Joshua had warned the generation that came to settle in Israel, You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you…. Now then,…throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel
(Joshua 24:19–20, Joshua 24:23). There was half-hearted and incomplete service to the Lord already among this generation. And if this flawed generation, already itself struggling with foreign gods and not able to serve the Lord,
as also revealed in Judges 1:1–36, “can be described in positive terms in Judges 2:6–9, it begs the question: What would a truly idolatrous generation look like? The answer is not long in coming."1
6 When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land.