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.

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."

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.

At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the Lord's covenant, to stand before the Lord to serve him, and to formulate blessings in his name, as they do to this very day.

Therefore Levi has no allotment or inheritance among his brothers; the Lord is his inheritance just as the Lord your God told him.

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.

The heavens -- indeed the highest heavens -- belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it.

However, only to your ancestors did he show his loving favor, and he chose you, their descendants, from all peoples -- as is apparent today.

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.

When your ancestors went down to Egypt, they numbered only seventy, but now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky.

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.

Instead, the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy is one of hills and valleys, a land that drinks in water from the rains,

a land the Lord your God looks after. He is constantly attentive to it from the beginning to the end of the year.

Then the anger of the Lord will erupt against you and he will close up the sky so that it does not rain. The land will not yield its produce, and you will soon be removed from the good land that the Lord is about to give 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.

Teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up.

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.

These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to obey as long as you live in the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess.

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.

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

When you do go across the Jordan River and settle in the land he is granting you as an inheritance and you find relief from all the enemies who surround you, you will live in safety.

On the other hand, you may slaughter and eat meat as you please when the Lord your God blesses you in all your villages. Both the ritually pure and impure may eat it, whether it is a gazelle or an ibex.

Be careful not to overlook the Levites as long as you live in the land.

When the Lord your God extends your borders as he said he would do and you say, "I want to eat meat just as I please," you may do so as you wish.

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 eat it so that it may go well with you and your children after you; you will be doing what is right in the Lord's sight.

Pay careful attention to all these things I am commanding you so that it may always go well with you and your children after you when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God.

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!

and the sign or wonder should come to pass concerning what he said to you, namely, "Let us follow other gods" -- gods whom you have not previously known -- "and let us serve them."

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.

Suppose you should hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live, that

You must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done among you,

you must by all means slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; annihilate with the sword everyone in it, as well as the livestock.

You must gather all of its plunder into the middle of the plaza and burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin forever -- it must never be rebuilt again.

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.

Thus you must obey the Lord your God, keeping all his commandments that I am giving you today and doing what is right before him.

Also the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains.

but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you.

You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

When he blesses you, if the place where he chooses to locate his name is distant,

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."

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,

For the Lord your God will bless you just as he has promised; you will lend to many nations but will not borrow from any, and you will rule over many nations but they will not rule over you.

If a fellow Israelite from one of your villages in the land that the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive to his impoverished condition.

Be careful lest you entertain the wicked thought that the seventh year, the year of cancellation of debts, has almost arrived, and your attitude be wrong toward your impoverished fellow Israelite and you do not lend him anything; he will cry out to the Lord against you and you will be regarded as having sinned.

If your fellow Hebrew -- whether male or female -- is sold to you and serves you for six years, then in the seventh year you must let that servant go free.

You must supply them generously from your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress -- as the Lord your God has blessed you, you must give to them.

However, if the servant says to you, "I do not want to leave you," because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you,

you shall take an awl and pierce a hole through his ear to the door. Then he will become your servant permanently (this applies to your female servant as well).

If they have any kind of blemish -- lameness, blindness, or anything else -- you may not offer them as a sacrifice to the Lord your God.

You may eat it in your villages, whether you are ritually impure or clean, just as you would eat a gazelle or an ibex.

You may not sacrifice the Passover in just any of your villages that the Lord your God is giving you,

Every one of you must give as you are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.

You must appoint judges and civil servants for each tribe in all your villages that the Lord your God is giving you, and they must judge the people fairly.

You must not pervert justice or show favor. Do not take a bribe, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort the words of the righteous.

You must pursue justice alone so that you may live and inherit the land the Lord your God is giving you.

You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself.

You must not sacrifice to him a bull or sheep that has a blemish or any other defect, because that is considered offensive to the Lord your God.

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

When it is reported to you and you hear about it, you must investigate carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done in Israel,

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.

You must then do as they have determined at that place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do just as you are taught.

When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, "I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,"

you must select without fail a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king -- you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites.

It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this law and these statutes and carry them out.

They will have no inheritance in the midst of their fellow Israelites; the Lord alone is their inheritance, just as he had told them.

You must give them the best of your grain, new wine, and olive oil, as well as the best of your wool when you shear your flocks.

Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, to the place the Lord chooses

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

Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you.

This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the Lord your God: "Please do not make us hear the voice of the Lord our God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die."

The Lord then said to me, "What they have said is good.

Now if you say to yourselves, 'How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?' --

whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him."

When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,

you must set apart for yourselves three cities in the middle of your land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession.

You shall build a roadway and divide into thirds the whole extent of your land that the Lord your God is providing as your inheritance; anyone who kills another person should flee to the closest of these cities.

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.

Otherwise the blood avenger will chase after the killer in the heat of his anger, eventually overtake him, and kill him, though this is not a capital case since he did not hate him at the time of the accident.

If the Lord your God enlarges your borders as he promised your ancestors and gives you all the land he pledged to them,

You must not shed innocent blood in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty.

You must not encroach on your neighbor's property, which will have been defined in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

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.

When you go to war against your enemies and see chariotry and troops who outnumber you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, is with you.

As you move forward for battle, the priest will approach and say to the soldiers,

In addition, the officers are to say to the troops, "Who among you is afraid and fainthearted? He may go home so that he will not make his fellow soldier's heart as fearful as his own."

However, the women, little children, cattle, and anything else in the city -- all its plunder -- you may take for yourselves as spoil. You may take from your enemies the plunder that the Lord your God has given you.

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

As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive.

Instead you must utterly annihilate them -- the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites -- just as the Lord your God has commanded you,

If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, you must not chop down its trees, for you may eat fruit from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it!

However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, and you may use it to build siege works against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.

If a homicide victim should be found lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you, and no one knows who killed him,

your elders and judges must go out and measure how far it is to the cities in the vicinity of the corpse.

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.