Deuteronomy

 

Chapters 1

 

1 These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness toward the west, near the Red Sea, between Pharan, Tophol, and Lobon, and Aulon, and Katachrysea.

 

2 It is a journey of eleven days from Choreb by mount Seir to Kades Barne.

 

3 And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to all the sons of Israel according to all that the Lord commanded him for them,

 

4 after he had smitten Seon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Hesebon, and Og king of Basan, who dwelt in Astaroth and in Edrain.

 

5 Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses began to declare this law, saying:

 

6 The Lord our God spoke to us in Choreb, saying, Let it suffice you to dwell in this mountain.

 

7 Turn and set out, and go into the mountain of the Amorites and to all those who dwell around the Araba, into the mountain and the plain, and toward the south and the seacoast, the land of the Chananites, and Antilibanus, as far as the great river Euphrates.

 

8 Behold, I have delivered the land before you; go in and inherit the land which I swore to your fathers, to Abraam and Isaak and Jakob, to give to them and to their seed after them.

 

9 And I said to you at that time, saying, I shall not be able alone to bear you.

 

10 The Lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are today like the stars of heaven in multitude.

 

11 May the Lord, the God of your fathers, add to you a thousandfold as you are, and bless you as he spoke to you.

 

12 How shall I alone be able to bear your labor and your burden and your disputes?

 

13 Give yourselves men wise and knowledgeable and understanding for your tribes, and I will set them over you as your leaders.

 

14 And you answered me and said, The thing which you have spoken to do is good.

 

15 And I took from you men wise and knowledgeable and understanding, and appointed them to lead over you, captains of thousands and of hundreds and of fifties and of tens, and officers for your judges.

 

16 And I commanded your judges at that time, saying, Hear between your brethren, and judge justly between a man and his brother, and his sojourner.

 

17 You shall not recognize a person in judgment; you shall judge the small and the great alike; you shall not shrink from the face of a man, for the judgment is God's. And whatever matter is too hard for you, you shall bring it to me, and I will hear it.

 

18 And I commanded you at that time all the things which you shall do.

 

19 And setting out from Choreb, we traveled through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw, the way of the mountain of the Amorite, as the Lord our God commanded us, and we came as far as Kades Barne.

 

20 And I said to you, You have come to the mountain of the Amorite, which the Lord our God gives you.

 

21 Behold, the Lord your God has delivered the land before your face; go up and inherit it, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, said to you; do not fear, nor be dismayed.

 

22 And you all came to me and said, Let us send men before us, and let them survey the land for us, and bring back word to us of the way by which we shall go up, and the cities into which we shall enter.

 

23 And the word was pleasing before me, and I took from you twelve men, one man per tribe.

 

24 And they turned and went up into the mountain, and came as far as the Valley of the Cluster, and spied it out.

 

25 And they took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us, and said, Good is the land which the Lord our God gives us.

 

26 And you were unwilling to go up, and disobeyed the word of the Lord your God,

 

27 and you murmured in your tents and said, Because the Lord hated us, he brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us utterly.

 

28 Where are we going up? Your brethren have turned away your heart, saying, A nation great and numerous and mightier than we, and cities great and walled up to heaven; moreover we have seen there the sons of giants.

 

29 And I said to you, Do not cower nor be afraid of them.

 

30 The Lord your God, who goes before your face, he will fight them together with you, according to all that he did for you in the land of Egypt,

 

31 and in this wilderness which you saw, how the Lord your God carried you, as a man would carry his son, along all the way which you traveled until you came to this place.

 

32 And in this matter you did not trust the Lord your God,

 

33 who goes before you on the way to choose a place for you, guiding you by fire at night, showing you the way by which you go on it, and by a cloud by day.

 

34 And the Lord heard the voice of your words, and being provoked, he swore, saying,

 

35 Not one of these men shall see this good land which I swore to their fathers,

 

36 except Chaleb the son of Iephonne; he shall see it, and to him I will give the land upon which he set foot, and to his sons, because he adhered to the things of the Lord.

 

37 And the Lord was angry with me on your account, saying, Neither shall you enter there.

 

38 Jesus the son of Naue, who stands beside you, he shall enter there; strengthen him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it.

 

39 And every young child who today does not know good or evil, they shall enter there, and to them I will give it, and they shall inherit it.

 

40 And you turned and encamped in the wilderness, by the way of the Red Sea.

 

41 And you answered me and said, We have sinned before the Lord our God; we will go up and fight according to all that the Lord our God commanded us. And each man taking up his weapons of war, and gathering together, you went up into the mountain.

 

42 And the Lord said to me, Say to them, You shall not go up, nor shall you fight, for I am not with you; lest you be crushed before your enemies.

 

43 And I spoke to you, and you did not listen to me, and you transgressed the word of the Lord, and pressing on defiantly, you went up into the mountain.

 

44 And the Amorite who dwelt in that mountain came out to meet you, and they pursued you as bees would do, and wounded you from Seir as far as Herma.

 

45 And you sat down and wept before the Lord, and the Lord did not hear your voice, nor give heed to you.

 

46 And you abode in Kades many days, as many days as you abode there. 

  

Chapters 2

 

1 And we turned and set out into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea, as the Lord spoke to me, and we circled Mount Seir many days.

 

2 And the Lord said to me,

 

3 "Let it be enough for you to circle this mountain; turn therefore to the north.

 

4 And command the people, saying, 'You are passing through the borders of your brothers, the sons of Esau, who dwell in Seir, and they will fear you and be very wary of you.

 

5 Do not join battle with them, for I will by no means give you any of their land, not even a foot's breadth, because I have given Mount Seir to the sons of Esau as an inheritance.

 

6 Buy food from them with money and eat, and you shall take water from them by measure for money and drink.

 

7 For the Lord our God has blessed you in every work of your hands. Consider how you passed through that great and terrible wilderness; behold, for forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.'"

 

8 And we passed by our brothers the sons of Esau, who dwell in Seir, along the way of the Arabah from Aileon and from Gasiongaber, and turning we passed along the way of the wilderness of Moab.

 

9 And the Lord said to me, "Do not be hostile to the Moabites, and do not join battle with them; for I will by no means give you any of their land as an inheritance, for I have given Seir to the sons of Lot to inherit."

 

13 "Now therefore rise up, set out, and pass through the ravine Zaret." And we passed through the ravine Zaret.

 

14 And the days during which we journeyed from Kades Barne until we passed through the ravine Zaret were thirty-eight years, until the whole generation of the men of war had perished, dying out of the camp, as God swore to them.

 

15 And the hand of God was upon them, to consume them out of the camp, until they had perished.

 

16 And it came to pass, when all the men of war had perished, dying from among the people,

 

17 that the Lord spoke to me, saying,

 

18 "You shall pass today the borders of Moab, Seir,

 

19 and you shall approach near the sons of Amman. Do not be hostile to them and do not join battle with them; for I will by no means give you any of the land of the sons of Amman as an inheritance, because I have given it to the sons of Lot as an inheritance."

 

24 "Now therefore rise up, set out, and pass through the ravine Arnon. Behold, I have delivered into your hands Seon king of Hesebon, the Amorite, and his land. Begin to take possession; join battle with him.

 

25 On this day begin to put the dread of you and the fear of you upon the face of all the nations under heaven, who, hearing your name, shall be troubled and shall be in anguish before you."

 

26 And I sent ambassadors from the wilderness of Kedamoth to Seon king of Hesebon with words of peace, saying,

 

27 "I will pass through your land; I will go along the road; I will not turn aside to the right or to the left.

 

28 You shall sell me food for money, and I will eat; and you shall give me water for money, and I will drink; only let me pass through on foot,

 

29 as the sons of Esau who dwell in Seir did for me, and the Moabites who dwell in Aroer, until I cross the Jordan into the land which the Lord our God is giving us."

 

30 But Seon king of Hesebon was not willing to let us pass through his land, because the Lord our God hardened his spirit and strengthened his heart, so that he might be delivered into your hands, as on this day.

 

31 And the Lord said to me, "Behold, I have begun to deliver up before you Seon king of Hesebon, the Amorite, and his land; begin to take possession of his land."

 

32 And Seon king of Hesebon came out to meet us, he and all his people, for battle at Jassa.

 

33 And the Lord our God delivered him up before us, and we struck him down, and his sons, and all his people.

 

34 And we took possession of all his cities at that time, and we utterly destroyed every city in turn, and their women and their children; we left no one alive as captive.

 

35 Only the cattle we took as spoil, and we took the plunder of the cities.

 

36 From Aroer, which is on the edge of the torrent Arnon, and the city that is in the ravine, and as far as the mountain of Galaad, there was not a city that escaped us; the Lord our God delivered them all into our hands.

 

37 Only we did not approach the land of the sons of Ammon, all the parts bordering the torrent Jabok, and the cities in the hill country, as the Lord our God commanded us. 

  

Chapters 3

 

1 And turning, we went up the road to Bashan, and Og the king of Bashan came out to meet us, he and all his people, for war at Edrei.

 

2 And the Lord said to me, "Do not fear him, for I have delivered him into your hands, and all his people and all his land, and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon."

 

3 And the Lord our God delivered him into our hands, even Og the king of Bashan and all his people, and we struck him until none of his seed was left.

 

4 And we took possession of all his cities at that time; there was no city that we did not take from them, sixty cities, all the region round about Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan,

 

5 all fortified cities, high walls, gates and bars, besides the very many cities of the Perizzites.

 

6 We utterly destroyed them, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, and we utterly destroyed every city in turn, and the women and the children;

 

7 and all the cattle and the spoils of the cities we took as plunder for ourselves.

 

8 And at that time we took the land out of the hands of the two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan, from the brook Arnon even to Hermon

 

10 all the cities of Misor, and all Gilead, and all Bashan as far as Selcha and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

 

11 For only Og king of Bashan was left of the Rephaim; behold, his bed was a bed of iron; behold, it is in the citadel of the sons of Ammon, nine cubits its length and four cubits its breadth, by the cubit of a man.

 

12 And that land we inherited at that time, from Aroer, which is by the edge of the brook Arnon; and half of Mount Gilead and its cities I gave to Reuben and to Gad.

 

13 And the rest of Gilead and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh, and all the region round about Argob, all that Bashan; it shall be reckoned the land of the Rephaim.

 

14 And Jair the son of Manasseh took all the region round about Argob as far as the borders of the Gargasites and the Machathites; he called them after his own name, Bashan Avoth Jair, unto this day.

 

15 And to Machir I gave Gilead.

 

16 And to Reuben and to Gad I have given from Gilead as far as the brook Arnon and as far as the Jabbok; the brook is the border for the sons of Ammon;

 

17 and the Arabah and the Jordan are the border of Machanareth, and as far as the sea of Arabah, the salt sea, beneath Ashdoth Pisgah, eastward.

 

18 And I commanded you at that time, saying, "The Lord your God has given you this land by lot; arm yourselves and go before your brothers the sons of Israel, every able man;

 

19 only your wives and your children and your cattle. I know that you have much cattle, let them dwell in your cities, which I have given you,

 

20 until the Lord your God gives rest to your brothers, as also to you, and these also shall inherit the land which the Lord our God gives them beyond the Jordan; then you shall return, each to his inheritance which I have given you."

 

21 And I commanded Joshua at that time, saying, "Your eyes have seen all that the Lord our God did to these two kings; so shall the Lord our God do to all the kingdoms into which you are crossing over there;

 

22 you shall not fear, for the Lord our God himself will fight for you."

 

23 And I besought the Lord at that time, saying,

 

24 "Lord, Lord, you have begun to show your servant your strength and your power and the mighty hand and the high arm; for what god is there in heaven or on earth who shall do as you have done, and according to your strength?

 

25 Therefore let me cross over and see this good land which is beyond the Jordan, this good mountain and Antilibanus."

 

26 But the Lord overlooked me because of you and did not hearken to me, and the Lord said to me, "Let it suffice you; do not speak this word again anymore.

 

27 Go up to the top of the Hewn Rock, and lifting up your eyes toward the sea and the north and the south and the east, see with your eyes; for you shall not cross this Jordan.

 

28 And command Joshua, and strengthen him and encourage him, for he shall cross over before this people, and he shall give them as inheritance the land which you have seen."

 

29 And we abode in the valley near the house of Peor. 

  

Chapters 4

 

1 And now, Israel, hear the statutes and the judgments, all that I teach you today to do, that you may live and be multiplied, and that entering in you may inherit the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, gives you.

 

2 You shall not add to the word which I command you, and you shall not take away from it; keep the commandments of the Lord your God, all that I command you today.

 

3 Your eyes have seen all that the Lord our God did to Baal-peor; for every man who went after Baal-peor, the Lord your God has destroyed him from among you;

 

4 but you who cleave to the Lord your God are all alive this day.

 

5 Behold, I have shown you statutes and judgments, as the Lord commanded me, to do so in the land into which you are entering there to inherit it.

