Select wise and practical men, those known among your tribes, whom I may appoint as your leaders."

So I chose as your tribal leaders wise and well-known men, placing them over you as administrators of groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and also as other tribal officials.

So all of you approached me and said, "Let's send some men ahead of us to scout out the land and bring us back word as to how we should attack it and what the cities are like there."

I thought this was a good idea, so I sent twelve men from among you, one from each tribe.

and in the desert, where you saw him carrying you along like a man carries his son. This he did everywhere you went until you came to this very place."

Now the length of time it took for us to go from Kadesh Barnea to the crossing of Wadi Zered was thirty-eight years, time for all the military men of that generation to die, just as the Lord had vowed to them.

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

When you look up to the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars -- the whole heavenly creation -- you must not be seduced to worship and serve them, for the Lord your God has assigned them to all the people of the world.

You must not desire another man's wife, nor should you crave his house, his field, his male and female servants, his ox, his donkey, or anything else he owns."

So he humbled you by making you hungry and then feeding you with unfamiliar manna. He did this to teach you that humankind cannot live by bread alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord's mouth.

a land where you may eat food in plenty and find no lack of anything, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper.

fed you in the desert with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you and eventually bring good to you.

Fix these words of mine into your mind and being, and tie them as a reminder on your hands and let them be symbols on your forehead.

you may convert the tithe into money, secure the money, and travel to the place the Lord your God chooses for himself.

Then you may spend the money however you wish for cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever you desire. You and your household may eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and enjoy it.

Suppose a man or woman is discovered among you -- in one of your villages that the Lord your God is giving you -- who sins before the Lord your God and breaks his covenant

by serving other gods and worshiping them -- the sun, moon, or any other heavenly bodies which I have not permitted you to worship.

you must bring to your city gates that man or woman who has done this wicked thing -- that very man or woman -- and you must stone that person to death.

Suppose a man has two wives, one whom he loves more than the other, and they both bear him sons, with the firstborn being the child of the less loved wife.

Then all the men of his city must stone him to death. In this way you will purge out wickedness from among you, and all Israel will hear about it and be afraid.

A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor should a man dress up in women's clothing, for anyone who does this is offensive to the Lord your God.

Suppose a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her, and then rejects her,

The young woman's father must say to the elders, "I gave my daughter to this man and he has rejected her.

The elders of that city must then seize the man and punish him.

They will fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman's father, for the man who made the accusation ruined the reputation of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.

the men of her city must bring the young woman to the door of her father's house and stone her to death, for she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by behaving like a prostitute while living in her father's house. In this way you will purge evil from among you.

If a man is caught having sexual relations with a married woman both the man who had relations with the woman and the woman herself must die; in this way you will purge evil from Israel.

If a virgin is engaged to a man and another man meets her in the city and has sexual relations with her,

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.

But if the man came across the engaged woman in the field and overpowered her and raped her, then only the rapist must die.

for the man met her in the field and the engaged woman cried out, but there was no one to rescue her.

Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered.

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.

A man may not marry his father's former wife and in this way dishonor his father.

A man with crushed or severed genitals may not enter the assembly of the Lord.

There must never be a sacred prostitute among the young women of Israel nor a sacred male prostitute among the young men of Israel.

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.

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.

When a man is newly married, he need not go into the army nor be obligated in any way; he must be free to stay at home for a full year and bring joy to the wife he has married.

If a man is found kidnapping a person from among his fellow Israelites, and regards him as mere property and sells him, that kidnapper must die. In this way you will purge evil from among you.

If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man's wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband's brother must go to her, marry her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.

But if the man does not want to marry his brother's widow, then she must go to the elders at the town gate and say, "My husband's brother refuses to preserve his brother's name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!"

then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. She will then respond, "Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother's family line!"

If two men get into a hand-to-hand fight, and the wife of one of them gets involved to help her husband against his attacker, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals,

You will be engaged to a woman and another man will rape her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it.

The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children.

You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God -- the heads of your tribes, your elders, your officials, every Israelite man,

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 will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger will rage against that man; all the curses written in this scroll will fall upon him and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory.

Gather the people -- men, women, and children, as well as the resident foreigners in your villages -- so they may hear and thus learn about and fear the Lord your God and carefully obey all the words of this law.

The sword will make people childless outside, and terror will do so inside; they will destroy both the young man and the virgin, the infant and the gray-haired man.

How can one man chase a thousand of them, and two pursue ten thousand; unless their Rock had delivered them up, and the Lord had handed them over?

This is the blessing Moses the man of God pronounced upon the Israelites before his death.