And they said, The LORD commanded my lord to give the land for an inheritance by lot to the children of Israel: and my lord was commanded by the LORD to give the inheritance of Zelophehad our brother unto his daughters.

And Moses commanded the children of Israel according to the word of the LORD, saying, The tribe of the sons of Joseph hath said well.

Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, married cousins on their father’s side.

These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea, between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab.

On this side Jordan, in the land of Moab, began Moses to declare this law, saying,

“The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, ‘You have stayed long enough on this mountain.

Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates.

Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.

“I spoke to you at that time, saying, ‘I am not able to bear the burden of you alone.

Jehovah, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you as he hath said unto you!

'How,' said I, 'can I myself alone bear the cumbrance, charge, and strife that is among you?

Give for yourselves men, wise and intelligent, and known to your tribes, and I set them for your heads;

And ye answered me, and said, The thing which thou hast spoken is good for us to do.

“So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and respected men, and set them over you as leaders: officials for thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and officers for your tribes.

"Then we set out from Horeb, and we went [through] the whole [of] that great and terrible desert that you saw [on] the way [to] the hill country of the Amorites as Yahweh our God had commanded us, and [so] we came up to Kadesh Barnea.

And I said unto you, Ye are come unto the mountain of the Amorites, which the LORD our God doth give unto us.

Behold, the LORD thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and possess it, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged.

And ye came near unto me every one of you, and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.

And what you said seemed good to me, and I took twelve men from among you, one from every tribe;

And they {set out} and {went up into the hill country}, and they went up to the wadi of Eschol, and they spied out [the land].

And they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and brought it down unto us, and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the LORD our God doth give us.

And ye murmured in your tents, and said, Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.

Where can we go? Our brothers discouraged us when they said that the people are bigger and taller than we are. Their cities are tall and fortified to the sky, and we also saw the Anakim there.'

Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them.

who was going before you in the way - to search out for you a place, where ye might encamp, - in the fire by night, that ye might get sight of the way wherein ye should go, and in the cloud, by day.

And the Lord, hearing your words, was angry, and said with an oath,

Truly, not one of this evil generation will see that good land which I said I would give to your fathers,

except Caleb the son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land on which he has set foot, because he followed the Lord completely.’

The Lord was angry with me also because of you, saying, ‘Not even you shall enter Canaan.

Moreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.

But you turn and set out [in the direction of] the wilderness by way of the {Red Sea}.'

Then ye answered and said unto me, We have sinned against the LORD, we will go up and fight, according to all that the LORD our God commanded us. And when ye had girded on every man his weapons of war, ye were ready to go up into the hill.

And the LORD said unto me, Say unto them, Go not up, neither fight; for I am not among you; lest ye be smitten before your enemies.

This I said to you, but you gave no attention and went against the orders of the Lord, and in your pride went up into the hill-country.

And we turned, and took our journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red sea, as Jehovah had said unto me; and we went round mount Seir many days.

The Lord then said to me,

And the LORD said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle: for I will not give thee of their land for a possession; because I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession.

Now rise up, said I, and get you over the brook Zered. And we went over the brook Zered.

Thirty-eight years had gone by from the time when we came away from Kadesh-barnea till we went over the stream Zered; by that time all the generation of the men of war among us were dead, as the Lord had said.

the Lord said to me,

(That land is said to have been a land of the Rephaim, for Rephaim had been living there in earlier times, but they were named Zamzummim by the Ammonites;

Arise, set out and cross [over] the wadi of Arnon. Look! I have given Sihon the Amorite, the king of Heshbon, and his land into your hand; begin to take possession of [it], and engage with him in battle.

"Let me pass through your territory. I'll stay on the main road. I won't turn to the right or left.

And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land before thee: begin to possess, that thou mayest inherit his land.

And the LORD set him before us, and we smote him and his sons and all his people.

only to the land of the children of Ammon thou camest not near; all the side of the river Jabbok, and the cities of the hill-country, and wheresoever Jehovah our God forbade us.

"We set out and went up along the road to Bashan. Then King Og of Bashan came out to meet us he and his whole army for a battle at Edrei.

And the LORD said unto me, Fear him not: for I will deliver him, and all his people, and his land, into thy hand; and thou shalt do unto him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at Heshbon.