 

6 And you shall keep and do them, for this is your wisdom and understanding before all the nations, all who hear all these statutes; and they will say, Behold, a wise and understanding people is this great nation.

 

7 For what great nation is there that has a god drawing near to them as the Lord our God is in all things for which we may call upon him?

 

8 And what great nation is there that has statutes and righteous judgments according to all this law which I set before you today?

 

9 Take heed to yourself, and guard your soul diligently, lest you forget all the words which your eyes have seen; and let them not depart from your heart all the days of your life, and you shall teach them to your sons and your sons' sons

 

10 the day on which you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, when the Lord said to me, Assemble the people to me, and let them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and may teach their sons.

 

11 And you came near and stood beneath the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire up to heaven, darkness, gloom, tempest, a great voice.

 

12 And the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard a voice of words, but you saw no likeness, only a voice.

 

13 And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to do, the ten words; and he wrote them on two tables of stone.

 

14 And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you should do them in the land into which you are entering there to inherit it.

 

15 And guard your souls diligently, for you saw no likeness on the day when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb on the mountain from the midst of the fire;

 

16 lest you act lawlessly and make for yourselves a graven likeness, any image, the likeness of male or female,

 

17 the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies beneath heaven,

 

18 the likeness of any creeping thing that creeps on the earth, the likeness of any fish, of all that are in the waters beneath the earth.

 

19 And lest, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars and all the array of heaven, you should go astray and worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has allotted to all the nations under heaven.

 

20 But you God took, and led you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as at this day.

 

21 And the Lord was angry with me because of the things said by you, and swore that I should not cross this Jordan and should not enter into the land which the Lord God gives you as an inheritance.

 

22 For I am dying in this land, and I am not crossing this Jordan; but you are crossing over, and you shall inherit this good land.

 

23 Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which he made with you, and make for yourselves a graven likeness of any of the things which the Lord your God has commanded;

 

24 for the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

 

25 And if you beget sons and sons of your sons, and you dwell long upon the land, and act lawlessly and make a graven likeness of anything, and do evil before the Lord your God so as to provoke him to anger,

 

26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you shall utterly perish from the land into which you are crossing the Jordan there to inherit it; you shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall be utterly destroyed.

 

27 And the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, and you shall be left few in number among the nations into which the Lord will bring you there.

 

28 And there you shall serve other gods, the works of men's hands, wood and stone, which shall not see nor hear nor eat nor smell.

 

29 And there you shall seek the Lord your God, and you shall find him, when you seek him out with all your heart and with all your soul in your affliction.

 

30 And all these words shall find you in the last of the days, and you shall return to the Lord your God and hearken to his voice;

 

31 for the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not forsake you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant of your fathers, which he swore to them.

 

32 Ask of the former days, which were before you, from the day when God created man upon the earth, and from one end of heaven to the other end of heaven, whether there has been anything like this great thing, whether such a thing has been heard;

 

33 whether a nation has heard the voice of a living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and lived;

 

34 whether God has attempted to go in and take for himself a nation from the midst of a nation, with trial and with signs and with wonders and with war and with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with great sights, according to all that the Lord our God did in Egypt before your eyes as you looked on;

 

35 so that you might know that the Lord your God, he is God, and there is no other besides him.

 

36 From heaven his voice was made audible, to instruct you; and on the earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from the midst of the fire.

 

37 Because he loved your fathers, he also chose their seed after them, even you, and himself led you out of Egypt by his great strength,

 

38 to destroy nations great and stronger than you from before your face, to bring you in and give you their land to inherit, as you have it today.

 

39 And you shall know today, and shall turn back in your mind, that the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, and there is no other besides him.

 

40 And you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, all that I command you today, that it may be well with you and with your sons after you, so that you may live long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you for all your days.

 

41 Then Moses set apart three cities beyond the Jordan toward the rising of the sun,

 

42 for the slayer to flee there, whoever kills his neighbor unknowingly, not hating him before yesterday and the day before; and he shall flee to one of these cities and live:

 

43 Bosor in the wilderness, in the plain country, for Reuben; and Ramoth in Gilead for Gad; and Golan in Bashan for Manasseh.

 

44 This is the law which Moses set before the sons of Israel;

 

45 these are the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments, all that Moses spoke to the sons of Israel in the wilderness when they came out of the land of Egypt,

 

46 on the other side of the Jordan, in the valley near the house of Peor, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, whom Moses and the sons of Israel smote when they came out of the land of Egypt.

 

47 And they inherited his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan toward the rising of the sun,

 

48 from Aroer, which is on the bank of the brook Arnon, up to the mountain of Sihon, which is Hermon,

 

49 all the Arabah beyond the Jordan toward the rising of the sun, below Ashdoth the hewn. 

  

Chapters 5

 

1 And Moses called all Israel and said to them: Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the judgments, all that I speak in your ears this day, and you shall learn them and take care to do them.

 

2 The Lord your God made a covenant with you at Horeb;

 

3 not with your fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with you, you who are all here alive today.

 

4 Face to face the Lord spoke to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire

 

5 and I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the words of the Lord, because you were afraid before the fire and did not go up onto the mountain, saying:

 

6 I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

 

7 You shall have no other gods before my face.

 

8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything, of what is in heaven above, or what is on the earth beneath, or what is in the waters under the earth.

 

9 You shall not bow down to them, nor shall you serve them, for I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, repaying the sins of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

 

10 and showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

 

11 You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will by no means hold guiltless him who takes his name in vain.

 

12 Keep the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it, as the Lord your God commanded you.

 

13 Six days you shall labor and do all your works;

 

14 but on the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God: you shall do no work on it, you and your sons and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, your ox and your beast of burden and every animal of yours, and the stranger who sojourns among you, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as you do;

 

15 and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the day of the sabbaths and to sanctify it.

 

16 Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that it may go well with you and that you may live long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you.

 

17 You shall not commit adultery.

 

18 You shall not kill.

 

19 You shall not steal.

 

20 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

 

21 You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, nor his field, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his beast of burden, nor any animal of his, nor anything that is your neighbor's.

 

22 These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly on the mountain out of the midst of the fire, darkness, gloom, tempest, a great voice — and he added no more; and he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.

 

23 And it came to pass, when you heard the voice out of the midst of the fire, while the mountain was burning with fire, that you came to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders,

 

24 and you said: Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire; this day we have seen that God will speak to man, and he shall live.

 

25 And now let us not die, for this great fire will consume us; if we continue to hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, we shall die.

 

26 For what flesh is there that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and shall live?

 

27 Draw near, you, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say, and you shall speak to us all that the Lord our God shall speak to you, and we will hear and do it.

 

28 And the Lord heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me: I have heard the voice of the words of this people, all that they spoke to you; rightly have they spoken all that they said.

 

29 Who will grant that their heart be so in them, that they fear me and keep my commandments all their days, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever?

 

30 Go, say to them: Return to your houses;

 

31 but you, stand here with me, and I will speak to you the commandments and the statutes and the judgments which you shall teach them, and let them do them in the land which I give them as an inheritance.

 

32 And you shall take care to do as the Lord your God commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left,

 

33 according to all the way which the Lord your God commanded you to walk in, that he may give you rest, and it may be well with you, and you may live long upon the land which you shall inherit. 

 

Chapters 6

 

1 And these are the commandments and the statutes and the judgments, which the Lord our God commanded to teach you to do thus in the land into which you are entering there to inherit it,

 

2 so that you may fear the Lord your God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today—you and your sons and the sons of your sons—all the days of your life, that you may live long.

 

3 And hear, O Israel, and take care to do them, that it may be well with you and that you may be multiplied exceedingly, just as the Lord the God of your fathers spoke, to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.

 

4 And these are the statutes and the judgments which the Lord commanded the sons of Israel in the wilderness when they came out of the land of Egypt: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord;

 

5 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

 

6 And these words, which I command you today, shall be in your heart and in your soul;

 

7 and you shall teach them to your sons, and you shall speak of them when sitting at home and walking on the road and lying down and rising up;

 

8 and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and it shall be immovable before your eyes;

 

9 and you shall write them upon the doorposts of your houses and of your gates. 10 And it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, to give you great and fine cities which you did not build,

 

11 houses full of all good things which you did not fill, hewn cisterns which you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant—and when you have eaten and are filled,

 

12 take heed to yourself, lest you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

 

13 You shall fear the Lord your God, and him you shall serve, and to him you shall cleave, and by his name you shall swear.

 

14 You shall not go after other gods, from the gods of the nations that are around you,

 

15 for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God, lest the Lord your God be provoked to wrath against you and destroy you from the face of the earth.

 

16 You shall not tempt the Lord your God, as you tempted him at the Temptation.

 

17 You shall surely keep the commandments of the Lord your God, the testimonies and the statutes which he commanded you;

 

18 and you shall do what is pleasing and good before the Lord your God, that it may be well with you, and that you may enter and inherit the good land which the Lord swore to your fathers,

 

19 to drive out all your enemies from before your face, as he has spoken.

 

20 And it shall be, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, What are the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God commanded us?

 

21 then you shall say to your son: We were slaves to Pharaoh in the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought us out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

 

22 And the Lord gave signs and wonders, great and grievous, in Egypt, upon Pharaoh and upon his house, before our eyes;

 

23 and he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in to give us this land which he swore to give to our fathers.

 

24 And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, that it may be well with us all the days, that we may live, as it is this day.

 

25 And it shall be mercy for us, if we take care to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as the Lord commanded us.

  

Chapters 7

 

 1 And when the Lord your God brings you into the land into which you are entering to inherit it, and removes great nations from before you, the Hittite and Girgashite and Amorite and Canaanite and Perizzite and Hivite and Jebusite, seven nations more numerous and stronger than you

 

2 and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands, then you shall strike them down; you shall utterly destroy them. You shall not make a covenant with them, nor shall you show them mercy.

 

3 Nor shall you intermarry with them: you shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son;

 

4 for he will turn your son away from me, and he will serve other gods, and the Lord will be angered with wrath against you and will destroy you quickly.

 

5 But thus shall you do to them: you shall tear down their altars and shatter their pillars and cut down their sacred groves and burn the carved images of their gods with fire;

 

6 for you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord your God chose you to be for him a treasured people above all the nations that are on the face of the earth.

 

7 It was not because you were more numerous than all the nations that the Lord preferred you and chose you—for you are the fewest of all the nations

 

8 but because the Lord loved you, and keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and an uplifted arm, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

 

9 And you shall know that the Lord your God, he is God, a faithful God, who keeps covenant and mercy with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

 

10 and who repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them; and he will not delay with those who hate him, to their face he will repay them.

 

11 So you shall keep the commandments and the statutes and these judgments that I command you today to do.

 

12 And it shall be, when you hear all these statutes and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy that he swore to your fathers,

 

13 and he will love you and bless you and multiply you, and he will bless the offspring of your womb and the fruit of your land—your grain and your wine and your oil, the herds of your cattle and the flocks of your sheep—upon the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.

 

14 You shall be blessed above all the nations; there shall not be among you one barren or unfruitful, nor among your livestock.

 

15 And the Lord will remove from you every sickness; and all the evil diseases of Egypt, which you have seen and known, he will not lay upon you, but he will lay them upon all who hate you.

 

16 And you shall consume all the spoils of the nations that the Lord your God gives you; your eye shall not spare them, and you shall not serve their gods, for this is a snare to you.

 

17 But if you say in your heart, "This nation is greater than I; how shall I be able to destroy them?"

 

18 you shall not fear them. You shall surely remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the Egyptians:

 

19 the great trials that your eyes saw, those great signs and wonders, the mighty hand and the uplifted arm with which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord our God do to all the nations before whom you are afraid.

 

20 And the Lord your God will send the hornets against them, until those who remain and those who have hidden from you are destroyed.

 

21 You shall not be wounded before them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and mighty God,

 

22 and the Lord your God will consume these nations from before you little by little; you will not be able to destroy them quickly, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.

 

23 And the Lord your God will deliver them into your hands and destroy them with great destruction, until he has annihilated them,

 

24 and he will deliver their kings into your hands, and their name shall perish from that place; no one shall stand against you, until you have destroyed them.

 

25 The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire; you shall not covet silver or gold from them, nor take it for yourself, lest you stumble because of it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God.

 

26 And you shall not bring an abomination into your house, or you shall be a thing accursed like it; you shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.

 

Chapters 8

 

1 All the commandments which I command you this day you shall be careful to do, that you may live and be multiplied and go in and inherit the land which the Lord your God swore to your fathers.

 

2 And you shall remember all the way by which the Lord your God led you in the wilderness, that he might afflict you and test you and that the things in your heart might be discerned, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

 

3 And he afflicted you and made you hunger and fed you with the manna, which your fathers did not know, that he might declare to you that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds through the mouth of God shall man live.

 

4 Your garments did not wear out from upon you, your feet did not grow callous—behold, forty years.

 

5 And you shall know in your heart that as a man would discipline his son, so the Lord your God will discipline you,

 

6 and you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in his ways and to fear him.

