The Israelis were punished for doing evil things

10 After all the people died who lived at the same time as Joshua [EUP], a group of people grew up who did not know Yahweh, and did not know what great things he had done for the Israeli people. 11-13 11-13They did things that Yahweh said were very evil. They worshiped idols that represented the god Baal and the goddess Astarte. They worshiped [DOU] the various gods that the people-groups around them worshiped. They stopped worshiping Yahweh, the God their ancestors worshiped, the one who had brought their ancestors out of Egypt. That caused Yahweh to be very angry. 14 So he allowed people from other groups to raid them and steal their crops and animals. They were no longer able to resist their enemies, and Yahweh allowed all their enemies around them to defeat them. 15 Whenever the Israelis went to fight their enemies, Yahweh [MTY] was opposing them, and allowed their enemies to defeat them, just as he had promised he would do. So the Israelis were greatly distressed.

16 Then Yahweh gave leaders to them. These leaders rescued the Israelis from the people who were raiding them. 17 But the Israelis still would not pay attention to their leaders. Instead, they went to the idols, acting like prostitutes who gave themselves to men who were not their husbands [MET], and they worshiped those idols. They were not like their ancestors. Their ancestors obeyed what Yahweh commanded, but their descendants quickly stopped behaving as their ancestors had behaved. 18 Whenever Yahweh gave a leader to them, he helped that leader and enabled him to rescue the people from their enemies. He helped them like that as long as that leader was alive. Yahweh pitied them as they groaned because they were being oppressed and caused to suffer. 19 But after that leader died, the people went back to behaving in ways even more evil than their ancestors had behaved. They worshiped other gods and bowed down to them and did all [LIT] the things that they thought those gods wanted them to do.

20 So Yahweh was very angry with the Israeli people. He said, “These people have disobeyed the agreement I made with their ancestors. They have not done what I told them to do. 21 So I will no longer expel the people-groups that Joshua left in this land when he died. 22 I will use them to test the Israeli people to see whether they will do what I want them to do, as their ancestors did.” 23 Yahweh had allowed those people-groups to stay in that land. He did not expel them by allowing Joshua and his men to defeat them.

32 1-2At that time there were still many people-groups in Canaan. Yahweh left them there to test the Israeli people. But many of the Israelis in Canaan were ones who had not fought in any of the wars in Canaan. So Yahweh also left those people-groups in Canaan so that the descendants of those who had not fought in any of the wars might learn how to fight. 3 This is a list of the people-groups that Yahweh left there: The Philistines and their five leaders, the people living in the area near Sidon city, the descendants of Canaan, and the descendants of Hiv who were living in the mountains of Lebanon between Baal-Hermon Mountain and Lebo-Hamath. 4 Yahweh left these people-groups there to test the Israelis, to see if they would obey his commands which he had told Moses to give them. 5 The Israelis lived among the Canaan people-group, the Hiv people-group, the Amor people-group, the Periz people-group, the Hiv people-group, and the Jebus people-group. 6 Moses had told the people not to associate with any of those people. But the Israelis took daughters of people from those people-groups to be their own wives, and gave their own daughters to men of those groups, to marry them. And as a result they started to worship the gods of those people-groups.