Study Desk

That it may be a sign among you: and when your children shall ask you tomorrow, saying: What means these stones?

You shall answer them: The waters of the Jordan ran off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord when it passed over the same: therefore were these stones set for a monument of the children of Israel forever.

The children of Israel therefore did as Josue commanded them, carrying out of the channel of the Jordan twelve stones, as the Lord had commanded him according to the number of the children of Israel unto the place wherein they camped, and there they set them.

The children of Ruben also, and Gad, and half the tribe of Manasses, went armed before the children of Israel, as Moses had commanded them.

And said to the children of Israel: When your children shall ask their fathers tomorrow, and shall say to them: What mean these stones?

Now when all the kings of the Amorrhites, who dwelt beyond the Jordan, westward, and all the kings of Chanaan, who possessed the places near the great sea, had heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the children of Israel, till they passed over, their heart failed them, and there remained no spirit in them, fearing the coming in of the children of Israel.par

At that time the Lord said to Josue: Make thee knives of stone, and circumcise the second time the children of Israel.

He did what the Lord had commanded, and he circumcised the children of Israel in the hill of the foreskins.

The children of these succeeded in the place of their fathers, and were circumcised by Josue: for they were uncircumcised even as they were born, and no one had circumcised them in the way.

And the children of Israel abode in Galgal, and they kept the phase, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, in the plains of Jericho:

And the manna ceased after they ate of the corn of the land, neither did the children of Israel use that food any more, but they ate of the corn of the present year of the land of Chanaan.

Now Jericho was close shut up and fenced, for fear of the children of Israel, and no man durst go out or come in.

Cursed be the man before the Lord, that shall raise up and build the city of Jericho. In his firstborn may he lay the foundation thereof, and in the last of his children set up its gates.

But the children of Israel transgressed the commandment, and took to their own use of that which was accursed. For Achan, the son of Charmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zare, of the tribe of Juda, took something of the anathema: and the Lord was angry against the children of Israel.

And taking them away out of the tent, they brought them to Josue, and to all the children of Israel, and threw them down before the Lord.

So all being slain that had pursued after Israel, in his flight to the wilderness, and falling by the sword in the same place, the children of Israel returned and laid waste the city.

And the children of Israel divided among them, the cattle and the prey of the city, as the Lord had commanded Josue.

As Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded the children of Israel, and it is written in the book of the law of Moses: an altar of unhewn stones, which iron had not touched: and he offered upon it holocausts to the Lord, and immolated victims of peace offerings.

And he wrote upon stones, the Deuteronomy of the law of Moses, which he had ordered before the children of Israel.

He left out nothing of those things which Moses had commanded, but he repeated all before all the people of Israel, with the women and children, and strangers, that dwelt among them.