You complained among yourselves privately and said, "Because the Lord hates us he brought us from Egypt to deliver us over to the Amorites so they could destroy us!

The exception is Caleb son of Jephunneh; he will see it and I will give him and his descendants the territory on which he has walked, because he has wholeheartedly followed me."

However, Joshua son of Nun, your assistant, will go. Encourage him, because he will enable Israel to inherit the land.

But the Lord told me: "Tell them this: 'Do not go up and fight, because I will not be with you and you will be defeated by your enemies.'"

Do not be hostile toward them, because I am not giving you any of their land, not even a footprint, for I have given Mount Seir as an inheritance for Esau.

Then the Lord said to me, "Do not harass Moab and provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as your territory. This is because I have given Ar to the descendants of Lot as their possession.

But when you come close to the Ammonites, do not harass or provoke them because I am not giving you any of the Ammonites' land as your possession; I have already given it to Lot's descendants as their possession.

But King Sihon of Heshbon was unwilling to allow us to pass near him because the Lord our God had made him obstinate and stubborn so that he might deliver him over to you this very day.

The Lord, however, said to me, "Don't be afraid of him because I have already given him, his whole army, and his land to you. You will do to him exactly what you did to King Sihon of the Amorites who lived in Heshbon."

But the Lord was angry at me because of you and would not listen to me. Instead, he said to me, "Enough of that! Do not speak to me anymore about this matter.

Commission Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, because he will lead these people over and will enable them to inherit the land you will see."

So be sure to do them, because this will testify of your wise understanding to the people who will learn of all these statutes and say, "Indeed, this great nation is a very wise people."

Be very careful, then, because you saw no form at the time the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the middle of the fire.

But the Lord became angry with me because of you and vowed that I would never cross the Jordan nor enter the good land that he is about to give you.

I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will surely and swiftly be removed from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not last long there because you will surely be annihilated.

Moreover, because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants who followed them and personally brought you out of Egypt with his great power

(I was standing between the Lord and you at that time to reveal to you the message of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and would not go up the mountain.) He said:

But now, why should we die, because this intense fire will consume us! If we keep hearing the voice of the Lord our God we will die!

It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you -- for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples.

Rather it is because of his love for you and his faithfulness to the promise he solemnly vowed to your ancestors that the Lord brought you out with great power, redeeming you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

You will eat your fill and then praise the Lord your God because of the good land he has given you.

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.

Do not think to yourself after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, "Because of my own righteousness the Lord has brought me here to possess this land." It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out ahead of you.

It is not because of your righteousness, or even your inner uprightness, that you have come here to possess their land. Instead, because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out ahead of you in order to confirm the promise he made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn people!

And he said to me, "Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image."

Then I again fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights; I ate and drank nothing because of all the sin you had committed, doing such evil before the Lord as to enrage him.

Otherwise the people of the land from which you brought us will say, "The Lord was unable to bring them to the land he promised them, and because of his hatred for them he has brought them out to kill them in the desert."

So you must love the resident foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

I am speaking to you because you are the ones who saw all the great deeds of the Lord!

As for that prophet or dreamer, he must be executed because he encouraged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, redeeming you from that place of slavery, and because he has tried to entice you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to go. In this way you must purge out evil from within.

You must stone him to death because he tried to entice you away from the Lord your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.

Then the Levites (because they have no allotment or inheritance with you), the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows of your villages may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work you do.

You must by all means lend to him and not be upset by doing it, for because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you attempt.

However, if the servant says to you, "I do not want to leave you," because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you,

You must not sacrifice to him a bull or sheep that has a blemish or any other defect, because that is considered offensive to the Lord your God.

Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you.

"Listen, Israel! Today you are moving forward to do battle with your enemies. Do not be fainthearted. Do not fear and tremble or be terrified because of them,

you must bring the two of them to the gate of that city and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry out though in the city and the man because he violated his neighbor's fianc?e; in this way you will purge evil from among you.

The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives.

If there is someone among you who is impure because of some nocturnal emission, he must leave the camp; he may not reenter it immediately.

If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house.

"The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you in everything you undertake until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me.

"You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it.

You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them.

You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe.

You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity.

All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given you.

"Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have,

You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege by which your enemies will constrict you.

He will withhold from all of them his children's flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

Likewise, the most tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters,

and will secretly eat her afterbirth and her newborn children (since she has nothing else), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, because you will have disobeyed the Lord your God.

In the morning you will say, 'If only it were evening!' And in the evening you will say, 'I wish it were morning!' because of the things you will fear and the things you will see.

Then people will say, "Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

At that time my anger will erupt against them and I will abandon them and hide my face from them until they are devoured. Many disasters and distresses will overcome them so that they will say at that time, 'Have not these disasters overcome us because our God is not among us?'

But I will certainly hide myself at that time because of all the wickedness they will have done by turning to other gods.

For I know that after I die you will totally corrupt yourselves and turn away from the path I have commanded you to walk. Disaster will confront you in the days to come because you will act wickedly before the Lord, inciting him to anger because of your actions."

But the Lord took note and despised them because his sons and daughters enraged him.