 

7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good and abundant land, where there are torrents of waters and springs of the deeps going forth through the plains and through the mountains;

 

8 a land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey;

 

9 a land in which you shall eat your bread without poverty and shall lack nothing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of its mountains you shall mine copper;

 

10 and you shall eat and be filled, and you shall bless the Lord your God upon the good land which he has given you.

 

11 Take heed to yourself, lest you forget the Lord your God, so as not to keep his commandments and his judgments and his ordinances, which I command you this day,

 

12 lest, having eaten and been filled, and having built fine houses and dwelt in them,

 

13 and your oxen and your sheep having been multiplied for you, silver and gold having been multiplied for you, and all that you have having been multiplied for you,

 

14 you be lifted up in heart and forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,

 

15 who led you through that great and fearful wilderness, where there was the biting serpent and the scorpion and thirst, where there was no water; who brought forth for you a spring of water out of the flinty rock;

 

16 who fed you with the manna in the wilderness, which your fathers did not know, that he might afflict you and test you and do you good in your latter days.

 

17 Do not say in your heart, "My strength and the might of my hand have gotten me this great power";

 

18 but you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you strength to get power, and that he may establish his covenant which the Lord swore to your fathers, as at this day.

 

19 And it shall be, if you utterly forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that you shall surely perish;

 

20 as also the other nations which the Lord destroys before your face, so shall you perish, because you did not listen to the voice of the Lord your God. 

 

Chapters 9

 

 1 Hear, O Israel: you are crossing the Jordan today to go in and take possession of nations great and stronger than you, cities great and walled up to heaven,

 

2 a people great and numerous and tall, the sons of Anak, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, "Who can stand before the sons of Anak?"

 

3 And you shall know today that the Lord your God, he it is who goes before you; he is a consuming fire; he will destroy them, and he will turn them back before you, and you shall destroy them, just as the Lord said to you.

 

4 Do not say in your heart, when the Lord your God has consumed these nations from before you, "Because of my righteousness the Lord brought me in to possess this good land"; rather, because of the ungodliness of these nations the Lord will destroy them before you.

 

5 It is not because of your righteousness nor because of the holiness of your heart that you are going in to possess their land, but because of the ungodliness of these nations the Lord will destroy them from before you, and in order to establish his covenant, which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob.

 

6 And you shall know today that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.

 

7 Remember, do not forget, how you provoked the Lord your God in the wilderness; from the day you came out of Egypt until you came to this place, you have continued rebellious toward the Lord.

 

8 Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord, and the Lord was angry with you, so as to destroy you,

 

9 when I went up onto the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you. And I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water.

 

10 And the Lord gave me the two stone tablets written with the finger of God, and on them were written all the words which the Lord spoke to you on the mountain on the day of the assembly.

 

11 And it came to pass after forty days and forty nights that the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant.

 

12 And the Lord said to me, "Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have acted lawlessly; they have quickly turned aside from the way which you commanded them; they have made themselves a molten image." 1

 

3 And the Lord said to me, "I have spoken to you once and twice, saying: I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.

 

14 Let me destroy them, and I will blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation great and strong and more numerous than this."

 

15 And I turned and went down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets were in my two hands.

 

16 And when I saw that you had sinned before the Lord your God and had made for yourselves a molten image and had turned aside from the way which the Lord had commanded you,

 

17 I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my two hands and shattered them before you.

 

18 And I made supplication before the Lord a second time, as also the first, forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all your sins which you sinned in doing evil before the Lord your God, provoking him.

 

19 And I am terrified because of the anger and the wrath, for the Lord was provoked against you so as to destroy you; but the Lord listened to me at that time also.

 

20 And with Aaron too the Lord was exceedingly angry, so as to destroy him, and I prayed for Aaron also at that time.

 

21 And your sin which you had made, the calf. I took it and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly until it became fine, and it became like dust, and I threw the dust into the wadi that comes down from the mountain.

 

22 And at the Burning and at the Testing and at the Graves of Craving you kept provoking the Lord your God.

 

23 And when the Lord sent you out from Kadesh Barnea, saying, "Go up and possess the land which I am giving you," you disobeyed the word of the Lord your God and did not believe him and did not listen to his voice.

 

24 You have been rebellious toward the Lord from the day he was made known to you.

 

25 And I made supplication before the Lord for forty days and forty nights, as long as I supplicated, for the Lord had said he would destroy you

 

26 and I prayed to God and said, "O Lord, Lord, King of the gods, do not destroy your people and your portion, whom you redeemed by your great strength, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt by your great strength and by your mighty hand and by your outstretched arm.

 

27 Remember Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, your servants, to whom you swore by yourself; do not look upon the stubbornness of this people and their ungodly deeds and their sins,

 

28 lest the inhabitants of the land from which you brought us out say, 'Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them, and because he hated them, he brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.'

 

29 And these are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt by your great strength and by your outstretched arm."

  

Chapters 10

 

1 At that time the Lord said to me, "Hew for yourself two stone tablets like the first ones, and come up to me on the mountain; and you shall make for yourself a wooden ark.

 

2 And I will write upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered, and you shall put them into the ark."

 

3 And I made an ark of incorruptible wood, and I hewed the two stone tablets like the first ones; and I went up onto the mountain, with the two tablets in my hands.

 

4 And he wrote on the tablets, according to the first writing, the ten words which the Lord spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire, and the Lord gave them to me.

 

5 And turning, I came down from the mountain and put the tablets into the ark which I had made, and they were there, as the Lord commanded me.

 

6 And the sons of Israel set out from Beroth of the sons of Iakim to Misadai; there Aaron died and was buried there, and Eleazar his son served as priest in his place.

 

7 From there they set out to Gadgad, and from Gadgad to Etebatha, a land of torrents of waters.

 

8 At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to minister and to pray in his name, until this day.

 

9 Therefore the Levites have no portion or inheritance among their brothers; the Lord himself is his inheritance, as he said to him.

 

10 And I stood on the mountain forty days and forty nights, and the Lord heard me at that time also, and the Lord did not wish to destroy you.

 

11 And the Lord said to me, "Go, set out before this people, and let them go in and inherit the land which I swore to their fathers to give to them."

 

12 And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

 

13 to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his ordinances, which I command you today, that it may be well with you?

 

14 Behold, to the Lord your God belong the heaven and the heaven of heaven, the earth and all that is in it;

 

15 yet the Lord chose your fathers, to love them, and he chose their seed after them—you—above all the nations, as at this day.

 

16 And you shall circumcise your hardness of heart, and you shall no longer stiffen your neck.

 

17 For the Lord your God, he is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great and mighty and fearsome God, who does not regard persons nor take a bribe,

 

18 executing judgment for the stranger and the orphan and the widow, and he loves the stranger, to give him bread and clothing.

 

19 And you shall love the stranger; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

 

20 You shall fear the Lord your God, and him you shall serve, and to him you shall cleave, and by his name you shall swear.

 

21 He is your boast, and he is your God, who has done among you these great and glorious things which your eyes have seen.

 

22 With seventy souls your fathers went down into Egypt, but now the Lord your God has made you like the stars of heaven in multitude. 

  

Chapters 11

 

1 And you shall love the Lord your God, and you shall keep his charges and his ordinances and his judgments all the days.

 

2 And you shall know today that it is not your children, who do not know and have not seen the discipline of the Lord your God and his great deeds and his mighty hand and his uplifted arm,

 

3 and his signs and his wonders, which he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to all his land,

 

4 and what he did to the army of the Egyptians, their chariots and their cavalry, how the water of the Red Sea overwhelmed them as they pursued you from behind, and the Lord destroyed them to this very day,

 

5 and what he did for you in the wilderness, until you came to this place,

 

6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiron, sons of Eliab son of Ruben, whom the earth, opening its mouth, swallowed up—them and their households and their tents and all their substance that was with them—in the midst of all Israel.

 

7 For your eyes have seen all the great works of the Lord, which he has done for you today.

 

8 And you shall keep all his commandments, which I command you today, so that you may live and be multiplied and, entering in, may inherit the land into which you are crossing the Jordan to inherit it,

 

9 so that you may prolong your days upon the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their seed after them, a land flowing with milk and honey.

 

10 For the land into which you are entering to inherit it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you came out, where, when they sow the seed, they water it with their feet, like a vegetable garden;

 

11 but the land into which you are entering to inherit it is a land of mountains and plains; from the rain of heaven it shall drink water,

 

12 a land which the Lord your God watches over; continually the eyes of the Lord your God are upon it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year.

 

13 And if you truly listen to all his commandments, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,

 

14 then he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early and the late, and you shall gather in your grain and your wine and your oil;

 

15 and he will give fodder in your fields for your cattle. And when you have eaten and are filled,

 

16 take heed to yourself, lest your heart be enlarged and you transgress and serve other gods and worship them,

 

17 and the Lord be inflamed with anger against you and shut up the heaven, and there be no rain, and the earth not yield its fruit, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord gave you.

 

18 And you shall put these words into your heart and into your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and it shall be immovable before your eyes.

 

19 And you shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when sitting at home and walking on the road and lying down and rising up.

 

20 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your houses and of your gates,

 

21 so that your days may be many, and the days of your sons, upon the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.

 

22 And it shall be, if you truly hear all these commandments, which I command you today to do, to love the Lord our God and to walk in all his ways and to cleave to him,

 

23 then the Lord will cast out all these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess nations great and stronger than yourselves.

 

24 Every place on which the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Antilebanon, and from the great river, the river Euphrates, even to the sea toward the west shall be your borders.

 

25 No one shall stand against your face; the Lord your God will lay the dread of you and the fear of you upon the face of all the land upon which you shall tread, as the Lord spoke to you.

 

26 Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse:

 

27 the blessing, if you hear the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today;

 

28 and the curses, if you do not hear the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and you stray from the way which I commanded you, going to serve other gods, whom you do not know.

 

29 And it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land into which you are crossing to inherit it, then you shall set the blessing on Mount Garizin and the curse on Mount Gaibal.

 

31 For you are crossing the Jordan, entering in to inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance for all your days, and you shall inherit it and dwell in it.

 

32 And you shall take care to do all his ordinances and these judgments, which I set before you today. 

  

Chapters 12

 

1 And these are the statutes and the judgments which you shall observe to do in the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, gives you as an inheritance, all the days that you live upon the earth.

 

2 You shall utterly destroy all the places in which the nations whom you are dispossessing served their gods there, upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under every leafy tree;

 

3 and you shall tear down their altars and shatter their pillars and cut down their groves, and you shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire, and their name shall perish from that place.

 

4 You shall not do so to the Lord your God,

 

5 but only in the place which the Lord your God shall choose in one of your tribes, to name his name there and have it invoked, there you shall seek him and there you shall enter,

 

6 and you shall bring there your whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and your firstfruits and your vows and your freewill offerings and the firstborn of your cattle and of your sheep,

 

7 and you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all the things to which you put your hand, you and your households, according as the Lord your God has blessed you.

 

8 You shall not do all the things which we do here today, each man what is pleasing in his own sight;

 

9 for you have not until now come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you.

 

10 And you shall cross the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord your God gives you to inherit, and he shall give you rest from all your enemies round about, and you shall dwell in safety.

 

11 And there shall be the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be invoked there, there you shall bring all that I command you today: your whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and your tithes and the firstfruits of your hands and your gifts and every choice thing of your gifts, whatever you vow to your God;

 

12 and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your menservants and your maidservants, and the Levite who is within your gates, because he has no portion or inheritance with you.

 

13 Take heed to yourself that you do not offer your whole burnt offerings in every place that you see,

 

14 but only in the place which the Lord your God shall choose, in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your whole burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you today.

 

15 Nevertheless, according to every desire of yours you may slaughter and eat flesh, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given you in every city; the unclean among you and the clean alike may eat it, as of a gazelle or a deer.

 

16 Only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it out upon the ground like water.

 

17 You shall not be able to eat in your cities the tithe of your grain and of your wine and of your oil, the firstborn of your cattle and of your sheep, and all vows, whatever you vow, and your confessions and the firstfruits of your hands,

 

18 but before the Lord your God you shall eat them, in the place which the Lord your God shall choose for himself, you and your son and your daughter, your manservant and your maidservant, and the sojourner who is in your cities—and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in all things to which you put your hand.

 

19 Take heed to yourself that you do not forsake the Levite all the time that you live upon the land.

 

20 And if the Lord your God enlarges your borders, as he said to you, and you say, "I will eat flesh," if your soul desires to eat flesh, according to every desire of your soul you may eat flesh.

 

21 And if the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be invoked there is too far from you, then you shall slaughter of your cattle and of your sheep which God gives you, as I have commanded you, and you shall eat in your cities according to the desire of your soul.

 

22 As the gazelle and the deer are eaten, so you shall eat it; the unclean among you and the clean shall eat it alike.

 

23 Take strict heed not to eat blood, for its blood is the life; the life shall not be eaten with the flesh.

 

24 You shall not eat it; you shall pour it out upon the ground like water.

 

25 You shall not eat it, that it may be well with you and with your sons after you, if you do what is good and pleasing before the Lord your God.

 

26 But your holy things, if you have any, and your vows you shall take and come to the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be invoked there,

 

27 and you shall offer your whole burnt offerings: the flesh you shall offer upon the altar of the Lord your God, and the blood of your sacrifices you shall pour out at the base of the altar of the Lord your God, but the flesh you shall eat.

 

28 Be watchful and hear, and you shall do all the words which I command you, that it may be well with you and with your sons forever, if you do what is good and pleasing before the Lord your God.

 

29 And if the Lord your God utterly destroys from before you the nations into whose land you are entering to inherit it, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land,

 

30 take heed to yourself that you do not seek to follow after them after they have been destroyed from before you; you shall not seek their gods, saying, "How do these nations serve their gods? I too will do likewise."

 

31 You shall not do so to the Lord your God; for the abominations which the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they burn their sons and their daughters in fire to their gods. 

  

Chapters 13

 

1 Every word that I command you today, this you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it, nor take away from it.

 

2 But if a prophet arises among you, or one who dreams a dream, and gives you a sign or a wonder,

 

3 and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, "Let us go and serve other gods, whom you do not know,"

 

4 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or of that dreamer of the dream, for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

 

5 You shall walk after the Lord your God, and him you shall fear, and his commandments you shall keep, and his voice you shall obey, and to him you shall cleave.

 

6 And that prophet or that dreamer of the dream shall die; for he has spoken to lead you astray from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, who redeemed you from slavery, to thrust you out of the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves.

 

7 And if your brother by your father or by your mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife in your bosom, or the friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, "Let us go and serve other gods," which neither you nor your fathers have known,

 

8 of the gods of the nations that are round about you, those near you or those far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth,

 

9 you shall not consent to him, nor shall you listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, you shall not yearn over him, nor shall you shield him.

 

10 You shall surely report concerning him; your hands shall be upon him first to put him to death, and the hands of all the people last.

 

11 And they shall stone him with stones, and he shall die, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

 

12 And all Israel, hearing, shall fear, and they shall not again do according to this evil thing among you.

 

13 And if you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God gives you to dwell in, people saying,

 

14 "Lawless men have gone out from among you, and have drawn away all who dwell in their city, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' whom you have not known,"

 

15 then you shall inquire and search diligently; and behold, if the report is clearly true, and this abomination has been done among you,

 

16 you shall utterly destroy all who dwell in that city by the slaughter of the sword; you shall devote it to destruction, and all that is in it.

 

17 And all its spoils you shall gather into its open ways, and you shall burn the city with fire, and all its spoils publicly, before the Lord your God; and it shall be uninhabited forever; it shall not be rebuilt again.

 

18 Nothing of the devoted thing shall cleave to your hand, so that the Lord may turn from the fury of his anger, and show you mercy, and have mercy on you, and multiply you, as the Lord swore to your fathers,

 

19 if you listen to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep all his commandments, which I command you today, to do what is good and pleasing before the Lord your God. 

  

Chapters 14

 

1 You are sons of the Lord your God: you shall not make incisions, nor make a baldness between your eyes for the dead;

 

2 for you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord your God has chosen you to be to him a peculiar people out of all the nations that are upon the face of the earth.

 

3 You shall not eat any abomination.

 

4 These are the beasts which you shall eat: the calf of the herd, and lamb of the sheep, and kid of the goats,

 

5 the stag, and gazelle, and antelope, and wild goat, and pygarg, and oryx, and giraffe.

 

6 Every beast that divides the hoof, and parts it into two claws, and chews the cud among the beasts, these you shall eat.

 

7 And these you shall not eat of those that chew the cud, and of those that divide the hoof and part it into claws: the camel, and the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof, these are unclean to you;

 

8 and the swine, because this one divides the hoof and parts the claws of the hoof, yet it does not chew the cud, this is unclean to you; of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.

 

9 And these you shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales you shall eat.

 

10 And all that have no fins and scales you shall not eat; they are unclean to you.

 

11 Every clean bird you shall eat.

 

12 And these of them you shall not eat: the eagle, and the griffon, and the sea-eagle,

 

13 and the vulture, and the kite, and those like it,

 

14 and every raven and those like it,

 

15 and the ostrich, and the owl, and the gull,

 

16 and the heron, and the swan, and the ibis,

 

17 and the cormorant, and the hawk and those like it, and the hoopoe, and the night-raven,

 

18 and the pelican, and the plover and those like it, and the porphyrion, and the bat.

 

19 All winged creeping things—these are unclean to you; you shall not eat of them.

 

20 Every clean winged thing you shall eat.

 

21 You shall not eat any carcass; it shall be given to the sojourner in your cities, and he shall eat it, or you shall sell it to the stranger; for you are a holy people to the Lord your God. You shall not boil a lamb in its mother's milk.

 

22 You shall tithe a tenth of all the produce of your seed, the produce of your field year by year,

 

23 and you shall eat it before the Lord your God in the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be called there; you shall bring the tithes of your grain and of your wine and of your oil, the firstborn of your herds and of your flocks, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God all your days.

 

24 But if the way be too far from you and you cannot carry them up, because the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be called there is far from you, because the Lord your God will bless you,

 

25 then you shall sell them for silver, and you shall take the silver in your hands and go to the place which the Lord your God shall choose,

 

26 and you shall give the silver for whatever your soul desires—for oxen or for sheep, for wine or for strong drink, or for whatever your soul desires—and you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your house,

 

27 and the Levite who is in your cities, because he has no portion or inheritance with you.

 

28 After three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce; in that year you shall lay it up in your cities,

 

29 and the Levite shall come, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow in your cities, and they shall eat and be filled, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the works which you do. 

  

Chapters 15

 

1 At the end of seven years you shall make a release.

 

2 And this is the ordinance of the release: you shall release every private debt which your neighbor owes you, and you shall not exact it of your brother, because a release has been proclaimed to the Lord your God.

 

3 Of the foreigner you may exact whatever is owed you by him, but you shall grant your brother release of your debt;

 

4 for there shall be no one in need among you, because the Lord your God will surely bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess,

 

5 if only you diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep and do all these commandments which I command you today.

 

6 For the Lord your God has blessed you, as he said to you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow; and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.

 

7 And if there be among you anyone in need of your brothers in one of your cities in the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your brother who is in need;

 

8 you shall surely open your hands to him, and shall lend him a loan as much as he needs, according to his want.

 

9 Take heed to yourself that there be no hidden word in your heart, a lawless thing, saying, "The seventh year, the year of release, draws near," and your eye be evil toward your brother who is in need, and you not give to him, and he cry out against you to the Lord, and there be great sin in you.

 

10 You shall surely give to him, and lend him a loan as much as he needs, and you shall not be grieved in your heart when you give to him; because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your works and in everything to which you set your hand.

 

11 For the needy shall not fail from the land; therefore I command you to do this thing, saying: You shall surely open your hands to your brother who is poor and to the needy in your land.

 

12 And if your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, be sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh you shall send him out free from you.

 

13 And when you send him out free from you, you shall not send him away empty;

 

14 you shall furnish him with provisions from your sheep and from your grain and from your winepress; as the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him.

 

15 And you shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this thing.

 

16 But if he says to you, "I will not go out from you," because he loves you and your house, because it is well with him in your service,

 

17 then you shall take an awl and pierce his ear against the door, and he shall be your servant forever; and to your maidservant you shall do likewise.

 

18 It shall not seem hard in your sight when they are sent out free from you, for he has served you six years at the yearly wage of a hired man; and the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do.

 

19 Every firstborn that is born among your cattle and among your sheep, the males, you shall consecrate to the Lord your God; you shall not work with your firstborn calf, nor shall you shear the firstborn of your sheep;

 

20 before the Lord you shall eat it year by year in the place which the Lord your God chooses, you and your household.

 

21 But if there be a blemish in it, lameness or blindness or indeed any bad blemish, you shall not sacrifice it to the Lord your God;

 

22 you shall eat it in your cities; the unclean among you and the clean alike shall eat it, as a gazelle or a deer;

 

23 only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it out upon the ground like water. 

  

Chapters 16

 

1 Observe the month of the new grain, and you shall keep the passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of the new grain you came out of Egypt by night.

 

2 And you shall sacrifice the passover to the Lord your God, sheep and oxen, in the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be called upon there.

 

3 You shall not eat leaven with it; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, the bread of affliction, because you came out of Egypt in haste; that you may remember the day of your going out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.

 

4 Leaven shall not be seen with you in all your borders for seven days, and none of the flesh which you sacrifice in the evening on the first day shall remain until the morning.

 

5 You shall not be able to sacrifice the passover in any of your cities which the Lord your God gives you,

 

6 but only in the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be called upon there; you shall sacrifice the passover in the evening, toward the setting of the sun, at the time when you came out of Egypt,

 

7 and you shall boil and roast and eat it in the place which the Lord your God shall choose; and you shall return in the morning and go to your houses.

 

8 Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day is a solemn assembly, a feast to the Lord your God; you shall do no work on it, except what must be done for a soul.

 

9 Seven full weeks you shall count for yourself; when you begin to put the sickle to the harvest, you shall begin to count seven weeks.

 

10 And you shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God according as your hand has strength, whatever he shall give you, according as the Lord your God has blessed you;

 

11 and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your manservant and your maidservant, and the Levite who is in your cities, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow that is among you, in the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be called upon there,

 

12 and you shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and you shall keep and do these commandments.

 

13 You shall keep the feast of tabernacles for yourself seven days, when you gather in from your threshing floor and from your winepress;

 

14 and you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your manservant and your maidservant, and the Levite and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who is in your cities.

 

15 Seven days you shall keep a feast to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord your God shall choose for himself; and if the Lord your God blesses you in all your produce and in every work of your hands, then you shall be rejoicing.

 

16 Three times in the year every male of yours shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which the Lord shall choose: at the feast of unleavened bread, and at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of tabernacles. You shall not appear before the Lord your God empty-handed;

 

17 each according to the strength of your hands, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given you.

 

18 You shall appoint for yourself judges and officers in all your cities which the Lord your God gives you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.

 

19 They shall not pervert judgment, they shall not show partiality nor take a bribe; for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and remove the words of the righteous.

 

20 You shall justly pursue what is just, that you may live and enter in and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you.

 

21 You shall not plant for yourself a grove, any tree, beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make for yourself.

 

22 You shall not set up for yourself a pillar, which the Lord your God hates. 

  

Chapters 17

 

1 You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God a calf or a sheep in which there is a blemish, any evil thing, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God.

 

2 And if there be found among you, in one of your cities which the Lord your God gives you, a man or woman who does what is evil before the Lord your God, transgressing his covenant,

 

3 and they go and serve other gods and worship them, the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which he did not command

 

4 and it is reported to you, and you inquire diligently, and behold, the thing has truly happened, this abomination has been committed in Israel,

 

5 then you shall bring out that man or that woman, and you shall stone them with stones, and they shall die.

 

6 On the testimony of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall the one who is to die be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.

 

7 And the hand of the witnesses shall be upon him first to put him to death, and the hand of all the people afterward; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves.

 

8 And if a matter be too difficult for you in judgment, between blood and blood, between judgment and judgment, between stroke and stroke, between dispute and dispute, matters of judgment in your cities, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be invoked there,

 

9 and you shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge who shall be in those days, and they shall inquire and declare to you the judgment.

 

10 And you shall act according to the matter which they declare to you from the place which the Lord your God shall choose for his name to be invoked there, and you shall be careful to do according to all that is enacted for you by law.

 

11 According to the law and according to the judgment which they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside from the word which they declare to you, to the right or to the left.

 

12 And the man who acts in arrogance, so as not to obey the priest who stands to minister in the name of the Lord your God, or the judge who shall be in those days that man shall die, and you shall remove the evil one from Israel;

 

13 and all the people, hearing of it, shall fear and shall not act impiously any more.

 

14 And when you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you by lot, and you take possession of it and dwell in it, and you say, "I will set a ruler over myself like the other nations around me,"

 

15 you shall surely set over yourself a ruler whom the Lord your God shall choose. From among your brothers you shall set a ruler over yourself; you shall not be able to set over yourself a foreign man, for he is not your brother.

 

16 For he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he turn the people back to Egypt in order to multiply horses for himself, since the Lord has said, "You shall not turn back again by this way any more."

 

17 And he shall not multiply wives for himself, nor shall his heart be turned away; and silver and gold he shall not greatly multiply for himself.

 

18 And it shall be, when he sits upon the seat of his rule, that he shall write for himself this second law in a book from the priests, the Levites,

 

19 and it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all these commandments and to perform these ordinances,

 

20 that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, that he may not turn aside from the commandments to the right or to the left, so that he may prolong his days in his rule, he and his sons, among the sons of Israel. 

