<n id="4" /> that day until evening. They offered up burnt sacrifices and tokens of peace<n id="5" /> to the <sc>Lordsc>.

The <sc>Lordsc> annihilated Benjamin before Israel; the Israelites struck down that day 25,100 sword-wielding Benjaminites.<n id="1" />

<p class="bodytext">Year after year<n id="1" /> this man would go up from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the <sc>Lordsc> of hosts at Shiloh. It was there that the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, served as the <sc>Lordsc>&#8217;s priests.