It is eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.

The Lord our God said to us in Horeb, You have been long enough in this mountain:

Make a move now, and go on your way into the hill-country of the Amorites and the places near it, in the Arabah and the hill-country and in the lowlands and in the South and by the seaside, all the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.

See, all the land is before you: go in and take for yourselves the land which the Lord gave by an oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to their seed after them.

May the Lord, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times greater in number than you are, and give you his blessing as he has said!

How is it possible for me by myself to be responsible for you, and undertake the weight of all your troubles and your arguments?

Take for yourselves men who are wise, far-seeing, and respected among you, from your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.

And you made answer and said to me, It is good for us to do as you say.

So I took the heads of your tribes, wise men and respected, and made them rulers over you, captains of thousands and captains of hundreds and captains of fifties and captains of tens, and overseers of your tribes.

And at that time I gave orders to your judges, saying, Let all questions between your brothers come before you for hearing, and give decisions uprightly between a man and his brother or one from another nation who is with him.

In judging, do not let a man's position have any weight with you; give hearing equally to small and great; have no fear of any man, for it is God who is judge: and any cause in which you are not able to give a decision, you are to put before me and I will give it a hearing.

Then we went on from Horeb, through all that great and cruel waste which you saw, on our way to the hill-country of the Amorites, as the Lord gave us orders; and we came to Kadesh-barnea.

And I said to you, You have come to the hill-country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving us.

See now, the Lord your God has put the land into your hands: go up and take it, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has said to you; have no fear and do not be troubled.

And you came near to me, every one of you, and said, Let us send men before us to go through the land with care and give us an account of the way we are to go and the towns to which we will come.

And taking in their hands some of the fruit of the land, they came down again to us, and gave us their account, saying, It is a good land which the Lord our God is giving us.

And you made an angry outcry in your tents, and said, In his hate for us the Lord has taken us out of the land of Egypt, to give us up into the hands of the Amorites for our destruction.

The Lord your God who goes before you will be fighting for you, and will do such wonders as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes;

And in the waste land, where you have seen how the Lord was supporting you, as a man does his son, in all your journeying till you came to this place.

Joshua, the son of Nun, your servant, he will go into the land: say to him that he is to be strong, for he will be Israel's guide into their heritage.

But as for you, go back, journeying into the waste land by the way of the Red Sea.

Then you said to me, We have done evil against the Lord, we will go up to the attack, as the Lord our God has given us orders. And arming yourselves every one, you made ready to go up without care into the hill-country.

And the Amorites who were in the hill-country came out against you and put you to flight, rushing after you like bees, and overcame you in Seir, driving you even as far as Hormah.

Then we went back, journeying into the waste land by the way to the Red Sea, as the Lord had said to me: and we were a long time going round Mount Seir.

And give the people orders, saying, You are about to go through the land of your brothers, the children of Esau, who are living in Seir; and they will have fear of you; so take care what you do:

Make no attack on them, for I will not give you any of their land, not even space enough for a man's foot: because I have given Mount Seir to Esau for his heritage.

So we went on past our brothers, the children of Esau, living in Seir, by the road through the Arabah, from Elath and Ezion-geber. And turning, we went by the road through the waste land of Moab.

(In the past the Emim were living there; a great people, equal in numbers to the Anakim and as tall;

And the Horites in earlier times were living in Seir, but the children of Esau took their place; they sent destruction on them and took their land for themselves, as Israel did to the land of his heritage which the Lord gave them.)

Thirty-eight years had gone by from the time when we came away from Kadesh-barnea till we went over the stream Zered; by that time all the generation of the men of war among us were dead, as the Lord had said.

(That land is said to have been a land of the Rephaim, for Rephaim had been living there in earlier times, but they were named Zamzummim by the Ammonites;

They were a great people, tall as the Anakim, and equal to them in number; but the Lord sent destruction on them and the children of Ammon took their place, living in their land;

As he did for the children of Esau living in Seir, when he sent destruction on the Horites before them, and they took their land where they are living to this day:

And the Avvim, living in the small towns as far as Gaza, came to destruction by the hands of the Caphtorim who came out from Caphtor and took their land.)

