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¹ All the kings of the Amorites west of the Jordan and the Canaanite kings living by the Mediterranean Sea heard that the Lord dried up the Jordan River until the Israelites had crossed it. After that they were scared and too afraid to face the Israelites.

The Israelites Are Circumcised

² At that time the Lord said to Joshua, "Make knives from flint stones and circumcise the Israelites." ³ So Joshua made knives from flint stones and circumcised the Israelites at Gibeath Haaraloth.

⁴ This is why Joshua circumcised the men: After the Israelites left Egypt, all the men old enough to serve in the army died in the desert on the way out of Egypt. ⁵ The men who had come out of Egypt had been circumcised, but none of those who were born in the desert on the trip from Egypt had been circumcised. ⁶ The Israelites had moved about in the desert for forty years. During that time all the fighting men who had left Egypt had died because they had not obeyed the Lord. So the Lord swore they would not see the land he had promised their ancestors to give them, a fertile land. ⁷ Their sons took their places. But none of the sons born on the trip from Egypt had been circumcised, so Joshua circumcised them. ⁸ After all the Israelites had been circumcised, they stayed in camp until they were healed.

⁹ Then the Lord said to Joshua, "As slaves in Egypt you were ashamed, but today I have removed that shame." So Joshua named that place Gilgal, which it is still named today.

¹⁰ The people of Israel were camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho. It was there, on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, they celebrated the Passover Feast. ¹¹ The day after the Passover, the people ate food grown on that land: bread made without yeast and roasted grain. ¹² The day they ate this food, the manna stopped coming. The Israelites no longer got the manna from heaven. They ate the food grown in the land of Canaan that year.

¹³ Joshua was near Jericho when he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and asked, "Are you a friend or an enemy?"

¹⁴ The man answered, "I am neither. I have come as the commander of the Lord's army."

Then Joshua bowed facedown on the ground and asked, "Does my master have a command for me, his servant?"

¹⁵ The commander of the Lord's army answered, "Take off your sandals, because the place where you are standing is holy." So Joshua did.