All along the way I, the Lord your God, have blessed your every effort. I have been attentive to your travels through this great wasteland. These forty years I have been with you; you have lacked for nothing.'"

So it was that after all the military men had been eliminated from the community,

After you have produced children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, if you become corrupt and make an image of any kind and do other evil things before the Lord your God that enrage him,

Indeed, ask about the distant past, starting from the day God created humankind on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether there has ever been such a great thing as this, or even a rumor of it.

You have been taught that the Lord alone is God -- there is no other besides him.

You have been rebelling against him from the very first day I knew you!

After they have been destroyed from your presence, be careful not to be ensnared like they are; do not pursue their gods and say, "How do these nations serve their gods? I will do the same."

You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors.

You must not encroach on your neighbor's property, which will have been defined in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked -- that has never pulled with the yoke --

You must not charge interest on a loan to your fellow Israelite, whether on money, food, or anything else that has been loaned with interest.

for I know about your rebellion and stubbornness. Indeed, even while I have been living among you to this very day, you have rebelled against the Lord; you will be even more rebellious after my death!

His people have been unfaithful to him; they have not acted like his children -- this is their sin. They are a perverse and deceitful generation.

For a fire has been kindled by my anger, and it burns to lowest Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce, and ignites the foundations of the mountains.