  

Chapters 18

 

1 The priests, the Levites—the whole tribe of Levi—shall have no portion nor inheritance with Israel; the offerings of the Lord are their inheritance, they shall eat them.

 

2 And they shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord himself is his inheritance, as he said to him.

 

3 And this is the due of the priests, the things from the people, from those who sacrifice the sacrifices, whether a calf or a sheep: and he shall give to the priest the shoulder and the jaws and the stomach.

 

4 And the firstfruits of your grain and of your wine and of your oil, and the firstfruit of the shearings of your sheep, you shall give to him;

 

5 because the Lord your God chose him out of all your tribes to stand before the Lord your God, to minister and to bless in his name, he and his sons among the sons of Israel.

 

6 And if the Levite comes from one of your cities, from all the sons of Israel, where he sojourns, as his soul desires, to the place which the Lord may choose,

 

7 then he shall minister to the name of the Lord his God, like all his brothers the Levites who stand there before the Lord;

 

8 he shall eat an allotted portion, apart from the sale of what belongs to his family.

 

9 And when you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.

 

10 There shall not be found among you one who purifies his son or his daughter in fire, one who practices divination, one who tells fortunes and reads omens, a sorcerer,

 

11 one who chants an incantation, a ventriloquist and an observer of portents, one who inquires of the dead.

 

12 For everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God; for because of these abominations the Lord will utterly destroy them from before you.

 

13 You shall be perfect before the Lord your God;

 

14 for these nations, whom you are dispossessing, these will listen to omens and divinations, but to you the Lord your God has not given so.

 

15 A prophet from among your brothers, like me, the Lord your God will raise up for you; him you shall hear,

 

16 according to all that you asked from the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying: We will not again hear the voice of the Lord our God, and this great fire we will not see anymore, lest we die.

 

17 And the Lord said to me: They have spoken rightly in all that they have said.

 

18 A prophet I will raise up for them from among their brothers, like you, and I will put my word in his mouth, and he shall speak to them whatever I command him.

 

19 And the man who does not hear whatever the prophet speaks in my name, I will exact vengeance from him.

 

20 But the prophet who acts impiously by speaking in my name a word which I did not command him to speak, and whoever speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

 

21 And if you say in your heart: How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?

 

22 Whatever the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the word does not come to pass and does not happen, this is the word which the Lord has not spoken; that prophet has spoken in impiety; you shall not spare him. 

  

Chapters 19

 

1 And when the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land your God is giving to you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses,

 

2 you shall set apart for yourself three cities in the midst of your land, which the Lord your God is giving you.

 

3 Determine the way for yourself, and divide into three parts the territory of your land which the Lord your God apportions to you, and there shall be a refuge there for every manslayer.

 

4 And this shall be the ordinance for the manslayer who flees there and shall live: whoever strikes his neighbor unintentionally, and did not hate him before yesterday and the day before

 

5 and whoever goes with his neighbor into the forest to gather wood, and his hand slips with the axe while cutting the wood, and the iron head, falling off from the handle, strikes his neighbor, and he dies, this man shall flee to one of these cities and live,

 

6 lest the avenger of blood pursue after the slayer, because his heart is inflamed, and overtake him if the way is long, and strike his life, and he die—though this man deserves no sentence of death, since he did not hate him before yesterday and the day before.

 

7 Therefore I command you this word, saying: You shall set apart three cities for yourself.

 

8 And if the Lord your God enlarges your borders, as he swore to your fathers, and the Lord gives you all the land which he said he would give to your fathers—

 

9 if you listen to do all these commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and to walk in all his ways all your days—then you shall add for yourself three more cities to these three,

 

10 and innocent blood shall not be shed in your land, which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, and there shall be no one guilty of blood among you.

 

11 But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him and strikes his life, and he dies, and he flees to one of these cities,

 

12 then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and deliver him into the hands of the avenger of blood, and he shall die.

 

13 Your eye shall not spare him, and you shall purge the innocent blood from Israel, and it shall be well with you.

 

14 You shall not move the landmarks of your neighbor, which your fathers set in your inheritance, which you inherited in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

 

15 One witness shall not suffice to testify against a man for any wrongdoing or any offense or any sin which he may commit; by the mouth of two witnesses and by the mouth of three witnesses shall every matter be established.

 

16 But if an unjust witness stands up against a man, alleging impiety against him,

 

17 then the two men between whom the dispute exists shall stand before the Lord and before the priests and before the judges who are in office in those days,

 

18 and the judges shall inquire diligently; and behold, if the unjust witness has testified unjustly and has stood up against his brother,

 

19 then you shall do to him as he wickedly intended to do against his brother, and you shall remove the evil from among yourselves.

 

20 And the rest, hearing of it, shall be afraid, and shall not again do this evil thing among you.

 

21 Your eye shall not spare him: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. 

 

Chapters 20

 

1 And if you go out to war against your enemies and see horse and rider and a people more numerous than you, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

 

2 And it shall be, when you draw near to the battle, that the priest shall come forward and speak to the people,

 

3 and shall say to them: Hear, O Israel! You are going forth today to war against your enemies; let not your heart faint; do not fear, nor be shattered, nor turn aside from before them,

 

4 for the Lord your God, who goes before you with you, will fight together with you against your enemies to save you.

 

5 And the scribes shall speak to the people, saying: What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.

 

6 And what man is there who has planted a vineyard and has not rejoiced in it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man rejoice in it.

 

7 And what man is there who has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.

 

8 And the scribes shall speak further to the people and say: What man is there who is fearful and cowardly in heart? Let him go and return to his house, lest he make his brother's heart cowardly like his own.

 

9 And it shall be, when the scribes have finished speaking to the people, that they shall appoint commanders of the army to lead the people.

 

10 And if you approach a city to make war against it, you shall also call them out with terms of peace.

 

11 If they answer you peaceably and open to you, then all the people found in it shall be tributary to you and subject to you;

 

12 but if they do not submit to you and make war against you, you shall besiege it,

 

13 and the Lord your God shall deliver it into your hands, and you shall smite every male of it with the slaughter of the sword,

 

14 except the women and the goods and all the cattle and everything that is in the city; and all the spoil you shall plunder for yourself, and you shall eat all the plunder of your enemies, which the Lord your God gives you.

 

15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations;

 

16 but behold, of the cities of these nations, whose land the Lord your God gives you to inherit, you shall not take alive from them anything that breathes,

 

17 but you shall utterly devote them to destruction—the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite and the Girgashite—as the Lord your God commanded you,

 

18 so that they may not teach you to do all their abominations, which they have done for their gods, and you sin before the Lord your God.

 

19 And if you besiege a city many days to make war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding iron against them; rather, you shall eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Is the tree in the field a man, that it should come before you into the siegeworks?

 

20 But a tree which you know does not bear edible fruit, this you shall destroy and cut down, and you shall build a siegework against the city that makes war against you, until it is delivered up. 

 

Chapters 21

 

1 And if a slain man is found in the land which the Lord your God gives you to inherit, fallen in the field, and they do not know who struck him,

 

2 your council of elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities round about the slain man,

 

3 and the city nearest to the slain man, the elders of that city shall take a heifer from the herd, one which has not been worked and which has not drawn a yoke,

 

4 and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down into a rough ravine, which has not been worked nor sown, and they shall hamstring the heifer in the ravine.

 

5 And the priests, the Levites, shall come near for the Lord your God chose them to stand before him and to bless in his name, and by their mouth every dispute and every assault shall be settled

 

6 and all the elders of that city, those nearest to the slain man, shall wash their hands over the head of the heifer that was hamstrung in the ravine,

 

7 and answering they shall say, "Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes have not seen it.

 

8 Be merciful to your people Israel, whom you redeemed, O Lord, out of the land of Egypt, that innocent blood may not be among your people Israel." And the blood shall be atoned for them.

 

9 And you shall remove the innocent blood from among yourselves, if you do what is good and pleasing before the Lord your God.

 

10 And if you go out to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take their spoil as plunder,

 

11 and you see among the spoil a woman beautiful in appearance and desire her and take her for yourself as wife,

 

12 then you shall bring her inside into your house, and you shall shave her head and trim her nails,

 

13 and you shall remove the garments of her captivity from her, and she shall sit in your house and mourn her father and her mother for a full month; and after that you shall go in to her and dwell with her, and she shall be your wife.

 

14 And it shall be, if you do not want her, you shall send her away free, and she shall by no means be sold for money; you shall not treat her with contempt, because you have humbled her.

 

15 And if a man has two wives, one of them loved and one of them hated, and both the loved one and the hated one bear children to him, and the firstborn son is the hated one's,

 

16 then it shall be, on the day when he distributes his possessions by inheritance to his sons, he shall not be able to give the right of the firstborn to the son of the loved one, overlooking the son of the hated one, the firstborn,

 

17 but he shall acknowledge the firstborn son of the hated one, giving him a double portion of all that is found to belong to him, because he is the beginning of his children, and to him belongs the birthright.

 

18 And if anyone has a disobedient and contentious son who does not obey the voice of his father and the voice of his mother, and they discipline him and he does not listen to them,

 

19 then his father and his mother shall seize him and bring him out to the elders of his city and to the gate of his place,

 

20 and they shall say to the men of their city, "This our son is disobedient and contentious; he does not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard."

 

21 And the men of his city shall stone him with stones, and he shall die; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves, and the rest, when they hear, will be afraid.

 

22 And if there is in someone a sin deserving the judgment of death, and he dies, and you hang him on a tree,

 

23 his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on that day, for everyone hanged on a tree is cursed by God; and you shall not defile the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. 

 

Chapters 22

 

1 If you see your brother's calf or his sheep straying on the road, you shall not disregard them; you shall surely return them to your brother and restore them to him.

 

2 But if your brother is not near you, or you do not know him, you shall gather them inside into your house, and they shall be with you until your brother seeks them, and you shall restore them to him.

 

3 So shall you do with his donkey, and so shall you do with his garment, and so shall you do with anything lost by your brother, whatever is lost by him and you find; you shall not be able to disregard it.

 

4 You shall not see your brother's donkey or his calf fallen on the road and disregard them; you shall surely help him raise them up.

 

5 A man's articles shall not be on a woman, nor shall a man put on a woman's dress, for everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.

 

6 If you come upon a bird's nest before you on the road, or in any tree, or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother is brooding over the young or over the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young;

 

7 you shall surely send the mother away, but the young you may take for yourself, so that it may go well with you and you may live many days.

 

8 If you build a new house, you shall also make a parapet for your roof; and you shall not bring bloodshed upon your house, if anyone who falls should fall from it.

 

9 You shall not sow your vineyard with different kinds of seed, lest the produce be consecrated—both the seed you sow and the produce of your vineyard.

 

10 You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

 

11 You shall not wear adulterated cloth, wool and linen in the same garment.

 

12 You shall make tassels for yourself on the four corners of the cloaks with which you cover yourself.

 

13 If any man takes a wife and lives with her and comes to hate her,

 

14 and brings against her charges of pretext and gives her a bad name, saying, "I took this woman, and when I came to her I did not find in her the tokens of virginity,"

 

15 then the father of the girl and her mother shall take and bring out the tokens of the girl's virginity to the council of elders at the gate,

 

16 and the father of the girl shall say to the elders, "I gave this daughter of mine to this man as a wife, and having come to hate her,

 

17 he now brings against her charges of pretext, saying, 'I did not find the tokens of virginity in your daughter'—yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity." And they shall spread out the garment before the elders of the city.

 

18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him,

 

19 and they shall fine him a hundred shekels and give them to the father of the young woman, because he brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel; and she shall be his wife, and he shall not be able to send her away all his days.

 

20 But if this charge proves true, and the tokens of virginity are not found for the young woman,

 

21 then they shall bring the young woman out to the doors of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones, and she shall die, because she committed folly among the sons of Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves.

 

22 If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, you shall kill them both, the man lying with the woman and the woman; and you shall remove the evil one from Israel.

 

23 If there is a virgin girl betrothed to a man, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her,

 

24 you shall bring them both out to the gate of their city, and they shall be stoned with stones and shall die: the young woman, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he humiliated his neighbor's wife; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves.

 

25 But if a man finds the betrothed girl in the open country, and forcing her lies with her, you shall kill only the man who lay with her,

 

26 and to the young woman you shall do nothing; there is in the young woman no sin worthy of death, for as when a man rises up against his neighbor and murders him, so is this matter,

 

27 because he found her in the field; the betrothed young woman cried out, and there was no one to help her.

 

28 If a man finds a virgin girl who is not betrothed, and forcing her lies with her, and he is discovered,

 

29 the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty didrachmas of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he humiliated her; he shall not be able to send her away all his days. 

  

Chapters 23

 

1 If you see your brother's calf or his sheep straying on the road, you shall not disregard them; you shall surely return them to your brother and restore them to him.

 

2 But if your brother is not near you, or you do not know him, you shall gather them inside into your house, and they shall be with you until your brother seeks them, and you shall restore them to him.

 

3 So shall you do with his donkey, and so shall you do with his garment, and so shall you do with anything lost by your brother, whatever is lost by him and you find; you shall not be able to disregard it.

 

4 You shall not see your brother's donkey or his calf fallen on the road and disregard them; you shall surely help him raise them up.

 

5 A man's articles shall not be on a woman, nor shall a man put on a woman's dress, for everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.

 

6 If you come upon a bird's nest before you on the road, or in any tree, or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother is brooding over the young or over the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young;

 

7 you shall surely send the mother away, but the young you may take for yourself, so that it may go well with you and you may live many days.

 

8 If you build a new house, you shall also make a parapet for your roof; and you shall not bring bloodshed upon your house, if anyone who falls should fall from it.

 

9 You shall not sow your vineyard with different kinds of seed, lest the produce be consecrated—both the seed you sow and the produce of your vineyard.

 

10 You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

 

11 You shall not wear adulterated cloth, wool and linen in the same garment.

 

12 You shall make tassels for yourself on the four corners of the cloaks with which you cover yourself.

 

13 If any man takes a wife and lives with her and comes to hate her,

 

14 and brings against her charges of pretext and gives her a bad name, saying, "I took this woman, and when I came to her I did not find in her the tokens of virginity,"

 

15 then the father of the girl and her mother shall take and bring out the tokens of the girl's virginity to the council of elders at the gate,

 

16 and the father of the girl shall say to the elders, "I gave this daughter of mine to this man as a wife, and having come to hate her,

 

17 he now brings against her charges of pretext, saying, 'I did not find the tokens of virginity in your daughter', yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity." And they shall spread out the garment before the elders of the city.

 

18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him,

 

19 and they shall fine him a hundred shekels and give them to the father of the young woman, because he brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel; and she shall be his wife, and he shall not be able to send her away all his days.

 

20 But if this charge proves true, and the tokens of virginity are not found for the young woman,

 

21 then they shall bring the young woman out to the doors of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones, and she shall die, because she committed folly among the sons of Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves.

 

22 If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, you shall kill them both, the man lying with the woman and the woman; and you shall remove the evil one from Israel.

 

23 If there is a virgin girl betrothed to a man, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her,

 

24 you shall bring them both out to the gate of their city, and they shall be stoned with stones and shall die: the young woman, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he humiliated his neighbor's wife; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves.

 

25 But if a man finds the betrothed girl in the open country, and forcing her lies with her, you shall kill only the man who lay with her,

 

26 and to the young woman you shall do nothing; there is in the young woman no sin worthy of death, for as when a man rises up against his neighbor and murders him, so is this matter,

 

27 because he found her in the field; the betrothed young woman cried out, and there was no one to help her.

 

28 If a man finds a virgin girl who is not betrothed, and forcing her lies with her, and he is discovered,

 

29 the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty didrachmas of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he humiliated her; he shall not be able to send her away all his days. 

  

Chapters 24

 

1 If a man takes a wife and lives with her, and it happens that she does not find favor before him, because he has found in her some unseemly thing, then he shall write her a bill of divorce and give it into her hands and send her out of his house,

 

2 and having departed she becomes another man's wife,

 

3 and the latter husband hates her and writes her a bill of divorce and gives it into her hands and sends her out of his house, or the latter husband dies, who took her to himself as wife,

 

4 the former husband who sent her away shall not be able to return and take her to himself as wife after she has been defiled, for it is an abomination before the Lord your God; and you shall not defile the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

 

5 If a man has recently taken a wife, he shall not go out to war, and no business shall be laid upon him; he shall be free in his house for one year, and shall make glad his wife whom he has taken.

 

6 You shall not take as a pledge a millstone or an upper millstone, for such a man takes a life in pledge.

 

7 If a man is caught stealing a soul of his brothers, the sons of Israel, and having oppressed him sells him, that thief shall die; and you shall remove the evil one from among yourselves.

 

8 Take heed to yourself concerning the plague of leprosy; you shall take great care to act according to all the law that the priests, the Levites, declare to you; as I commanded you, be careful to do.

 

9 Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way as you were coming out of Egypt.

 

10 If there is a debt owed you by your neighbor, any debt whatsoever, you shall not enter his house to take the pledge;

 

11 you shall stand outside, and the man to whom you have made the loan shall bring out the pledge to you outside.

 

12 And if the man is poor, you shall not sleep with his pledge;

 

13 you shall surely return his pledge at sunset, and he shall sleep in his garment and bless you, and it shall be mercy for you before the Lord your God.

 

14 You shall not withhold the wages of a poor and needy man, whether of your brothers or of the strangers in your cities;

 

15 you shall pay his wages the same day; the sun shall not set upon it, because he is poor and has his hope in it; and he shall not cry out against you to the Lord, and it become sin in you.

 

16 Fathers shall not die for children, and sons shall not die for fathers; each shall die for his own sin.

 

17 You shall not pervert the judgment of the stranger and the orphan and the widow, and you shall not take a widow's garment in pledge;

 

18 and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this thing.

 

19 If you reap a harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in your field, you shall not return to take it; it shall be for the poor and the stranger and the orphan and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the works of your hands.

 

20 And if you gather your olives, you shall not return to glean what is behind you; it shall be for the stranger and the orphan and the widow; and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this thing.

 

21 And if you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it again behind you; it shall be for the stranger and the orphan and the widow;

 

22 and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this thing. 

 

Chapters 25

 

1 If there be a dispute between men, and they come to judgment, and the judges judge, and justify the righteous and condemn the ungodly,

 

2 then it shall be, if the ungodly man is worthy of stripes, you shall make him sit down before the judges, and they shall scourge him before them according to his ungodliness, by number.

 

3 Forty stripes they shall give him; they shall not add more; but if they add more, to scourge him with more stripes than these, your brother will be disgraced before you.

 

4 You shall not muzzle an ox that is treading out the grain.

 

5 And if brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no seed, the wife of the dead man shall not marry outside to a man not related; her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her to himself as wife and live with her.

 

6 And it shall be that the child which she bears shall be established from the name of the deceased, and his name shall not be blotted out of Israel.

 

7 But if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then the woman shall go up to the gate, to the elders, and say, "My husband's brother refuses to raise up the name of his brother in Israel; my husband's brother would not."

 

8 And the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him; and if he stands and says, "I do not wish to take her,"

 

9 then his brother's wife shall come forward before the elders and loose his one sandal from his foot and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, "Thus shall they do to the man who will not build up his brother's house."

 

10 And his name shall be called in Israel, "The house of him whose sandal has been loosed."

 

11 And if men fight together, a man with his brother, and the wife of one of them comes near to rescue her husband from the hand of the one striking him, and stretching out her hand seizes him by his private parts,

 

12 you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall not spare her.

 

13 There shall not be in your bag a weight and a weight, a great and a small;

 

14 there shall not be in your house a measure and a measure, a great and a small;

 

15 you shall have a true and just weight, and you shall have a true and just measure, that you may live long in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance;

 

16 for everyone who does these things, everyone who does injustice, is an abomination to the Lord your God.

 

17 Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt,

 

18 how he withstood you on the way and cut off your rear guard, those who were weary behind you, while you were hungry and weary; and he did not fear God.

 

19 And it shall be, when the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies round about you, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven, and you shall not forget. 

  

Chapters 26

 

1 And it shall be, when you enter into the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, and you take possession of it and dwell in it,

 

2 that you shall take of the firstfruits of the fruits of your land, which the Lord your God gives you, and you shall put them in a basket and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses for his name to be called upon there,

 

3 and you shall come to the priest who shall be in those days, and you shall say to him: I declare today to the Lord my God that I have come into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.

 

4 And the priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it before the altar of the Lord your God,

 

5 and you shall answer and say before the Lord your God: My father abandoned Syria and went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a great nation and a great and numerous multitude.

 

6 And the Egyptians afflicted us and humbled us and laid hard labors upon us.

 

7 And we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our humiliation and our toil and our oppression.

 

8 And the Lord himself brought us out of Egypt with great strength and with a mighty hand and with his high arm and with great visions and with signs and with wonders,

 

9 and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

 

10 And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the produce of the land which you gave me, O Lord, a land flowing with milk and honey. And you shall leave them before the Lord your God and worship there before the Lord your God,

 

11 and you shall rejoice in all the good things which the Lord your God has given you and your house, you and the Levite and the sojourner who is among you.

 

12 And when you have finished tithing all the tithe of the produce of your land in the third year, you shall give the second tithe to the Levite and the sojourner and the orphan and the widow, and they shall eat in your cities and be filled.

 

13 And you shall say before the Lord your God: I have cleared out the holy things from my house and have given them to the Levite and the sojourner and the orphan and the widow, according to all the commandments which you commanded me; I have not transgressed your commandment, nor have I forgotten it.

 

14 And I have not eaten of them in my grief, I have not offered any of them for an unclean purpose, I have not given any of them to the dead; I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God, I have done as you commanded me.

 

15 Look down from your holy house, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the land which you have given them, as you swore to our fathers, to give us a land flowing with milk and honey.

 

16 On this day the Lord your God has commanded you to do all these statutes and judgments, and you shall keep and do them with all your heart and with all your soul.

 

17 You have chosen God today to be your God, and to walk in his ways and to keep his statutes and his judgments and to obey his voice;

 

18 and the Lord has chosen you today to be for him a special people, just as he said to you, to keep all his commandments,

 

19 and for you to be above all the nations, as he has made you renowned and a boast and glorious, that you may be a holy people to the Lord your God, as he has spoken. 

  

Chapters 27

 

1 And Moses and the elders of Israel commanded, saying, Keep all these commandments, as many as I command you today.

 

2 And it shall be, on whatever day you cross the Jordan into the land which the Lord your God gives you, that you shall set up for yourself great stones, and you shall plaster them with plaster;

 

3 and you shall write upon the stones all the words of this law, when you have crossed the Jordan, when you enter into the land which the Lord the God of your fathers gives you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord the God of your fathers said to you.

 

4 And it shall be, when you have crossed the Jordan, you shall set up these stones, which I command you today, on Mount Gaibal, and you shall plaster them with plaster.

 

5 And you shall build there an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones; you shall not lift up iron upon them.

 

6 Of whole stones you shall build an altar to the Lord your God, and you shall offer upon it whole burnt offerings to the Lord your God;

 

7 and you shall sacrifice there a peace offering to the Lord your God, and you shall eat and be filled and rejoice before the Lord your God.

 

8 And you shall write upon the stones all this law very plainly.

 

9 And Moses and the priests the Levites spoke to all Israel, saying, Be silent and hear, O Israel: on this day you have become a people to the Lord your God;

 

10 and you shall hearken to the voice of the Lord your God and do all his commandments and his ordinances, as many as I command you today.

 

11 And Moses commanded the people on that day, saying,

 

12 These shall stand to bless the people on Mount Garizin when you have crossed the Jordan: Symeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.

 

13 And these shall stand for the curse on Mount Gaibal: Reuben, Gad and Aser, Zabulon, Dan and Nephthali.

 

14 And the Levites shall answer and say to all Israel with a loud voice:

 

15 Cursed is the man who shall make a graven or molten image, an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of a craftsman, and set it in a hidden place; and all the people shall answer and say, So be it.

 

16 Cursed is he who dishonors his father or his mother; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

17 Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's landmarks; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

18 Cursed is he who leads the blind astray in the way; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

19 Cursed is whoever perverts the judgment of the stranger and the orphan and the widow; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

20 Cursed is he who lies with his father's wife, because he has uncovered his father's covering; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

21 Cursed is he who lies with any beast; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

22 Cursed is he who lies with his sister by his father or by his mother; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

23 Cursed is he who lies with his mother-in-law; and all the people shall say, So be it. Cursed is he who lies with his wife's sister; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

24 Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor by deceit; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

25 Cursed is whoever takes gifts to strike the life of innocent blood; and all the people shall say, So be it.

 

26 Cursed is every man who does not abide in all the words of this law to do them; and all the people shall say, So be it. 

 

Chapters 28

 

1 And it shall be, when you cross over the Jordan into the land which the Lord your God gives you, if you diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep and to do all his commandments which I command you today, then the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth,

 

2 and all these blessings shall come upon you and find you, if you diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God.

 

3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field;

 

4 blessed shall be the offspring of your womb and the fruits of your land, the herds of your oxen and the flocks of your sheep;

 

5 blessed shall be your storehouses and your stores;

 

6 blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

 

7 May the Lord your God deliver up your enemies who stand against you, crushed before your face; they shall come out against you by one way, and by seven ways they shall flee from before your face.

 

8 May the Lord send the blessing upon you in your storerooms and in all to which you set your hand, upon the land which the Lord your God gives you.

