Joshua prayed, ¹  “O, Master, Lord! Why did you bring these people across the Jordan to hand us over to the Amorites so they could destroy us?

The men of Gibeon sent this message to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, “Do not abandon ¹  your subjects! ²  Rescue us! Help us! For all the Amorite kings living in the hill country are attacking us.” ³ 

If you have no desire ¹  to worship ²  the Lord, choose today whom you will worship, ³  whether it be the gods whom your ancestors ⁴  worshiped ⁵  beyond the Euphrates, ⁶  or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my family ⁷  will worship ⁸  the Lord!”

So the king summoned the Gibeonites and spoke with them. (Now the Gibeonites were not descendants of Israel; they were a remnant of the Amorites. The Israelites had made a promise to ¹  them, but Saul tried to kill them because of his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.)

Now when these things had been completed, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the local residents ¹  who practice detestable things similar to those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.

When you perceived that his heart was faithful toward you, you established a ¹  covenant with him to give his descendants ²  the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Girgashites. You have fulfilled your promise, ³  for you are righteous.

At that time ¹  their fortified cities will be like the abandoned summits of the Amorites, ²  which they abandoned because of the Israelites; there will be desolation.

The five Amorite kings ¹  ran away and hid in the cave at Makkedah.

Joshua attacked them by surprise after marching all night from Gilgal. ¹ 

(The Danites failed to conquer their territory, ¹  so they went up and fought with Leshem and captured it. They put the sword to it, took possession of it, and lived in it. They renamed it ²  Dan after their ancestor. ³ )

But the Israelites ¹  defeated him in battle ²  and took possession of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as the Ammonites, for the border of the Ammonites was strongly defended.

For the Lord will rise up, as he did at Mount Perazim, ¹  he will rouse himself, as he did in the Valley of Gibeon, ²  to accomplish his work, his peculiar work, to perform his task, his strange task. ³ 

As they fled from Israel on the slope leading down from ¹  Beth Horon, the Lord threw down on them large hailstones from the sky, ²  all the way to Azekah. They died – in fact, more died from the hailstones than the Israelites killed with the sword.