Then Moab said to the responsible men of Midian, It is clear that this great people will be the destruction of everything round us, making a meal of us as the ox does of the grass of the field. At that time Balak, the son of Zippor, was king of Moab.

Come now, in answer to my prayer, and put a curse on this people, for they are greater than I: and then I may be strong enough to overcome them and send them out of the land: for it is clear that good comes to him who has your blessing, but he on whom you put your curse is cursed.

See, the people who have come out of Egypt are covering all the earth: now, put a curse on this people for me, so that I may be able to make war on them, driving them out of the land.

And God said to Balaam, You are not to go with them, or put a curse on this people, for they have my blessing.

For I will give you a place of very great honour, and whatever you say to me I will do; so come, in answer to my prayer, and put a curse on this people.

So take your rest here this night, till I have knowledge what more the Lord has to say to me.

Then the angel of the Lord took up his position in a narrow road through the vine-gardens, with a wall on this side and on that.

And the ass said to Balaam, Am I not your ass upon which you have gone all your life till this day? and have I ever done this to you before? And he said, No.

And the Lord put words in Balaam's mouth, and said, Go back to Balak, and this is what you are to say.

And the Lord came to Balaam, and put words in his mouth, and said, Go back to Balak, and this is what you are to say.

So now I will go back to my people: but first let me make clear to you what this people will do to your people in days to come.

Then he went on with his story and said, But who may keep his life when God does this?

And by this agreement, he and his sons after him have the right to be priests for ever; because, by his care for the honour of his God, he took away the sin of the children of Israel.

And if his father has no brothers, then give it to his nearest relation in the family, as his heritage: this is to be a decision made by law for the children of Israel, as the Lord gave orders to Moses.

And the Lord said to Moses, Go up into this mountain of Abarim so that you may see the land which I have given to the children of Israel.

Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, put a man at the head of this people,

Say to them, This is the offering made by fire which you are to give to the Lord; he-lambs of the first year without any mark, two every day as a regular burned offering.

This is the burned offering for every Sabbath day, in addition to the regular burned offering, and its drink offering.

And their drink offerings are to be half a hin of wine for an ox, and the third part of a hin for a male sheep, and the fourth part of a hin for a lamb: this is the burned offering for every month through all the months of the year.

On the fifteenth day of this month there is to be a feast; for seven days let your food be unleavened cakes.

In this way, every day for seven days, give the food of the offering made by fire, a sweet smell to the Lord: it is to be offered in addition to the regular burned offering, and its drink offering.

And on the tenth day of this seventh month there will be a holy meeting; keep yourselves from pleasure, and do no sort of work;

And Moses said to the heads of the tribes of the children of Israel, This is the order of the Lord.

Then Eleazar the priest said to the men of war who had been to the fight, This is the rule of the law which the Lord has given to Moses:

Take this from their part and give it to Eleazar the priest as an offering to be lifted up to the Lord.

And they said, With your approval, let this land be given to your servants as their heritage: do not take us over Jordan.

For if you are turned away from him, he will send them wandering again in the waste land; and you will be the cause of the destruction of all this people.

For we will not have our heritage with them on the other side of Jordan and forward; because our heritage has come to us on this side of Jordan to the east.

Then Moses said to them, If you will do this, arming yourselves to go before the Lord to the war,

And the land is under the rule of the Lord: then after that you may come back, having done no wrong to the Lord and to Israel; and this land will be yours for your heritage before the Lord.

But if you do not do this, then you are sinners against the Lord; and you may be certain that your sin will have its reward.

We will go over armed before the Lord into the land of Canaan, and you will give us our heritage on this side of Jordan.

Give orders to the children of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land of Canaan; (this is the land which is to be your heritage, the land of Canaan inside these limits,)

And for your limit on the west you will have the Great Sea and its edge: this will be your limit on the west.

And the limit will go on to Ziphron, with its farthest point at Hazar-enan: this will be your limit on the north.

And Moses gave orders to the children of Israel saying, This is the land which is to be your heritage, by the decision of the Lord, which by the Lord's order is to be given to the nine tribes and the half-tribe:

The measure of this space of land is to be two thousand cubits outside the town on the east, and two thousand cubits on the south and on the west and on the north, the town being in the middle. This space will be the outskirts of their towns.

This is the order of the Lord about the daughters of Zelophehad: The Lord says, Let them take as their husbands whoever is most pleasing to them, but only among the family of their father's tribe.

On the far side of Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses gave the people this law, saying,

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

Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts feeble with fear by saying, The people are greater and taller than we are, and the towns are great and walled up to heaven; and more than this, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.

