Book of Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 1

¹ These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan, in the desert, in the Arabah, opposite Suph, between Pharan, Tophel, Laban, Haseroth and Di-Zahab. ² It is an eleven-day walk from Horeb, along the mountain path of Seir, to Kadesh-Barneh. ³ In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had commanded him to say to them. ⁴ After he had defeated Sihon, king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og, king of Bashan, who lived in Astaroth and Edrai. ⁵ On the other side of the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses began to explain this law, saying: ⁶ The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, «You have stayed long enough in this mountain ⁷ Turn around and set out, go to the hill country of the Amorites and all around it: to the Arabah, to the hill country, to the Shephelah, to the Negev, to the coast of the sea, to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, all the way to the great river, the Euphrates river. ⁸ »Here I am setting this land before you; go and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them and to their descendants after them.” ⁹ I spoke to you at that time in this way: «I cannot, by myself, carry you. ¹⁰ The Lord your God has multiplied you, and today you are as numerous as the stars in the sky. ¹¹ May the Lord, the God of your fathers, make you grow a thousand times more and bless you as he has promised. ¹² How could I, alone, bear your burden, your grievances? ¹³ »Take wise, intelligent, and respected men from among your tribes, and I will appoint them as your leaders.” ¹⁴ You replied to me by saying, "The thing you propose to do is good.". ¹⁵ So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and well-known men, and I appointed them as leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, and leaders of tens, and as magistrates in your tribes. ¹⁶ At the same time, I gave this command to your judges: «Listen to the arguments of your brothers and judge fairly the disputes that each of them has with his brother or with the stranger who is with him. ¹⁷ In your judgments, you will not show partiality; you will listen to the lowly as well as the great, and you will not be afraid of anyone, for judgment belongs to God. If you find a case too difficult, you will bring it before me so that I may hear it.» ¹⁸ This is how I instructed you at that time, all the things you should do. ¹⁹ Having left Horeb, we crossed all that vast and dreadful desert that you saw, heading towards the mountain of the Amorites, as the Lord your God had commanded us, and we arrived at Kadesh-Barne. ²⁰ Then I said to you, «You have come to the mountain of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving us. ²¹ »See, the Lord your God has set this land before you; go up and take possession of it, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has told you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.” ²² You all approached me and said, "Let's send men ahead of us to explore the country and report back to us about the route we'll take and the cities we'll reach."« ²³ The idea seemed good to me, so I took twelve men from among you, one man from each tribe. ²⁴ They set off and, after crossing the mountain, they arrived at the Escol valley and explored it. ²⁵ They took some of the fruits of the land in their hands and brought them to us, and they reported back to us, saying, «This is a good land that the Lord our God has given us.» ²⁶ However, you did not want to go up and you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. ²⁷ You murmured in your tents, saying, «It is because the Lord hates us that he brought us out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, in order to destroy us. ²⁸ "Where are we going up? Our brothers have melted our hearts, saying, 'This is a people greater and taller than we are; these are great cities, whose walls reach to the heavens; and we even saw the descendants of Enacim there.'"» ²⁹ I tell you, «Do not be alarmed or afraid of them. ³⁰ The Lord your God, who goes before you, will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your very eyes., ³¹ and then in the desert, where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way you traveled until you arrived at this place.» ³² Despite this, you did not trust in the Lord your God, ³³ who walked before you on the road to find you places to camp, in a fire at night to show you the way you should walk, and in a cloud during the day. ³⁴ The Lord heard the sound of your words and, in his anger, he swore, saying: ³⁵ «None of the men of this wicked generation will see the good land I swore to give to your fathers,”, ³⁶ Except for Caleb son of Jephone, he will see him, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set foot on, because he faithfully followed the Lord.» ³⁷ The Lord was also angry with me because of you, and he said, «You too shall not enter it. ³⁸ But Joshua, son of Nun, your servant, will enter it; strengthen him, for he is the one who will put Israel in possession of this land. ³⁹ And your grandchildren, of whom you said, "They will be a prey," and your sons, who today know neither good nor evil, they will enter into it; to them I will give it, and they will possess it. ⁴⁰ You, go back and head for the desert, along the Red Sea route.» ⁴¹ You answered me, saying, «We have sinned against the Lord; we will go up and fight, according to all that the Lord our God has commanded us.» And you each girded on your weapons and prepared yourselves recklessly to go up the mountain. ⁴² The Lord said to me, «Tell them: Do not go up and do not fight, for I am not among you; do not let yourselves be defeated by your enemies.» ⁴³ I spoke to you, but you did not listen, you resisted the Lord's command, and you were presumptuous enough to go up the mountain. ⁴⁴ Then the Amorite who dwells in that mountain came out against you, he pursued you like bees do and defeated you in Seir, as far as Hormah. ⁴⁵ You returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord did not listen to your voice or pay attention to you. ⁴⁶ You stayed in Cadès for many days, for the duration of your stay.