 

9 May the Lord your God raise you up as a holy people to himself, as he swore to your fathers, if you hearken to the voice of the Lord your God and walk in his ways;

 

10 and all the nations of the earth shall see you, that the name of the Lord is called upon you, and they shall fear you.

 

11 And the Lord your God shall multiply you for good in the offspring of your womb and in the fruits of your land and in the offspring of your cattle, upon the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.

 

12 May the Lord open to you his good treasury, the heaven, to give the rain to your land in its season, to bless all the works of your hands; and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.

 

13 May the Lord your God make you the head and not the tail, and you shall then be above and not below, if you hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God, all that I command you today to keep and to do;

 

14 you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

 

15 And it shall be, if you do not hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep and to do all his commandments which I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.

 

16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field;

 

17 cursed shall be your storehouses and your stores;

 

18 cursed shall be the offspring of your womb and the fruits of your land, the herds of your oxen and the flocks of your sheep;

 

19 cursed shall you be when you go out, and cursed shall you be when you come in.

 

20 May the Lord send forth upon you want and famine and consumption upon everything to which you set your hand, whatever you may do, until he utterly destroys you and until he quickly ruins you, because of your evil practices, because you have forsaken me.

 

21 May the Lord make death cling to you, until he consumes you from off the land into which you are entering there to inherit it.

 

22 May the Lord smite you with distress and fever and chill and inflammation and slaughter and blight and paleness, and they shall pursue you until they destroy you.

 

23 And the heaven that is over your head shall be bronze to you, and the earth beneath you iron.

 

24 May the Lord give the rain of your land as dust, and dust shall come down from heaven upon you, until it wears you out and until it destroys you.

 

25 May the Lord give you up to slaughter before your enemies; by one way you shall go out against them, and by seven ways you shall flee from before their face; and you shall be in dispersion among all the kingdoms of the earth.

 

26 And your dead shall be food for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to scare them away.

 

27 May the Lord smite you with the Egyptian ulcer in the seat, and with wild scab and itch, so that you cannot be healed.

 

28 May the Lord smite you with madness and blindness and derangement of mind,

 

29 and you shall grope at midday, as a blind man gropes in the darkness, and he shall not prosper your ways; and you shall then be wronged and plundered all your days, and there shall be no one to help you.

 

30 You shall take a wife, and another man shall have her; you shall build a house, and you shall not dwell in it; you shall plant a vineyard, and you shall not gather its grapes;

 

31 your calf shall be slaughtered before you, and you shall not eat of it; your donkey shall be seized from you and shall not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and there shall be no one to help you;

 

32 your sons and your daughters shall be given to another nation, and your eyes shall look on, wasting away toward them, and your hand shall have no strength;

 

33 the produce of your land and all your labors a nation which you do not know shall eat, and you shall be wronged and broken all your days;

 

34 and you shall be driven mad because of the sights of your eyes which you shall see.

 

35 May the Lord smite you with a grievous ulcer on the knees and on the legs, so that you cannot be healed from the sole of your feet to the crown of your head.

 

36 May the Lord carry away you and your rulers, whom you may set over yourself, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers know, and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone.

 

37 And you shall be there a riddle and a proverb and a tale among all the nations to which the Lord shall carry you away.

 

38 You shall carry much seed out into the field and bring in little, for the locust shall devour it.

 

39 You shall plant a vineyard and cultivate it, but you shall not drink wine nor rejoice from it, for the worm shall devour it.

 

40 You shall have olive trees in all your borders, but you shall not anoint yourself with oil, for your olive shall drop off.

 

41 You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go away into captivity.

 

42 The blight shall consume all your trees and the fruits of your land.

 

43 The stranger who is among you shall mount up above you, higher and higher, but you shall come down lower and lower;

 

44 he shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.

 

45 And all these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you, until he utterly destroys you and until he ruins you, because you did not hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his ordinances which he commanded you.

 

46 And they shall be signs and wonders in you and in your seed forever,

 

47 because you did not serve the Lord your God with gladness and a good heart, on account of the abundance of all things.

 

48 And you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in want of all things; and he shall put an iron yoke upon your neck, until he utterly destroys you.

 

49 The Lord will bring upon you a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, like the swoop of an eagle, a nation whose voice you will not understand,

 

50 a nation shameless in countenance, which will not respect the face of an old man nor show mercy to the young,

 

51 and it will devour the offspring of your cattle and the produce of your land, so as to leave you no grain, wine, or oil, nor the herds of your oxen or the flocks of your sheep, until it destroys you

 

52 and wears you down in all your cities, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, are pulled down throughout all your land; and it will afflict you in all your cities which the Lord your God gave you.

 

53 And you shall eat the offspring of your own womb, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God gave you, in your distress and in your affliction with which your enemy shall afflict you.

 

54 The man who is tender and very delicate among you will look with an evil eye upon his brother and the wife of his bosom and the children remaining who are left to him,

 

55 so as not to give to one of them any of the flesh of his children which he eats, because nothing is left to him, in your distress and in your affliction with which your enemies shall afflict you in all your cities.

 

56 And the tender and very delicate woman among you, whose foot never ventured to walk upon the ground because of her delicacy and tenderness, will look with an evil eye upon the husband of her bosom and her son and her daughter,

 

57 and upon her afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs, and upon the child she bears; for she will eat them secretly, because of the lack of everything, in your distress and in your affliction with which your enemy shall afflict you in all your cities.

 

58 If you do not hearken to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, to fear this honored and wonderful name, the Lord your God,

 

59 then the Lord will make your plagues extraordinary, and the plagues of your seed, great and wonderful plagues, and evil and persistent diseases;

 

60 and he will turn back upon you all the grievous pain of Egypt, which you dreaded before them, and they will cleave to you.

 

61 And every sickness and every plague not written in the book of this law the Lord will bring upon you, until he utterly destroys you.

 

62 And you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven in multitude, because you did not hearken to the voice of the Lord your God.

 

63 And it shall be that just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you utterly; and you shall be removed from the land into which you are entering to inherit it.

 

64 And the Lord your God will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

 

65 But even among those nations he will give you no rest, nor shall there be any resting-place for the sole of your foot; and there the Lord will give you a despairing heart, failing eyes, and a wasting soul.

 

66 And your life shall hang in suspense before your eyes, and you shall be afraid day and night, and you shall have no assurance of your life.

 

67 In the morning you shall say, "Would that it were evening!" and in the evening you shall say, "Would that it were morning!" Because of the fear of your heart with which you shall fear, and because of the sights your eyes shall see.

 

68 And the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said, "You shall never see it again"; and there you shall be sold to your enemies as male and female slaves, and there shall be no buyer.

 

69 These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to establish with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them at Horeb. 

  

Chapters 29

 

1 And Moses called all the sons of Israel and said to them: You have seen all that the Lord did in the land of Egypt before you, to Pharaoh and to his servants and to all his land,

 

2 the great trials which your eyes have seen, those great signs and wonders;

 

3 and the Lord God has not given you a heart to know and eyes to see and ears to hear until this day.

 

4 And he led you forty years in the wilderness; your garments did not grow old, and your sandals were not worn away from your feet;

 

5 you did not eat bread, you did not drink wine or strong drink, so that you might know that this is the Lord your God.

 

6 And you came as far as this place, and Seon king of Hesebon and Og king of Basan came out to meet us in war, and we struck them down

 

 

7 and took their land, and I gave it as an inheritance to Ruben and to Gad and to the half tribe of Manasse.

 

8 And you shall take care to do all the words of this covenant, so that you may understand all that you shall do.

 

9 You all stand today before the Lord your God: your tribal chiefs and your elders and your judges and your officers, every man of Israel,

 

10 your wives and your offspring and the sojourner who is in the midst of your camp, from your woodcutter even to your water-carrier,

 

11 to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God and into his curses, all that the Lord your God covenants with you today,

 

12 that he may establish you as a people for himself, and he himself shall be your God, just as he said to you, and just as he swore to your fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

 

13 And not with you alone do I make this covenant and this curse,

 

14 but also with those who are here with us today before the Lord your God, and with those who are not here with us today.

 

15 For you know how we dwelt in the land of Egypt and how we passed through the midst of the nations through whom you passed,

 

16 and you saw their abominations and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which are among them.

 

17 Is there among you any man or woman or family or tribe, whose mind has turned aside from the Lord your God, to go and serve the gods of those nations? Is there among you any root growing upward in gall and bitterness?

 

18 And it shall be, if anyone hears the words of this curse and boasts in his heart, saying, May holy things be mine, for I shall walk in the wandering of my heart—lest the sinner destroy the sinless along with him

 

19 God will by no means be willing to be merciful to him, but then the wrath of the Lord and his jealousy will be kindled against that man, and all the curses of this covenant that are written in the book of this law will cling to him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven;

 

20 and the Lord will set him apart for evils from all the sons of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in the book of this law.

 

21 And the other generation shall say—your sons who shall arise after you, and the stranger who comes from a land far off, when they see the plagues of that land and its diseases, which the Lord sent upon it,

 

22 brimstone and burnt salt: all its land shall not be sown nor shall it sprout, nor shall any green thing come up upon it, as Sodom and Gomorra, Adama and Seboim were overthrown, which the Lord overthrew in fury and wrath

 

23 and all the nations shall say, Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What is this great fury of wrath?

 

24 And they shall say: Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord the God of their fathers, which he made with their fathers when he brought them out of the land of Egypt,

 

25 and they went and served other gods and worshipped them—gods whom they did not know, nor had he assigned them to them;

 

26 and the Lord was angered with fury against that land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in the book of this law,

 

27 and the Lord removed them from their land in fury and wrath and very great provocation, and cast them out into another land, as it is now.

 

28 The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, to do all the words of this law. 

  

Chapters 30

 

1 And it shall come to pass, when all these words have come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before your face, and you take them to your heart among all the nations, wherever the Lord scatters you there,

 

2 and you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul,

 

3 then the Lord will heal your sins and have mercy on you, and will again gather you from all the nations among whom the Lord scattered you there.

 

4 If your dispersion be from one end of heaven to the other end of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there the Lord your God will take you;

 

5 and the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers inherited, and you shall inherit it; and he will do you good and make you more numerous than your fathers.

 

6 And the Lord will purge your heart and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

 

7 And the Lord your God will put these curses upon your enemies and upon those who hate you, who persecuted you.

 

8 And you shall return and hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, and you shall do his commandments, which I command you today,

 

9 and the Lord your God will care greatly for you in every work of your hands, in the offspring of your womb and in the produce of your land and in the offspring of your cattle; for the Lord your God will turn again to rejoice over you for good, just as he rejoiced over your fathers,

 

10 if you hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep and to do all his commandments and his ordinances and his judgments that are written in the book of this law, if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

 

11 For this commandment which I command you today is not excessive, nor is it far from you.

 

12 It is not in heaven above, so as to say, Who will go up for us into heaven and get it for us? and having heard it we will do it.

 

13 Neither is it beyond the sea, so as to say, Who will cross over for us to the other side of the sea and get it for us? and he will make it heard for us, and we will do it.

 

14 The word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart and in your hands, to do it.

 

15 Behold, I have set before your face today life and death, good and evil.

 

16 If you hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his ordinances and his judgments, then you shall live and be many, and the Lord your God will bless you in all the land into which you are entering there to inherit it.

 

17 But if your heart turns away and you do not hearken, and being led astray you worship other gods and serve them,

 

18 I declare to you today that you shall utterly perish, and you shall by no means be long-lived upon the land which the Lord your God gives you, into which you are crossing the Jordan there to inherit it.

 

19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today: I have set before your face life and death, the blessing and the curse; choose life, that you may live, you and your seed,

 

20 to love the Lord your God, to hearken to his voice, and to cleave to him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may dwell upon the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, to give to them. 

  

Chapters 31

 

1 And Moses finished speaking all these words to all the sons of Israel;

 

2 and he said to them, "I am one hundred and twenty years old today; I shall no longer be able to go in and go out, and the Lord said to me, 'You shall not cross this Jordan.'

 

3 The Lord your God, who goes before your face, he himself will utterly destroy these nations from before your face, and you shall dispossess them; and Joshua is the one who goes before your face, as the Lord has spoken.

 

4 And the Lord will do to them as he did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan, and to their land, inasmuch as he utterly destroyed them.

 

5 And the Lord has delivered them to you, and you shall do to them as I commanded you.

 

6 Be manly and strong; do not fear, nor be cowardly, nor be terrified before their face, for the Lord your God, who goes before with you, among you, will by no means let you go nor forsake you."

 

7 And Moses called Joshua and said to him before all Israel, "Be manly and strong, for you shall go in before the face of this people into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give them, and you shall give it to them as an inheritance;

 

8 and the Lord, who goes along with you, will not let you go nor by any means forsake you; do not fear, nor be cowardly."

 

9 And Moses wrote the words of this law in a book and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to the elders of the sons of Israel.