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.

But for all this, you had no faith in the Lord your God,

Truly, not one of this evil generation will see that good land which I said I would give to your fathers,

This I said to you, but you gave no attention and went against the orders of the Lord, and in your pride went up into the hill-country.

You have been journeying round this mountain long enough: now go to the north;

For the blessing of the Lord your God has been on you in all the work of your hands: he has knowledge of your wanderings through this great waste: these forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have been short of nothing.

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:

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.

And this land which we took at that time, from Aroer by the valley of the Arnon, and half the hill-country of Gilead with its towns, I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites.

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.)

At that time I gave you orders, saying, The Lord has given you this land for your heritage: all the men of war are to go over armed before your brothers the children of Israel.

But the Lord was angry with me because of you and would not give ear to my prayer; and the Lord said to me, Let it be enough, say no more about this thing.

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.

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.

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

That day when you were waiting before the Lord your God in Horeb, and the Lord said to me, Make all the people come together, so that hearing my words they may go in fear of me all the days of their life on earth and give this teaching to their children.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

And keep in mind that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God took you out of that land by his strong hand and his stretched-out arm: for this reason the Lord has given you orders to keep the Sabbath day.

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.

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.

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.

Keep these words, which I say to you this day, deep in your hearts;

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.

But this is what you are to do to them: their altars are to be pulled down and their pillars broken, and their holy trees cut down and their images burned with fire.

Keep in mind this thought, that as a son is trained by his father, so you have been trained by the Lord your God.

Then take care that you are not turned away from the Lord your God and from keeping his orders and decisions and laws which I give you this day:

Say not then, in your hearts, My power and the strength of my hands have got me this wealth.

But keep in mind the Lord your God: for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth, so that he may give effect to the agreement which he made by his oath with your fathers, as at this day.

And after the Lord has sent them in flight from before you, say not in your heart, Because of my righteousness the Lord has given me this land; when it is because of their evil-doing that the Lord is driving these nations out before you.

Be certain then that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land as a reward for your righteousness; for you are a stiff-necked people.

Keep well in mind how you made the Lord your God angry in the waste land; from the day when you went out of Egypt till you came to this place, you have gone against the orders of the Lord.

And the Lord said to me, Get up now, and go down quickly from this place; for the people you have taken out of Egypt have given themselves over to evil; they have quickly been turned from the way in which I gave them orders to go; they have made themselves a metal image.

And then the Lord said to me, I have seen that this people is stiff-necked:

Keep in mind your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not looking at the hard heart of this people, or their evil-doing and their sin:

At that time the Lord had the tribe of Levi marked out to take up the ark of the Lord's agreement, to be before the Lord and to do his work and to give blessings in his name, to this day.

For this reason Levi has no part or heritage for himself among his brothers: the Lord is his heritage, as the Lord your God said to him.)

Doing the orders of the Lord and keeping his laws which I give you this day for your good?

But the Lord had delight in your fathers and love for them, marking out for himself their seed after them, even you, from all peoples, as at this day.

And be certain in your minds this day; for these words are not said to your children, who have had no experience of the training of the Lord your God, and who have not seen his great power or his strong hand and his stretched-out arm,

And what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and their war-carriages; how he made the waters of the Red Sea come up over them when they went after you, and how the Lord put an end to them even to this day;

And what he did for you in the waste land, till you came to this place;

And it will be that if you truly give ear to the orders which I put before you this day, loving the Lord your God and worshipping him with all your heart and all your soul,

The blessing if you give ear to the orders of the Lord your God, which I give you this day:

And the curse if you do not give ear to the orders of the Lord your God, but let yourselves be turned from the way which I have put before you this day, and go after other gods which are not yours.

And all Israel, hearing of it, will be full of fear, and no one will again do such evil as this among you.

And of the things living in the waters, you may take all those who have wings for swimming with and skins formed of thin plates.

This is how it is to be done: every creditor is to give up his right to whatever he has let his neighbour have; he is not to make his neighbour, his countryman, give it back; because a general forgiveness has been ordered by the Lord.

But it is right for you to give to him, without grief of heart: for because of this, the blessing of the Lord your God will be on all your work and on everything to which you put your hand.

And keep in mind that you yourself were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God made you free: so I give you this order today.

If word of this comes to your ears, then let this thing be looked into with care, and if there is no doubt that it is true, and such evil has been done in Israel;

And when he has taken his place on the seat of his kingdom, he is to make in a book a copy of this law, from that which the priests, the Levites, have in their care: