It is [only] eleven days’ journey from Horeb (Mount Sinai) by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea [on Canaan’s border; yet Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years before crossing the border and entering Canaan, the promised land].

Turn and resume your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland (the Shephelah), in the Negev (South country) and on the coast of the [Mediterranean] Sea, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.

Look, I have set the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord swore (solemnly promised) to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.’

So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and made them leaders over you, commanders of thousands, and hundreds, and fifties, and tens, and officers (administrators) for your tribes.

The plan pleased me and I took twelve of your men, one man from each tribe.

Then they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us; and they reported back to us, and said, ‘It is a good land which the Lord our God is about to give us.’

“Then we turned and set out for the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea, just as the Lord had told me; and we circled Mount Seir for many days.

‘Now arise, continue on, and go through the valley of the Arnon. Look, I have handed over to you Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin! Take possession [of it] and fight with him in battle.

The Lord said to me, ‘Look, I have begun to hand over to you Sihon and his land. Begin! Take possession [of it], so that you may possess his land.’

At the same time we took all his cities and utterly destroyed every city—men, women and children. We left no survivor.

We took only the cattle as plunder for ourselves and the spoil of the cities which we had captured.

We captured all his cities at that time; there was not a city which we did not take from them: sixty cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

But we took all the cattle and the spoil of the cities as plunder for ourselves.

“So we took the land at that time from the hand of the two kings [Sihon and Og] of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon

“So we took possession of this land at that time. I gave the territory from Aroer, which is by the valley of the Arnon, along with half of the hill country of Gilead and its cities to the Reubenites and to the Gadites.

Jair the son (descendant) of Manasseh took all the region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, that is Bashan, and called it after his own name, Havvoth (the villages of) Jair, as it is called to this day.)

“Now, O Israel, listen and pay attention to the statutes and the judgments (God’s legal decisions) which I am teaching you to do, so that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.

“Only pay attention and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your grandchildren [impressing these things on their mind and penetrating their heart with these truths]—

especially the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb (Mount Sinai), when the Lord said to me, ‘Assemble the people to Me and I will let them hear My words, so that they may learn to fear Me [with awe-filled reverence and profound respect] all the days they live on the land, and so that they may teach their children.’

The Lord commanded me at that time to teach you the statutes and judgments, so that you might do them in the land which you are going over to possess.

“So pay attention and watch yourselves carefully—for you did not see any form [of God] on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire—

So be on your guard and watch yourselves, so that you do not forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He has made with you, and make for yourselves a carved or sculpted image in the form of anything which the Lord your God has forbidden you.

Or has any [man-made] god ever tried to go and take for himself a nation from within another nation by trials, by signs and wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great terrors, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your [very] eyes?

They took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who reigned across the Jordan to the east,

Then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them:

“Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments (legal decisions) which I am speaking today in your hearing, so that you may learn them and observe them carefully.

‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain [that is, irreverently, in false affirmations or in ways that impugn the character of God]; for the Lord will not hold guiltless nor leave unpunished the one who takes His name in vain [disregarding its reverence and its power].

You shall remember [with thoughtful concern] that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

But as for you, stand here by Me, and I will tell you all the commandments and the statutes and the judgments which you shall teach them, so that they may obey them in the land which I give them to possess.’

“Now this is the command; the statutes and the judgments (precepts) which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you might do (follow, obey) them in the land which you are crossing over [the Jordan] to possess,

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.

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

The Lord will take away from you all sickness; and He will not subject you to any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will impose them on all [those] who hate you.

You shall burn the carved and sculpted images of their gods in the fire. You shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, so that you will not be ensnared by it [in a deadly trap], for it is an abomination (repulsive) to the Lord your God.

a land where you will eat bread without shortage, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my two hands and smashed them before your very eyes!

I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, and burned it in the fire and thoroughly crushed it, grinding the metal thoroughly until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away [from the Lord] and serve other gods and worship them,

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

Be careful that you do not neglect the Levite [who serves God] as long as you live in your land.

However, you shall take your holy things which you have [to offer] and your votive (pledged, vowed) offerings, you shall take them and go to the place which the Lord will choose.

The swine, because it has a divided hoof but does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat nor touch their carcasses.

then take an awl and pierce it through his ear into the door, and he shall [willingly] be your servant always. Also you shall do the same for your maidservant.

You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.

You shall act in accordance with the law which they teach you and the judgment which they tell you. You shall not turn aside from their verdict, to the right or to the left.

And who is the man who is engaged (legally promised) to a woman and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would marry her.’

Only the women and the children and the animals and everything that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you.

so that they will not teach you to act in accordance with all the detestable practices which they have done [in worship and service] for their gods, and in this way cause you to sin against the Lord your God.

“When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its [fruit-bearing] trees by swinging an axe against them; for you may eat from them, and you shall not cut them down. For is the tree of the field a man, that it should be besieged (destroyed) by you?

It shall be that the elders of the city which is nearest to the dead man shall take a heifer of the herd, one which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke;

then his father and mother shall take hold of him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.

“You shall not see your countryman’s ox or his sheep straying away or being stolen, and ignore [your duty to help] them; you shall certainly take them back to him.

“If you happen to come upon a bird’s nest along the road, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother [bird] is sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young.

You shall certainly let the mother go, but you may take the young for yourself, so that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days.

and charges her [without cause] with shameful behavior and publicly defames her, and says, ‘I took this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find in her evidence of virginity,’

Then the elders of that city shall take the man and reprimand him,

“A man shall not take his father’s [former] wife, so that he will not expose his father’s wife.

and you shall have a spade among your tools, and when you [prepare to] sit down outside [to relieve yourself], you shall dig a hole with it and shall turn and cover up your waste.

You shall not bring the wages of a prostitute or the price of a dog [that is, a male prostitute] into the house of the Lord your God as payment for any vow, for both of these [the gift and the giver] are utterly repulsive to the Lord your God.

and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife,

then her former husband who [first] sent her away may not take her again as his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an outrage before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

“No one shall take a handmill or an upper millstone [used to grind grain into bread] as security [for a debt], for he would be taking a [person’s] life in pledge.

“Be careful during an outbreak of leprosy, that you diligently observe and do according to all that the Levitical priests teach you; just as I have commanded them, so you shall be careful to do.

“You shall not pervert the justice due a stranger or an orphan, nor seize (impound) a widow’s garment as security [for a loan].

“If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, the widow of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall be intimate with her after taking her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.

But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s [widowed] wife, then she shall go up to the gate [of the city, where court is held] to the elders, and say, ‘My brother-in-law refuses to continue his brother’s name in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband’s brother.’

Then the elders of his city will summon him and speak to him. And if he stands firm and says, ‘I do not want to marry her,’

that you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God gives you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His Name (Presence).

Then the priest will take the basket from you and place it before the altar of the Lord your God.

and we took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.

‘The whole land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it; it is like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and wrath.’

Then the Lord your God shall make you abundantly prosperous in everything that you do, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your cattle and in the produce of your land; for the Lord will again delight over you for good, just as He delighted over your fathers,

“Now then, write this song for yourselves, and teach it to the sons of Israel; put it in their mouth, so that this song may be a witness for Me against the sons of Israel.

“Take this Book of the Law and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, so that it may remain there as a witness against you.

“As an eagle that protects its nest,
That flutters over its young,
He spread out His wings and took them,
He carried them on His pinions.

“And He will say, ‘Where are their gods,
The rock in which they took refuge?

“The priests shall teach Your ordinances (judgments) to Jacob,
And Your law to Israel.
They shall put incense before You,
And whole burnt offerings on Your altar.