Deuteronomy 2

¹ Changing direction, we set out for the desert, by way of the Red Sea, as the Lord had commanded me, and we circled for a long time around the mountain of Seir. ² And the Lord said to me: ³ «"You have circled this mountain enough, resume your northward direction. ⁴ Give this order to the people: You are about to cross over to the border of your brothers, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be careful. ⁵ to have a dispute with them, because I will not give you anything in their land, not even what the sole of your foot can cover: I have given Esau the mountain of Seir as his possession. ⁶ You will buy from them at a price the food you will eat, and you will buy from them at a price even the water you will drink. ⁷ For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work From your hands, he has known your journey through this great desert; for forty years the Lord your God has been with you: you have lacked nothing.» ⁸ So we passed away from our brothers, the children of Esau, who dwell in Seir, turning away from the road to Arabah, Elath and Azi'ingab, and we turned aside and headed towards the desert of Moab. ⁹ The Lord said to me, «Do not attack Moab or engage in battle with them, for I will not give you any possession in their land: it is to the children of Lot that I have given Ar as an inheritance. ¹⁰ The Emim used to live there, a large, numerous and tall people, like the Enacim. ¹¹ They too are regarded as Rephaim, as are the Enacim, but the Moabites call them Emim. ¹²The Horrahites also once lived in Seir, but the children of Esau drove them out and destroyed them from before them, and settled in their place, as Israel did for the land which it possesses and which the Lord gave it. ¹³ "Now get up and cross the Zared stream." And we crossed the Zared stream. ¹⁴ The time our marches lasted, from Cadès-Barné to the crossing of the Zared torrent, was thirty-eight years, until the whole generation of warriors had disappeared from the middle of the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them. ¹⁵ The hand of the Lord was also upon them to destroy them from the midst of the camp, until they had disappeared. ¹⁶ When death had swept away all the warriors from among the people, ¹⁷ The Lord spoke to me, saying: ¹⁸ «"Today you will cross the border into Moab, Ar, ¹⁹ and you will approach the children of Ammon. Do not attack them or have any quarrel with them, for I will not give you any possession in the land of the children of Ammon: it is to the children of Lot that I have given it as a possession. ²⁰ This country was also regarded as a land of Rephaim; Rephaim had previously lived there, and the Ammonites called them Zomzommim: ²¹ a people great, numerous and tall, like the Enacim, the Lord destroyed them before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place. ²² This is what the Lord did for the descendants of Esau who live in Seir, when he destroyed the Horrahites before them, driving them out, and they settled in their place to this day. ²³ Likewise, the Hivites, who lived in villages as far as Gaza, were destroyed by the Caphtorim, who, having come out of Caphtor, settled in their place. ²⁴ Arise, depart, and cross the Arnon River. Behold, I deliver into your hand Sihon king of Hesebon, the Amorites, and his land. Begin to seize it, engage him in battle. ²⁵ From this day forward, I will spread the terror and fear of your name among all the peoples under the heavens, so that at the sound of your fame they will tremble and be in anguish because of you.» ²⁶ From the desert of Cademoth, I sent messengers to Sihon, king of Heshbon, with words of peace, saying to him: ²⁷ «"If I can pass through your country, I will follow the main road, without deviating to the right or to the left. ²⁸ You will sell me the food I will eat for money, and you will give me the water I will drink for money; I only want to pass through on foot. ²⁹ This is what the descendants of Esau who live in Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar have done for me, until I cross the Jordan to enter the land the Lord our God is giving us.» ³⁰ But Sihon, king of Hesebon, would not let us pass through to him, because the Lord your God had hardened his spirit and made his heart inflexible, in order to deliver him into your hands, as you see today. ³¹ The Lord said to me, «Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land into your hand. Begin to conquer it in order to take possession of his land.» ³² Sehon came out to meet us, with all his people, to give us battle at Jasa. ³³ And the Lord our God delivered him into our hands, and we defeated him, his sons, and all his people. ³⁴ We then captured all its cities and devoted every city and its people to anathema., women and the children, without letting a single one escape. ³⁵ However, we plundered for ourselves the livestock and the spoils of the cities we had taken. ³⁶ From Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of Arnon, and from the city which is in the valley, to Gilead, there was no city too inaccessible for us; the Lord our God delivered them all to us. ³⁷ But you did not approach the land of the Ammonites, nor any place on the banks of the Jabbok River, nor the hill towns, nor any of the places which the Lord our God had forbidden you to take.

