Before his death, Joshua called a great meeting of his people at Shechem, a large city situated by the major trade routes in the central part of the country. Scholars and archaeologists have noticed that Shechem is not listed amongst the cities which the Israelites attacked in their campaign of conquest and excavations have revealed two interesting facts: there is no evidence of damage to the city dating from the time of the conquest, and the ruins have been found of a large temple or shrine which does date back to before the period of the conquest. It has therefore been suggested that the people of Shechem and the area around it were friendly to the Israelite invaders and may even have been distantly related to those who had come out of Egypt.

In the story of Abraham we are told that he built an altar to God at Shechem, as did Jacob who bought land there. Patriarchal traditions are connected with Shechem, and Joshua 24: 32 says that the body of Joseph, which had been brought from Egypt, was buried there. A possible explanation for the choice of Shechem as the centre for the great meeting at which the people renewed their loyalty to the covenant, is that the people there had welcomed the invading Israelites and their covenant faith. There had been no fight for that area and the Israelites and their God had been welcomed. This suggestion cannot be proved conclusively from the book of Joshua, but it would explain the choice of Shechem for a very important meeting at which Joshua first challenged the people to understand what they were doing before he led them in a ceremony of renewal of loyalty to their covenant relationship with God. 'If you are not willing to serve him, decide today whom you will serve, the gods your ancestors worshipped in Mesopotamia or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are now living' (24: 15). Joshua set up a large stone in what is described as 'the Lord’s sanctuary', which could have been the shrine which has been excavated. 'He said to all the people, "This stone will be our witness. It has heard all the words that the Lord has spoken to us. So it will be a witness against you, to keep you from rebelling against your God" (24: 27).

This passage contains some important implications. First, it is obvious that Joshua would not have performed such a ceremony in a place where there was any opposition to the Israelite faith. If 'the Lord’s sanctuary' was the shrine which has now been excavated, this indicates that the people of Shechem were willing for Israel's God to be their God and for the Israelite faith and way of life to be theirs as well. We have already seen that the laws of the covenant allowed for those who were not born into the community of the Israelites to be accepted into it, if they were willing to live according to the faith and Law of the covenant. This may have been the case at Shechem.

Although the Israelites were descended from Abraham, the essential bond in the community of God's people was not blood relationship but loyalty to the covenant. This is brought out vividly in a story told in Joshua 7 of Achan, an Israelite of the tribe of Judah, who stole things at Jericho which had been consecrated to destruction under the herem which was referred to in the last chapter. When Achan's theft was known, Joshua ordered that the man and his whole family and his animals should be killed and all his possessions destroyed. Every trace of Achan should be removed from the community of the people of God because of Achan’s disloyalty to the Covenant Law.

In the short book of Ruth, which follows the book of Judges in our Bible, we have the story of a woman who was born a Moabite but was accepted into the Israelite community because of her loyalty and devotion. She was an ancestress of King David. It is important to understand what was the essential bond which bound people together in the covenant community, because the 'exclusiveness' which developed much later amongst the Jews and was based on a racist outlook, was a serious misunderstanding. In Luke 3: 8, we find John the Baptist attacking this misunderstanding amongst his people and St. Paul takes up the point in Galatians 3: 7: 'You should realise then, that the real descendants of Abraham are the people who have faith'.

In contrast to what we think happened at Shechem, the carrying out of the herem took place in the conquest of the cities against which the Israelites had to fight, and the following verses indicate the total destruction involved: 'With their swords they killed everyone in the city, men and women, young and old. They also killed the cattle, sheep, and donkeys' (6:21). 'Then they set fire to the city and burnt it to the ground, along with everything in it, except the things made of gold, silver, bronze, and iron, which they took and put in the LORD'S treasury' (6: 24). In the last chapter we considered the religious nature of the herem, but whilst it is possible to justify it at this stage of Israel's history and culture, it was a brutal and savage act, practiced by other peoples of the time when they fought in the name of their gods. Against the background of their times, the practice of the herem confirmed the victory of their God over the gods of the people they conquered, but eventually Israel would understand that their God was more than a God who gave them victory in battle. The time would come when the herem was no longer practiced.