1
At that time, after the death of Yehoshua, the children of the Kena’aniym were still in the land, and the Yis’ra’eliym resolved to drive them out.
2
And the children of Yis’rael asked of Yahuah, saying, Who shall first go up for us to the Kena’aniym to fight against them? and Yahuah said, Yehudah shall go up.
3
And the children of Yehudah said to Shim’on, Go up with us into our lot, and we will fight against the Kena’aniym and we likewise will go up with you, in your lot, so the children of Shim’on went with the children of Yehudah.
4
And the children of Yehudah went up and fought against the Kena’aniym, so Yahuah delivered the Kena’aniym into the hands of the children of Yehudah, and they struck them in Bezek, ten thousand men.
5
And they fought with Adoni-Bezeq in Bezek, and he fled from before them, and they pursued him and caught him, and they took hold of him and cut off his thumbs and great toes.
6
And Adoni-Bezeq said, sixty and ten kings having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table, as I have done, so Elohim has requited me, and they brought him to Yerushalayim and he died there.
7
And the children of Shim’on went with the children of Yehudah, and they struck the Kena’aniym with the edge of the sword.
8
And Yahuah was with the children of Yehudah, and they possessed the mountain, and the children of Yoseph went up to Beit-El, the same is Luz, and Yahuah was with them.
9
And the children of Yoseph spied out Beit-El, and the watchmen saw a man going forth from the city, and they caught him and said to him, Show us now the entrance of the city and we will show kindness to you.
10
And that man showed them the entrance of the city, and the children of Yoseph came and struck the City with the edge of the sword.
11
And the man with his family they sent away, and he went to the Chittiym and he built a city, and he called the name of it Luz, so all the Yis’ra’eliym lived in their cities, and the children of Yis’rael lived in their cities, and the children of Yis’rael served Yahuah all the days of Yehoshua, and all the days of the elders, who had lengthened their days after Yehoshua, and saw the great work of Yahuah, which he had performed for Yis’rael.
12
And the elders judged Yis’rael after the death of Yehoshua for seventeen years.
13
And all the elders also fought the battles of Yis’rael against the Kena’aniym and Yahuah drove the Kena’aniym from before the children of Yis’rael, in order to place the Yis’ra’eliym in their land.
14
And he accomplished all the words which he had spoken to Avraham, Yitschaq, and Ya’aqov, and the oath which he had sworn, to give to them and to their children, the land of the Kena’aniym.
15
And Yahuah gave to the children of Yis’rael the whole land of Kena’an, as he had sworn to their ancestors, and Yahuah gave them rest from those around them, and the children of Yis’rael lived securely in their cities.
16
Blessed be Yahuah for ever, amen, and amen.
17
Strengthen yourselves, and let the hearts of all you that trust in Yahuah be of good courage. Provenance Ledger Native textual layer The work survives as a medieval Ivrit narrative compilation. The Hebrew textual tradition controls names, grammar, divine references, and the work’s own narrative categories. Status: ATTESTED LATER IVRIT WITNESS; date and authorship unresolved within the text itself. English coordinate witness The 1840 Moses Samuel translation, later republished by J. H. Parry & Company in 1887, supplies the conventional 91-chapter and 3,910-verse coordinate scaffold. Its archaic English, publisher’s identification claim, Anglicized names, and generic church vocabulary do not govern this reconstruction. Earlier controls Torah and the earlier HaSefarim narrative remain superior wherever this later work retells the same event. Jubilees, Enoch, and Yosephus function as comparative controls according to their own provenance; correspondence is not treated as identity, and disagreement is not silently erased. Transmission and ideological layers The work contains expansions, chronological claims, ethnonyms, geographic labels, dynastic accounts, and inherited interpretive material from later centuries. These remain inside the work’s voice. Medieval or publisher-era claims are not projected backward as direct eyewitness history. Unresolved register The exact date, author, and full source genealogy of the compilation remain unresolved. The relationship between any individual narrative unit and earlier oral or written traditions must be assessed unit by unit. This edition does not declare the 91-chapter compilation to be the distinct Sefer HaYashar cited in HaSefarim. KIDAN–B’ERIT decision rule IVRIT + GEʽEZ → ROOT → FUNCTION → RELATION → BEST-PRESERVED FORM → CROSS-LANGUAGE BRIDGE → SEMITIC CORROBORATION → FRESH ENGLISH. Native Ivrit remains Ivrit; genuine Geʽez parallels remain Geʽez; English remains the gloss and never becomes the source.