And we took at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites the land that was on this side Jordan, from the river of Arnon unto mount Hermon;

"And I charged you [all] at that time [when I] said, "Yahweh has given you--to [all of] you--this land to possess. All the {warriors} shall cross over, ready to fight, before your brothers, the {Israelites}.

Only your wives and your little children and your livestock (I know that {you have much livestock}) must stay in your towns that I have given you,

Till the Lord has given rest to your brothers as to you, and till they have taken for themselves the land which the Lord your God is giving them on the other side of Jordan: then you may go back, every man of you, to the heritage which I have given you.

Please let me cross over and see the beautiful land on the other side of the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.

But the LORD was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the LORD said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter.

Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?

Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger:

For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it?

And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt;

Then Moses severed three cities on this side Jordan toward the sunrising;

Someone could flee there who committed manslaughter, killing his neighbor accidentally without previously hating him. He could flee to one of these cities and stay alive:

[He set apart] Bezer in the wilderness in the land of the plateau of the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead of the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan of the Manassites.

And this is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel:

On this side Jordan, in the valley over against Bethpeor, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt at Heshbon, whom Moses and the children of Israel smote, after they were come forth out of Egypt:

And they possessed his land, and the land of Og king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorites, which were on this side Jordan toward the sunrising;

And all the plain on this side Jordan eastward, even unto the sea of the plain, under the springs of Pisgah.

And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.

I was standing between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain. He said,

These words the Lord said to all of you together on the mountain, out of the heart of the fire, out of the cloud and the dark, with a great voice: and he said no more; he put them in writing on the two stones of the law and gave them to me.

When you heard the voice from the darkness while the mountain was blazing, all the leaders and elders of your tribes came to me and said:

And ye said, Behold, the LORD our God hath shewed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth.

Do you go near: and after hearing everything which the Lord our God has to say, give us an account of all he has said to you, and we will give ear, and do it.

And the LORD heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the LORD said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken.

And thou shalt hear, Israel, and take heed to do them; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase greatly, as Jehovah the God of thy fathers hath said unto thee, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

You shall teach them diligently to your children [impressing God’s precepts on their minds and penetrating their hearts with His truths] and shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up.

And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers,

by driving out all your enemies before you, as the Lord has said.

then thou hast said to thy son, Servants we have been to Pharaoh in Egypt, and Jehovah bringeth us out of Egypt by a high hand;

and Jehovah giveth signs and wonders, great and sad, on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on all his house, before our eyes;

And he took us out from that place, guiding us here to give us this land, as he said in his oath to our fathers.

and when the LORD thy God hath set them before thee that thou shouldest smite them: see that thou utterly destroy them and make no covenant with them nor have compassion on them.

For you are a holy people [set apart] to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people for His own possession [that is, His very special treasure].

The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

And it will be, that if you give attention to these decisions and keep and do them, then the Lord will keep his agreement with you and his mercy, as he said in his oath to your fathers.

You must not bring any abhorrent thing into your house, or you will be set apart for destruction like it. You are to utterly detest and abhor it, because it is set apart for destruction.

and thou hast said in thy heart, My power, and the might of my hand, hath made for me this wealth:

And remember Jehovah thy God; for he gave to thee strength to make wealth in order to set up his covenant, which he sware to our fathers, as this day.

Just like the nations the Lord is about to destroy from your sight, so he will do to you because you would not obey him.

a people great and tall, sons of Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’

Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD hath said unto thee.

And the Lord gave me the two stones with writing on them done by the finger of God: on them were recorded all the words which the Lord said to you on the mountain out of the heart of the fire, on the day of the great meeting.

And the LORD said unto me, Arise, get thee down quickly from hence; for thy people which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt have corrupted themselves; they are quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten image.

Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed, they are stiff-necked (stubborn, obstinate) people.

And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins which ye sinned, in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

When the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, He said, ‘Go up and possess the land I have given you’; you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You did not believe or obey Him.

Thus I fell down before the LORD forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first; because the LORD had said he would destroy you.

I prayed therefore unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

Or it may be said in the land from which you have taken them, Because the Lord was not able to take them into the land which he said he would give them, and because of his hate for them, he has taken them out to put them to death in the waste land.

At that time the LORD said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood.