When the Lord heard you, he became angry and made this vow:

Then the Lord spoke to you from the middle of the fire; you heard speech but you could not see anything -- only a voice was heard.

But if you seek the Lord your God from there, you will find him, if, indeed, you seek him with all your heart and soul.

Have a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the middle of fire, as you yourselves have, and lived to tell about it?

From heaven he spoke to you in order to teach you, and on earth he showed you his great fire from which you also heard his words.

Then, when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness while the mountain was ablaze, all your tribal leaders and elders approached me.

You said, "The Lord our God has shown us his great glory and we have heard him speak from the middle of the fire. It is now clear to us that God can speak to human beings and they can keep on living.

Who is there from the entire human race who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the middle of the fire as we have, and has lived?

When the Lord heard you speaking to me, he said to me, "I have heard what these people have said to you -- they have spoken well.

Therefore, cleanse your heart and stop being so stubborn!

the blessing if you take to heart the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today,

You will not be allowed to eat in your villages your tithe of grain, new wine, olive oil, the firstborn of your herd and flock, any votive offerings you have vowed, or your freewill and personal offerings.

If the place he chooses to locate his name is too far for you, you may slaughter any of your herd and flock he has given you just as I have stipulated; you may eat them in your villages just as you wish.

If a fellow Israelite from one of your villages in the land that the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive to his impoverished condition.

You must sacrifice the Passover animal (from the flock or the herd) to the Lord your God in the place where he chooses to locate his name.

Suppose he goes with someone else to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose from the handle and strikes his fellow worker so hard that he dies. The person responsible may then flee to one of these cities to save himself.

In addition, the officers are to say to the troops, "Who among you is afraid and fainthearted? He may go home so that he will not make his fellow soldier's heart as fearful as his own."

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 --

So we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he heard us and saw our humiliation, toil, and oppression.

Today the Lord your God is commanding you to keep these statutes and ordinances, something you must do with all your heart and soul.

Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair.

Beware that the heart of no man, woman, clan, or tribe among you turns away from the Lord our God today to pursue and serve the gods of those nations; beware that there is among you no root producing poisonous and bitter fruit.

The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being and so that you may live.

butter from the herd and milk from the flock, along with the fat of lambs, rams and goats of Bashan, along with the best of the kernels of wheat; and from the juice of grapes you drank wine.