Now, Israel, listen to the statutes and to the ordinances which I teach you, to do them, that you may live and go in and possess the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, gives you.
You shall not add to the word which I command you, neither shall you take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.
Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baal Peor; for the LORD your God has destroyed all the men who followed Baal Peor from among you.
But you who were faithful to the LORD your God are all alive today.
Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do so in the middle of the land where you go in to possess it.
Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who shall hear all these statutes and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”
What great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law which I set before you today?
Only be careful, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes saw, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your children and your children’s children—
the day that you stood before the LORD your God in Horeb, when the LORD said to me, “Assemble the people to me, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.”
and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the army of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky.
But the LORD has taken you, and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be to him a people of inheritance, as it is today.
Furthermore the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, and swore that I should not go over the Jordan, and that I should not go in to that good land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance;
Be careful, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the LORD your God has forbidden you.
For the LORD your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.
When you father children and children’s children, and you have been long in the land, and then corrupt yourselves, and make a carved image in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in the LORD your God’s sight to provoke him to anger,
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land which you go over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days on it, but will utterly be destroyed.
For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and from the one end of the sky to the other, whether there has been anything as great as this thing is, or has been heard like it?
Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the middle of the fire, as you have heard, and live?
Or has God tried to go and take a nation for himself from among another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
It was shown to you so that you might know that the LORD is God. There is no one else besides him.
Out of heaven he made you to hear his voice, that he might instruct you. On earth he made you to see his great fire; and you heard his words out of the middle of the fire.
Because he loved your fathers, therefore he chose their offspring after them, and brought you out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt;
to drive out nations from before you greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today.
Know therefore today, and take it to heart, that the LORD himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no one else.
You shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD your God gives you for all time.
Then Moses set apart three cities beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise,
that the man slayer might flee there, who kills his neighbor unintentionally and didn’t hate him in time past, and that fleeing to one of these cities he might live:
Bezer in the wilderness, in the plain country, for the Reubenites; and Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.
This is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel.
These are the testimonies, and the statutes, and the ordinances which Moses spoke to the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt,
beyond the Jordan, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon, whom Moses and the children of Israel struck when they came out of Egypt.
They took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise;
from Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, even to Mount Zion (also called Hermon),
and all the Arabah beyond the Jordan eastward, even to the sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of Pisgah.
