Then we turned and set out toward the desert land on the way to the Red Sea just as the Lord told me to do, detouring around Mount Seir for a long time.

Do not be hostile toward them, because I am not giving you any of their land, not even a footprint, for I have given Mount Seir as an inheritance for Esau.

All along the way I, the Lord your God, have blessed your every effort. I have been attentive to your travels through this great wasteland. These forty years I have been with you; you have lacked for nothing.'"

Then the Lord said to me, "Do not harass Moab and provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as your territory. This is because I have given Ar to the descendants of Lot as their possession.

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.

This is exactly what he did for the descendants of Esau who lived in Seir when he destroyed the Horites before them so that they could dispossess them and settle in their area to this very day.

As for the Avvites who lived in settlements as far west as Gaza, Caphtorites who came from Crete destroyed them and settled down in their place.)

Sell me food for cash so that I can eat and sell me water to drink. Just allow me to go through on foot,

just as the descendants of Esau who live at Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar did for me, until I cross the Jordan to the land the Lord our God is giving us."

We kept only the livestock and plunder from the cities for ourselves.

But all the livestock and plunder from the cities we kept for ourselves.

all the cities of the plateau, all of Gilead and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.

Jair, son of Manasseh, took all the Argob region as far as the border with the Geshurites and Maacathites (namely Bashan) and called it by his name, Havvoth-Jair, which it retains to this very day.)

To the Reubenites and Gadites I allocated the territory extending from Gilead as far as Wadi Arnon (the exact middle of the wadi was a boundary) all the way to the Wadi Jabbok, the Ammonite border.

At that time I instructed you as follows: "The Lord your God has given you this land for your possession. You warriors are to cross over before your fellow Israelites equipped for battle.

Do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God will personally fight for you."

Go up to the top of Pisgah and take a good look to the west, north, south, and east, for you will not be allowed to cross the Jordan.

Again, however, pay very careful attention, lest you forget the things you have seen and disregard them for the rest of your life; instead teach them to your children and grandchildren.

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.

Moreover, at that same time the Lord commanded me to teach you statutes and ordinances for you to keep in the land which you are about to enter and possess.

Be very careful, then, because you saw no form at the time the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the middle of the fire.

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.

For the Lord your God is a consuming fire; he is a jealous God.

(for he is a merciful God), he will not let you down or destroy you, for he cannot forget the covenant with your ancestors that he confirmed by oath to them.

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?

Or has God ever before tried to deliver a nation from the middle of another nation, accompanied by judgments, signs, wonders, war, strength, power, and other very terrifying things like the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

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.

These cities are Bezer, in the desert plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassehites.

Their territory extended from Aroer at the edge of the Arnon valley as far as Mount Siyon -- that is, Hermon --

The Lord spoke face to face with you at the mountain, from the middle of the fire.

(I was standing between the Lord and you at that time to reveal to you the message of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and would not go up the mountain.) He said:

You must not make for yourself an image of anything in heaven above, on earth below, or in the waters beneath.

You must not worship or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I punish the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons for the sin of the fathers who reject me,

You must not make use of the name of the Lord your God for worthless purposes, for the Lord will not exonerate anyone who abuses his name that way.

The Lord said these things to your entire assembly at the mountain from the middle of the fire, the cloud, and the darkness with a loud voice, and that was all he said. Then he inscribed the words on two stone tablets and gave them to 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.

But now, why should we die, because this intense fire will consume us! If we keep hearing the voice of the Lord our God we will die!

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?

If only it would really be their desire to fear me and obey all my commandments in the future, so that it may go well with them and their descendants forever.

But as for you, remain here with me so I can declare to you all the commandments, statutes, and ordinances that you are to teach them, so that they can carry them out in the land I am about to give them."

for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a jealous God and his anger will erupt against you and remove you from the land.

you must say to them, "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt in a powerful way.

And he brought signs and great, devastating wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on his whole family before our very eyes.

The Lord commanded us to obey all these statutes and to revere him so that it may always go well for us and he may preserve us, as he has to this day.

You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,

for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will erupt against you and he will quickly destroy you.

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth.

It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you -- for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples.

