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[93]
After this was over, he gathered the army together to a congregation,
and spake thus to those tribes that had their settlement in the land of
the Amorites beyond Jordan, - for fifty thousand of them had armed themselves,
and had gone to the war along with them: - "Since that God, who is
the Father and Lord of the Hebrew nation, has now given us this land for
a possession, and promised to preserve us in the enjoyment of it as our
own for ever; and since you have with alacrity offered yourselves to assist
us when we wanted that assistance on all occasions, according to his command;
it is but just, now all our difficulties are over, that you should be permitted
to enjoy rest, and that we should trespass on your alacrity to help us
no longer; that so, if we should again stand in need of it, we may readily
have it on any future emergency, and not tire you out so much now as may
make you slower in assisting us another thee. We, therefore, return you
our thanks for the dangers you have undergone with us, and we do it not
at this thee only, but we shall always be thus disposed; and be so good
as to remember our friends, and to preserve in mind what advantages we
have had from them; and how you have put off the enjoyments of your own
happiness for our sakes, and have labored for what we have now, by the
goodwill of God, obtained, and resolved not to enjoy your own prosperity
till you had afforded us that assistance. However, you have, by joining
your labor with ours, gotten great plenty of riches, and will carry home
with you much prey, with gold and silver, and, what is more than all these,
our good-will towards you, and a mind willingly disposed to make a requital
of your kindness to us, in what case soever you shall desire it, for you
have not omitted any thing which Moses beforehand required of you, nor
have you despised him because he was dead and gone from you, so that there
is nothing to diminish that gratitude which we owe to you. We therefore
dismiss you joyful to your own inheritances; and we entreat you to suppose,
that there is no limit to be set to the intimate relation that is between
us; and that you will not imagine, because this river is interposed between
us, that you are of a different race from us, and not Hebrews; for we are
all the posterity of Abraham, both we that inhabit here, and you that inhabit
there; and it is the same God that brought our forefathers and yours into
the world, whose worship and form of government we are to take care of,
which he has ordained, and are most carefully to observe; because while
you continue in those laws, God will also show himself merciful and assisting
to you; but if you imitate the other nations, and forsake those laws, he
will reject your nation." When Joshua had spoken thus, and saluted
them all, both those in authority one by one, and the whole multitude in
common, he himself staid where he was; but the people conducted those tribes
on their journey, and that not without tears in their eyes; and indeed
they hardly knew how to part one from the other.
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