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."

What is going to happen to us? Our brothers have drained away our courage by describing people who are more numerous and taller than we are, and great cities whose defenses appear to be as high as heaven itself! Moreover, they said they saw Anakites there."

As for me, the Lord was also angry with me on your account. He said, "You also will not be able to go there.

Also, your infants, who you thought would die on the way, and your children, who as yet do not know good from bad, will go there; I will give them the land and they will possess it.

(The Emites used to live there, a people as powerful, numerous, and tall as the Anakites.

(That also is considered to be a land of the Rephaites. The Rephaites lived there originally; the Ammonites call them Zamzummites.

From Aroer, which is at the edge of Wadi Arnon (it is the city in the wadi), all the way to Gilead there was not a town able to resist us -- the Lord our God gave them all to us.

We captured all his cities at that time -- there was not a town we did not take from them -- sixty cities, all the region of Argob, the dominion of Og in Bashan.

All of these cities were fortified by high walls, gates, and locking bars; in addition there were a great many open villages.

I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will surely and swiftly be removed from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not last long there because you will surely be annihilated.

Then the Lord will scatter you among the peoples and there will be very few of you among the nations where the Lord will drive you.

There you will worship gods made by human hands -- wood and stone that can neither see, hear, eat, nor smell.

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.

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.

Today realize and carefully consider that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth below -- there is no other!

Recall that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there by strength and power. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

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?

He delivered us from there so that he could give us the land he had promised our ancestors.

You will be blessed beyond all peoples; there will be no barrenness among you or your livestock.

Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications.

When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing.

Then I turned, went down the mountain, and placed the tablets into the ark I had made -- they are still there, just as the Lord commanded me.

"During those days the Israelites traveled from Beeroth Bene-Yaaqan to Moserah. There Aaron died and was buried, and his son Eleazar became priest in his place.

From there they traveled to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a place of flowing streams.

But you must seek only the place he chooses from all your tribes to establish his name as his place of residence, and you must go there.

And there you must take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks.

Both you and your families must feast there before the Lord your God and rejoice in all the output of your labor with which he has blessed you.

for you may do so only in the place the Lord chooses in one of your tribal areas -- there you may do everything I am commanding you.

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.

However, there should not be any poor among you, for the Lord will surely bless you in the land that he is giving you as an inheritance,

There will never cease to be some poor people in the land; therefore, I am commanding you to make sure you open your hand to your fellow Israelites who are needy and poor in your land.

There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning.

If a matter is too difficult for you to judge -- bloodshed, legal claim, or assault -- matters of controversy in your villages -- you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses.

The person who pays no attention to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict -- that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.

and serves in the name of the Lord his God like his fellow Levites who stand there before the Lord.

There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer,

Now this is the law pertaining to one who flees there in order to live, if he has accidentally killed another without hating him at the time of the accident.

The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger to die.

and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. There at the wadi they are to break the heifer's neck.

If you happen to notice a bird's nest along the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and there are chicks or eggs with the mother bird sitting on them, you must not take the mother from the young.

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

If there is someone among you who is impure because of some nocturnal emission, he must leave the camp; he may not reenter it immediately.

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

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do all this.

Whenever you reap your harvest in your field and leave some unraked grain there, you must not return to get it; it should go to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow so that the Lord your God may bless all the work you do.

Then you must affirm before the Lord your God, "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor, and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number, but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people.

Then you must build an altar there to the Lord your God, an altar of stones -- do not use an iron tool on them.

Also you must offer fellowship offerings and eat them there, rejoicing before the Lord your God.

Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off.

Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you.

The Lord will force you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there.

He will withhold from all of them his children's flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, because you will have disobeyed the Lord your God.

The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone.

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.

Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you."

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.

Even if your exiles are in the most distant land, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.

"Take this scroll of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. It will remain there as a witness against you,

They are a nation devoid of wisdom, and there is no understanding among them.

"See now that I, indeed I, am he!" says the Lord, "and there is no other god besides me. I kill and give life, I smash and I heal, and none can resist my power.

They will summon peoples to the mountain, there they will sacrifice proper sacrifices; for they will enjoy the abundance of the seas, and the hidden treasures of the shores.

He has selected the best part for himself, for the portion of the ruler is set aside there; he came with the leaders of the people, he obeyed the righteous laws of the Lord and his ordinances with Israel.

There is no one like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the sky to help you, on the clouds in majesty.

Then the Lord said to him, "This is the land I promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when I said, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I have let you see it, but you will not cross over there."

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