20. and if you leave him to serve foreign gods, he will turn against you and punish you. He will destroy you, even though he was good to you before.”
21. The people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”
22. Joshua said to them, “You are your own witnesses to the fact that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”“Yes,” they said, “we are witnesses.”
23. “Then get rid of those foreign gods that you have,” he demanded, “and pledge your loyalty to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
24. The people then said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”
25. So Joshua made a covenant for the people that day, and there at Shechem he gave them laws and rules to follow.
26. Joshua wrote these commands in the book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up under the oak tree in the Lord's sanctuary.
27. He said to all the people, “This stone will be our witness. It has heard all the words that the Lord has spoken to us. So it will be a witness against you, to keep you from rebelling against your God.”
28. Then Joshua sent the people away, and they all returned to their own part of the land.
29. After that, the Lord's servant Joshua son of Nun died at the age of 110.
30. They buried him on his own land at Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim north of Mount Gaash.
31. As long as Joshua lived, the people of Israel served the Lord, and after his death they continued to do so as long as those leaders were alive who had seen for themselves everything that the Lord had done for Israel.
32. The body of Joseph, which the people of Israel had brought from Egypt, was buried at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver. This land was inherited by Joseph's descendants.