Rather it is because of his love for you and his faithfulness to the promise he solemnly vowed to your ancestors that the Lord brought you out with great power, redeeming you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

You must destroy all the people whom the Lord your God is about to deliver over to you; you must not pity them or worship their gods, for that will be a snare to you.

you must not fear them. You must carefully recall what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt,

the great judgments you saw, the signs and wonders, the strength and power by which he brought you out -- thus the Lord your God will do to all the people you fear.

You must not tremble in their presence, for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a great and awesome God.

You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God.

You must not bring any abhorrent thing into your house and thereby become an object of divine wrath along with it. You must absolutely detest and abhor it, for it is an object of divine wrath.

For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of brooks, springs, and fountains flowing forth in valleys and hills,

You must remember the Lord your God, for he is the one who gives ability to get wealth; if you do this he will confirm his covenant that he made by oath to your ancestors, even as he has to this day.

Understand today that the Lord your God who goes before you is a devouring fire; he will defeat and subdue them before you. You will dispossess and destroy them quickly just as he has told you.

Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn people!

The Lord gave me the two stone tablets, written by the very finger of God, and on them was everything he said to you at the mountain from the midst of the fire at the time of that assembly.

And he said to me, "Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image."

So I turned and went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.

When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God and had cast for yourselves a metal calf; you had quickly turned aside from the way he had commanded you!

Then I again fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights; I ate and drank nothing because of all the sin you had committed, doing such evil before the Lord as to enrage him.

For I was terrified at the Lord's intense anger that threatened to destroy you. But he listened to me this time as well.

The Lord was also angry enough at Aaron to kill him, but at that time I prayed for him too.

As for your sinful thing that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.

I lay flat on the ground before the Lord for forty days and nights, for he had said he would destroy you.

Otherwise the people of the land from which you brought us will say, "The Lord was unable to bring them to the land he promised them, and because of his hatred for them he has brought them out to kill them in the desert."

At that same time the Lord said to me, "Carve out for yourself two stone tablets like the first ones and come up the mountain to me; also make for yourself a wooden ark.

The Lord then wrote on the tablets the same words, the ten commandments, which he had spoken to you at the mountain from the middle of the fire at the time of that assembly, and he gave them to me.

As for me, I stayed at the mountain as I did the first time, forty days and nights. The Lord listened to me that time as well and decided not to destroy you.

and to keep the Lord's commandments and statutes that I am giving you today for your own good?

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who is unbiased and takes no bribe,

He is the one you should praise; he is your God, the one who has done these great and awesome things for you that you have seen.

They did not see the awesome deeds he performed in the midst of Egypt against Pharaoh king of Egypt and his whole land,

For the land where you are headed is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, a land where you planted seed and which you irrigated by hand like a vegetable garden.

then he promises, "I will send rain for your land in its season, the autumn and the spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine, and olive oil.

I will provide pasture for your livestock and you will eat your fill."

For if you carefully observe all of these commandments I am giving you and love the Lord your God, live according to his standards, and remain loyal to him,

Every place you set your foot will be yours; your border will extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the River (that is, the Euphrates) as far as the Mediterranean Sea.

Nobody will be able to resist you; the Lord your God will spread the fear and terror of you over the whole land on which you walk, just as he promised you.

For you are about to cross the Jordan to possess the land the Lord your God is giving you, and you will possess and inhabit it.

for you have not yet come to the final stop and inheritance the Lord your God is giving you.

Then you must come to the place the Lord your God chooses for his name to reside, bringing everything I am commanding you -- your burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, and all your choice votive offerings which you devote to him.

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.

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.

However, by no means eat the blood, for the blood is life itself -- you must not eat the life with the meat!

You must not worship the Lord your God the way they do! For everything that is abhorrent to him, everything he hates, they have done when worshiping their gods. They even burn up their sons and daughters before their gods!

You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, for the Lord your God will be testing you to see if you love him with all your mind and being.

As for that prophet or dreamer, he must be executed because he encouraged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, redeeming you from that place of slavery, and because he has tried to entice you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to go. In this way you must purge out evil from within.

the gods of the surrounding people (whether near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other).

You must not give in to him or even listen to him; do not feel sympathy for him or spare him or cover up for him.

You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors.

You are children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald for the sake of the dead.

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth.

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.

As for the Levites in your villages, you must not ignore them, for they have no allotment or inheritance along with you.

This is the nature of the cancellation: Every creditor must remit what he has loaned to another person; he must not force payment from his fellow Israelite, for it is to be recognized as "the Lord's cancellation of debts."