 

10 And Moses commanded them on that day, saying, "After seven years, at the time of the year of release, at the feast of tabernacles,

 

11 when all Israel comes together to appear before the Lord your God in the place which the Lord may choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their ears,

 

12 having assembled the people, the men and the women and the offspring and the sojourner who is in your cities, so that they may hear and so that they may learn to fear the Lord your God, and they shall hearken to do all the words of this law;

 

13 and their sons, who do not know, shall hear and shall learn to fear the Lord your God all the days that they live upon the land into which you are crossing the Jordan to inherit it."

 

14 And the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, the days of your death have drawn near; call Joshua, and stand by the doors of the tent of witness, and I will command him." And Moses and Joshua went to the tent of witness and stood by the doors of the tent of witness.

 

15 And the Lord came down in a cloud and stood by the doors of the tent of witness, and the pillar of the cloud stood by the doors of the tent.

 

16 And the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, you are about to sleep with your fathers, and this people will rise up and go whoring after strange gods of the land into which it is entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant, which I made with them.

 

17 And I will be angered with wrath against them in that day, and I will forsake them and turn away my face from them, and it shall be devoured, and many evils and afflictions shall find it, and it shall say in that day, 'Because the Lord my God is not with me, these evils have found me.'

 

18 But I will surely turn away my face from them in that day because of all the evils which they have done, because they turned to strange gods.

 

19 And now write the words of this song and teach it to the sons of Israel and put it into their mouth, so that this song may be for me a witness among the sons of Israel.

 

20 For I will bring them into the good land which I swore to their fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey, and they shall eat and, being filled, shall be sated; and they will turn to strange gods and serve them and provoke me and break my covenant.

 

21 And this song shall stand up against them face to face as a witness, for it shall by no means be forgotten from their mouth and from the mouth of their seed; for I know their wickedness, what things they do here today, before I bring them into the good land which I swore to their fathers."

 

22 And Moses wrote this song on that day and taught it to the sons of Israel.

 

23 And Moses commanded Joshua and said to him, "Be manly and strong, for you shall bring the sons of Israel into the land which the Lord swore to them, and he himself shall be with you."

 

24 And when Moses had finished writing all the words of this law in a book, even to the end,

 

25 he also commanded the Levites who carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying,

 

26 "Take this book of the law and place it at the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and it shall be there among you for a witness.

 

27 For I know your provocation and your stiff neck; for while I am still living with you today, you have been embittering what pertains to God, how much more after my death?

 

28 Assemble to me your tribal chiefs and your elders and your judges and your officers, so that I may speak into their ears all these words and call heaven and earth to witness against them.

 

29 For I know that after my death you will act lawlessly with lawlessness and turn aside from the way which I commanded you, and evils will befall you in the last days, because you will do what is evil before the Lord, to provoke him to anger by the works of your hands."

 

30And Moses spoke into the ears of the whole assembly of Israel the words of this song, even to the end. 

  

Chapters 32

 

1 Give heed, O heaven, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words from my mouth.

 

2 Let my utterance be awaited like rain, and let my words come down like dew, as a shower upon the grass and as snowfall upon the herbage.

 

3 For I have called upon the name of the Lord: ascribe greatness to our God.

 

4 God, his works are true, and all his ways are judgments; a faithful God, and there is no injustice; righteous and holy is the Lord.

 

5 They have sinned; they are not his, blameworthy children, a crooked and perverse generation.

 

6 Do you thus repay these things to the Lord, O foolish people and not wise? Did not he himself, your father, acquire you and make you and create you?

 

7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of generation upon generation. Ask your father, and he will declare it to you; your elders, and they will tell you.

 

8 When the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God,

 

9 and his people Jacob became the Lord's portion, Israel the allotted cord of his inheritance.

 

10 He sustained him in a desert land, in the thirst of burning heat, in a waterless place; he encircled him and instructed him and guarded him as the apple of an eye,

 

11 as an eagle would shelter its nest, and he yearned over his young; spreading out his wings he received them and took them up upon his back.

 

12 The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god with them.

 

13 He brought them up upon the strength of the land; he fed them with the produce of the fields; they sucked honey out of a rock and oil out of solid rock,

 

14 butter of cattle and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs and rams, of sons of bulls and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of wheat; and they drank wine, the blood of the grape.

 

15 And Jacob ate and was filled, and the beloved kicked; he grew fat, he grew thick, he grew broad; and he forsook the God who made him and departed from God his savior.

 

16 They provoked me with foreign things; with their abominations they embittered me.

 

17 They sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods whom they did not know; new and recent ones have come, whom their fathers did not know.

 

18 You forsook the God who begot you, and you forgot the God who nourishes you.

 

19 And the Lord saw and was jealous and was provoked because of the anger of his sons and daughters,

 

20 and he said: I will turn my face away from them and will show what will happen to them in the last days; for it is a perverted generation, sons in whom there is no faithfulness.

 

21 They made me jealous with what is no god; they angered me with their idols; and I will make them jealous with what is no nation; with a senseless nation I will anger them.

 

22 For a fire has been kindled out of my wrath; it will burn down to Hades below; it will consume the earth and its produce; it will set ablaze the foundations of the mountains.

 

23 I will gather evils against them, and I will spend my arrows on them.

 

24 Wasting away with famine and the devouring of birds, and incurable convulsion; I will send against them the teeth of wild beasts, with the fury of those that crawl upon the earth.

 

25 Outside the sword shall make them childless, and terror out of the inner chambers, the young man with the virgin, the suckling with the man grown old.

 

26 I said: I will scatter them; I will indeed make the memory of them cease from among men,

 

27 were it not for the wrath of enemies, lest they live long, and lest the adversaries join in attack, lest they say: Our hand is high, and it was not the Lord who did all these things.

 

28 For it is a nation that has lost counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

 

29 They were not wise enough to understand these things; let them accept it for the time to come.

 

30 How shall one pursue a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless God had sold them and the Lord had delivered them up?

 

31 For their gods are not like our God, but our enemies are without understanding.

 

32 For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and their tendril from Gomorrah; their grape is a grape of gall, a cluster of bitterness is theirs;

 

33 their wine is the fury of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps.

 

34 Behold, are not these things gathered up with me and sealed among my treasures?

 

35 In the day of vengeance I will repay, at the time when their foot slips; for the day of their destruction is near, and the things prepared for you are at hand.

 

36 For the Lord will judge his people, and he will be comforted over his servants; for he saw them paralyzed and failing under affliction and enfeebled.

 

37 And the Lord said: Where are their gods in whom they trusted,

 

38 the fat of whose sacrifices you used to eat, and you drank the wine of their libations? Let them rise up and help you and be your protectors.

 

39 See, see that I am, and there is no god besides me; I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal, and there is no one who shall deliver out of my hands.

 

40 For I will lift up my hand to heaven and I will swear by my right hand and say: As I live forever,

 

41 I will whet my sword like lightning, and my hand will take hold of judgment, and I will repay vengeance to my enemies, and to those who hate me I will repay;

 

42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh, with the blood of the wounded and of captives, from the head of the rulers of enemies.

 

43 Rejoice, O heavens, together with him, and let all the sons of God worship him; rejoice, O nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God strengthen themselves in him; for he avenges the blood of his sons, and he will take vengeance and repay justice to his enemies, and to those who hate him he will repay; and the Lord will cleanse the land of his people.

 

44 And Moses wrote this song on that day and taught it to the sons of Israel. And Moses went in and spoke all the words of this law in the ears of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun.

 

45 And Moses finished speaking to all Israel,

 

46 and he said to them: Give heed in your heart to all these words which I testify to you today, which you shall command your sons, to keep and to do all the words of this law.

 

47 For this is no empty word for you, for this is your life, and because of this word you shall live long upon the land into which you are crossing the Jordan there to inherit it.

 

48 And the Lord spoke to Moses on this day, saying:

 

49 Go up onto this mountain of Abarim, Mount Nabau, which is in the land of Moab, facing Jericho, and see the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel for a possession,

 

50 and die on the mountain onto which you go up there, and be added to your people, just as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was added to his people,

 

51 because you disobeyed my word among the sons of Israel at the water of contention, Kadesh, in the wilderness of Sin, because you did not sanctify me among the sons of Israel.

 

52 For you shall see the land from opposite, but you shall not enter there. 

  

Chapters 33

 

1 And this is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the sons of Israel before his death.

 

2 And he said: The Lord has come from Sinai, and he appeared to us from Seir, and hastened from Mount Paran with the myriads of Kades; at his right hand were angels with him.

 

3 And he spared his people, and all the sanctified ones were under your hands; and these are under you, and he received of his words

 

4 a law, which Moses commanded us, an inheritance for the assemblies of Jacob.

 

5 And there shall be a ruler in the beloved one, when the rulers of peoples are gathered together with the tribes of Israel.

 

6 Let Reuben live and not die, and let him be many in number.

 

7 And this is for Judah: Hear, O Lord, the voice of Judah, and may they come to his people; his hands shall contend for him, and you shall be a helper against his enemies.

 

8 And to Levi he said: Give to Levi his manifestations and his truth to the holy man, whom they tested with a testing; they reviled him at the water of contention;

 

9 who says to his father and mother, "I have not seen you," and did not recognize his brothers, and disowned his sons: he kept your oracles and guarded your covenant.

 

10 They shall declare your ordinances to Jacob and your law to Israel; they shall place incense in your wrath continually upon your altar.

 

11 Bless, O Lord, his strength, and accept the works of his hands; break the loins of the enemies who have risen up against him, and let those who hate him not rise up.

 

12 And to Benjamin he said: Beloved by the Lord, he shall dwell in confidence, and God shades over him all his days, and he rested between his shoulders.

 

13 And to Joseph he said: His land is from the blessing of the Lord, from the seasons of heaven and the dew, and from the deeps of springs below,

 

14 and in season, of the produce of the sun's turnings, and from the conjunctions of months,

 

15 and from the summit of the mountains of the beginning, and from the summit of the everlasting hills,

 

16 and in season, of the fullness of the earth. And may the things acceptable to him who appeared in the bush come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the crown of him glorified among his brothers.

 

17 A firstborn bull—his beauty; the horns of a unicorn are his horns; with them he shall gore the nations together, as far as the end of the earth. These are the myriads of Ephraim, and these the thousands of Manasseh.

 

18 And to Zebulun he said: Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out, and, Issachar, in his tents.

 

19 They shall utterly destroy nations, and you shall call upon them there and offer a sacrifice of righteousness, for the wealth of the sea shall suckle you, and the trading posts of those dwelling by the coast.

 

20 And to Gad he said: Blessed is he who enlarges Gad; like a lion he rested, having crushed arm and ruler.

 

21 And he saw his firstfruits, for there the land of rulers was divided, gathered together with the chiefs of peoples; the Lord executed righteousness and his judgment with Israel.

 

22 And to Dan he said: Dan is a lion's whelp, and he shall leap out from Bashan.

 

23 And to Naphtali he said: Naphtali is the fullness of things acceptable, and let him be filled with blessing from the Lord; he shall inherit the sea and the southwest.

 

24 And to Asher he said: Blessed among children is Asher, and he shall be acceptable to his brothers. He shall dip his foot in oil;

 

25 iron and bronze shall be his sandal, and as your days, so shall your strength be.

 

26 There is none like the God of the beloved one: he who mounts upon heaven is your helper, and the majestic one of the firmament.

 

27 And there is the shelter of God from the beginning, and beneath is the strength of everlasting arms; and he shall cast out the enemy from before your face, saying, "May you perish."

 

28 And Israel shall dwell in confidence, alone, upon the land of Jacob, upon grain and wine, and heaven shall be cloudy for him with dew.

 

29 Blessed are you, Israel; who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? Your helper shall shield you, and the sword is your boast; and your enemies shall deceive you, and you shall tread upon their neck. 

  

Chapters 34

 

1 And Moses went up from Araboth Moab to Mount Nabau, to the peak of Phasga, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him all the land of Galaad as far as Dan,

 

2 and all the land of Nephthali, and all the land of Ephraim and Manasse, and all the land of Judah as far as the farthest sea,

 

3 and the wilderness and the region around Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Segor.

 

4 And the Lord said to Moses, "This is the land which I swore to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, saying, 'To your seed I will give it'; and I have shown it to your eyes, but there you shall not enter."

 

5 And Moses, the servant of the Lord, died in the land of Moab by the word of the Lord.

 

6 And they buried him in Gai in the land of Moab, near the house of Phogor; and no one knows his burial place to this day.

 

7 Now Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eyes were not dimmed, nor were his lips corrupted.

 

8 And the sons of Israel wept for Moses in Araboth Moab by the Jordan opposite Jericho for thirty days; and the days of mourning and weeping for Moses were completed.

 

9 And Joshua son of Naue was filled with a spirit of understanding, for Moses had laid his hands upon him; and the sons of Israel listened to him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses.

 

10 And there arose no longer a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,

 

11 in all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh and his servants and all his land,

 

12 the great marvels and the mighty hand, which Moses performed before all Israel.