As the children of Esau did for me in Seir and the Moabites in Ar; till I have gone over Jordan into the land which the Lord our God is giving us.

But Sihon, king of Heshbon, would not let us go through; for the Lord your God made his spirit hard and his heart strong, so that he might give him up into your hands as at this day.

Then Sihon came out against us with all his people, to make an attack on us at Jahaz.

From Aroer on the edge of the valley of the Arnon and from the town in the valley as far as Gilead, no town was strong enough to keep us out; the Lord our God gave them all into our hands:

But you did not go near the land of the children of Ammon, that is, all the side of the river Jabbok or the towns of the hill-country, wherever the Lord our God had said we were not to go.

Then turning we took the road to Bashan: and Og, king of Bashan, came out against us with all his people, and made an attack on us at Edrei.

And the Lord said to me, Have no fear of him: for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hands; do to him as you did to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who was ruling in Heshbon.

(By the Sidonians, Hermon is named Sirion, and by the Amorites Shenir;)

All the towns of the table-land and all Gilead and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

(For Og, king of Bashan, was the last of all the Rephaim; his bed was made of iron; is it not in Rabbah, in the land of the children of Ammon? It was nine cubits long and four cubits wide, measured by the common cubit.)

The rest of Gilead and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, all the land of Argob, together with Bashan, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh. (This land is named the land of the Rephaim.

Jair, the son of Manasseh, took all the land of Argob, as far as the country of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, naming it, Bashan, Havvoth-Jair after himself, as it is to this day.)

And the land from Gilead to the valley of the Arnon, with the middle of the valley as a limit, as far as the river Jabbok which is the limit of the country of the children of Ammon, I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites;

As well as the Arabah, with the river Jordan as their limit, from Chinnereth to the Salt Sea, under the slopes of Pisgah to the east.

But your wives and your little ones and your cattle (for it is clear that you have much cattle) may go on living in the towns I have given you;

Till the Lord has given rest to your brothers as to you, and till they have taken for themselves the land which the Lord your God is giving them on the other side of Jordan: then you may go back, every man of you, to the heritage which I have given you.

O Lord God, you have now for the first time let your servant see your great power and the strength of your hand; for what god is there in heaven or on earth able to do such great works and such acts of power?

But give my orders to Joshua, comforting him and making him strong; for he is to go over Jordan at the head of this people, and he will give them this land which you will see for their heritage.

And now give ear, O Israel, to the laws and the decisions which I am teaching you, and do them; so that life may be yours, and you may go in and take for yourselves the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.

I have been teaching you laws and decisions, as I was ordered to do by the Lord my God, so that you might keep them in the land to which you are going to take it for your heritage.

So keep these laws and do them; for so will your wisdom and good sense be clear in the eyes of the peoples, who hearing all these laws will say, Truly, this great nation is a wise and far-seeing people.

For what great nation has a god so near to them as the Lord our God is, whenever we are turned to him in prayer?

And what great nation has laws and decisions so right as all this law which I put before you today?

And you came near, waiting at the foot of the mountain; and flames of fire went up from the mountain to the heart of heaven, with dark clouds, and all was black as night.

And the Lord gave me orders at that time to make clear to you these laws and decisions, so that you might do them in the land to which you are going, and which is to be your heritage.

But the Lord has taken you out of the flaming fire, out of Egypt, to be to him the people of his heritage, as you are today.

And the Lord was angry with me because of you, and made an oath that I was not to go over Jordan into the good land which the Lord is giving you for your heritage:

But death is to come to me in this land, I may not go over Jordan: but you will go over and take that good land for your heritage.

For the Lord your God is an all-burning fire, and he will not let the honour which is his be given to any other.

Because the Lord your God is a God of mercy, he will not take away his help from you or let destruction overtake you, or be false to the agreement which he made by an oath with your fathers.

