In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first of the month, Moses told the Israelites everything the Lord had commanded him to say to them.

This was after he had defeated Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth, at Edrei.

“We then set out from Horeb and went across all the great and terrible wilderness you saw on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, just as the Lord our God had commanded us. When we reached Kadesh-barnea,

“Then we turned back and headed for the wilderness by way of the Red Sea, as the Lord had told me, and we traveled around the hill country of Seir for many days.

The Emim, a great and numerous people as tall as the Anakim, had previously lived there.

The Horites had previously lived in Seir, but the descendants of Esau drove them out, destroying them completely and settling in their place, just as Israel did in the land of its possession the Lord gave them.

The time we spent traveling from Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley was 38 years until the entire generation of fighting men had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them.

Indeed, the Lord’s hand was against them, to eliminate them from the camp until they had all perished.

“When all the fighting men had died among the people,

This was just as He had done for the descendants of Esau who lived in Seir, when He destroyed the Horites before them; they drove them out and have lived in their place until now.

But you did not go near the Ammonites’ land, all along the bank of the Jabbok River, the cities of the hill country, or any place that the Lord our God had forbidden.

We completely destroyed them, as we had done to Sihon king of Heshbon, destroying the men, women, and children of every city.

If only they had such a heart to fear Me and keep all My commands always, so that they and their children will prosper forever.

He humbled you by letting you go hungry; then He gave you manna to eat, which you and your fathers had not known, so that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers had not known, in order to humble and test you, so that in the end He might cause you to prosper.

I saw how you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made a calf image for yourselves. You had quickly turned from the way the Lord had commanded for you.

I was afraid of the fierce anger the Lord had directed against you, because He was about to destroy you. But again the Lord listened to me on that occasion.

I took the sinful calf you had made, burned it up, and crushed it, thoroughly grinding it to powder as fine as dust. Then I threw it into the stream that came down from the mountain.

“I fell down in the presence of the Lord 40 days and 40 nights because the Lord had threatened to destroy you.

Otherwise, those in the land you brought us from will say, ‘Because the Lord wasn’t able to bring them into the land He had promised them, and because He hated them, He brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.’

Then on the day of the assembly, the Lord wrote on the tablets what had been written previously, the Ten Commandments that He had spoken to you on the mountain from the fire. The Lord gave them to me,

and I went back down the mountain and placed the tablets in the ark I had made. And they have remained there, as the Lord commanded me.”

“If a man is discovered having sexual relations with another man’s wife, both the man who had sex with the woman and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

Because you didn’t serve the Lord your God with joy and a cheerful heart, even though you had an abundance of everything,

These are the words of the covenant the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant He had made with them at Horeb.

Then people will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which He had made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.

They began to worship other gods, bowing down to gods they had not known—gods that the Lord had not permitted them to worship.

When Moses had finished writing down on a scroll every single word of this law,

They sacrificed to demons, not God,
to gods they had not known,
new gods that had just arrived,
which your fathers did not fear.

if I had not feared insult from the enemy,
or feared that these foes might misunderstand
and say: ‘Our own hand has prevailed;
it wasn’t the Lord who did all this.’”

How could one man pursue a thousand,
or two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
unless the Lord had given them up?

So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, as the Lord had said.

Moses was 120 years old when he died; his eyes were not weak, and his vitality had not left him.

Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites obeyed him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses.