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

Anyone who accidentally killed someone without hating him at the time of the accident could flee to one of those cities and be safe.

You must not go after other gods, those of the surrounding peoples,

So realize that the Lord your God is the true God, the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

but who pays back those who hate him as they deserve and destroys them. He will not ignore those who hate him but will repay them as they deserve!

The Lord will protect you from all sickness, and you will not experience any of the terrible diseases that you knew in Egypt; instead he will inflict them on all those who hate you.

"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.

so that your days and those of your descendants may be extended in the land which the Lord promised to give to your ancestors, like the days of heaven itself.

However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger. (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you).

You will go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office in those days and seek a solution; they will render a verdict.

When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn the abhorrent practices of those nations.

Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.

then both parties to the controversy must stand before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges who will be in office in those days.

This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.

They will besiege all of your villages until all of your high and fortified walls collapse -- those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you.

then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants -- great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses.

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.

Your eyes have seen the great judgments, those signs and mighty wonders.

your infants, your wives, and the foreigners living in your encampment, those who chop wood and those who carry water --

but with whoever stands with us here today before the Lord our God as well as those not with us here today.

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.

Secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those that are revealed belong to us and our descendants forever, so that we might obey all the words of this law.

Then the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and persecute you.

I will sharpen my lightning-like sword, and my hand will grasp hold of the weapon of judgment; I will execute vengeance on my foes, and repay those who hate me!

Bless, O Lord, his goods, and be pleased with his efforts; undercut the legs of any who attack him, and of those who hate him, so that they cannot stand.

May the firstborn of his bull bring him honor, and may his horns be those of a wild ox; with them may he gore all peoples, all the far reaches of the earth. They are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.