Give thought now to the days which are past, before your time, from the day when God first gave life to man on the earth, and searching from one end of heaven to the other, see if such a great thing as this has ever been, or if anything like it has been talked of in story.

Has any people ever gone on living after hearing the voice of God out of the heart of the fire as you did?

Has God ever before taken a nation for himself from out of another nation, by punishments and signs and wonders, by war and by a strong hand and a stretched-out arm and great acts of wonder and fear, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes?

All this he let you see, so that you might be certain that the Lord is God and there is no other.

Driving out before you nations greater and stronger than you, to take you into their land and give it to you for your heritage, as at this day.

So today be certain, and keep the knowledge deep in your hearts, that the Lord is God, in heaven on high and here on earth; there is no other God.

Then keep his laws and his orders which I give you today, so that it may be well for you and for your children after you, and that your lives may be long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for ever.

This is the law which Moses put before the children of Israel:

And they took his land for a heritage, and the land of Og, king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, whose lands were on the other side of Jordan to the east;

From Aroer on the edge of the valley of the Arnon as far as Mount Sion, which is Hermon,

And all the Arabah on the far side of Jordan to the east, as far as the sea of the Arabah under the slopes of Pisgah.

The Lord our God made an agreement with us in Horeb.

The Lord did not make this agreement with our fathers but with us, who are all living and present here today.

You are not to make use of the name of the Lord your God for an evil purpose; whoever takes the Lord's name on his lips for an evil purpose will be judged as a sinner by the Lord.

Keep the Sabbath day as a holy day, as you have been ordered by the Lord your God.

But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on that day do no work, you or your son or your daughter, or your man-servant or your woman-servant, or your ox or your ass or any of your cattle, or the man from a strange country who is living among you; so that your man-servant and your woman-servant may have rest as well as you.

Give honour to your father and your mother, as you have been ordered by the Lord your God; so that your life may be long and all may be well for you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

Or let your desire be turned to your neighbour's wife, or his house or his field or his man-servant or his woman-servant or his ox or his ass or anything which is your neighbour's.

And said, The Lord has let us see his glory and his power, and his voice has come to us out of the fire: today we have seen that a man may go on living even after hearing the voice of God.

Why then is death to be our fate? For if the voice of the Lord our God comes to us any more, death will overtake us, and we will be burned up in this great fire.

For what man is there in all the earth, who, hearing the voice of the living God as we have, out of the heart of the fire, has been kept from death?

Do you go near: and after hearing everything which the Lord our God has to say, give us an account of all he has said to you, and we will give ear, and do it.

Then the Lord, hearing your words to me, said to me, The words which this people have said to you have come to my ears: what they have said is well said.

But as for you, keep your place here by me, and I will give you all the orders and the laws and the decisions which you are to make clear to them, so that they may do them in the land which I am giving them for their heritage.

So give ear, O Israel, and take care to do this; so that it may be well for you, and you may be greatly increased, as the Lord the God of your fathers has given you his word, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Give ear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord:

And the Lord your God is to be loved with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Let them be fixed as a sign on your hand, and marked on your brow;

For the Lord your God who is with you is a God who will not let his honour be given to another; or the wrath of the Lord will be burning against you, causing your destruction from the face of the earth.

Do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did in Massah.

And do what is upright and good in the eyes of the Lord your God, so that it may be well for you and you may go in and take for your heritage that good land from which the Lord undertook by an oath to your fathers,

And when your son says to you in time to come, What is the reason for these rules and laws and decisions which the Lord our God has given you?

Then you will say to your son, We were servants under Pharaoh's yoke in Egypt; and the Lord took us out of Egypt with a strong hand:

And he took us out from that place, guiding us here to give us this land, as he said in his oath to our fathers.

And the Lord gave us orders to keep all these laws, in the fear of the Lord our God, so that it might be well for us for ever, and that he might keep us from death, as he has done to this day.

And it will be our righteousness if we take care to keep all this order before the Lord our God as he has given it to us.