Deuteronomy 3

¹ Having turned around, we went up the road to Bashan and Og, king of Bashan, came out to meet us, with all his people, to give us battle at Edrai. ² The Lord said to me, «Do not be afraid of him, for I have given him into your hands, along with all his people and his land. You shall treat him as you treated Sihon, king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon.» ³ And the Lord our God also delivered into our hands Og, king of Bashan, with all his people; we defeated him until none of his people remained. ⁴ We then took all his cities and there was not one that did not fall into our power: sixty cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. ⁵ All these cities were fortified, with high walls, gates and bars, not to mention the very large number of cities without walls. ⁶ We devoted them by anathema, as we had done to Sihon, king of Heshbon, devoting by anathema cities, men, women, and children. ⁷ But we plundered for ourselves all the livestock and spoils of the cities. ⁸ So at that time we took from the two kings of the Amorites the land beyond the Jordan, from the Arnon River to Mount Hermon. ⁹ The Sidonians call Hermon Sarion and the Amorites Sanir, ¹⁰ all the cities of the plain, all Gilead and all Bashan, as far as Selhah and Edrai, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. ¹¹ For Og, king of Bashan, was the only one left of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed, an iron bed, is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Its length is nine cubits and its width four cubits, according to the cubit of a man. ¹² We then took possession of this land. I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites the territory from Aroer which overlooks the valley of the Arnon, as well as half of the mountain of Gilead with its cities. ¹³ I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh the rest of Gilead and all the part of Bashan that formed the kingdom of Og. All the land of Argob, with all of Bashan, is what is called the land of the Rephaim. ¹⁴ Jair, son of Manasseh, obtained all the region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurians and the Macathians, and he gave his name to the towns of Bashan, called the Towns of Jair, to this day. ¹⁵ I gave Gilead to Machir. ¹⁶ To the Reubenites and the Gadites, I gave part of Gilead and the land as far as the Arnon River, with the middle of the valley serving as the boundary, and as far as the Jaboch River, the border of the Ammonites., ¹⁷ as well as the Arabah, with the Jordan as its boundary, from Cenereth to the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, at the foot of the slopes of Phasga, towards the East. ¹⁸ At that time, I gave you this order: «The Lord your God has given you this land to be your possession; all of you mighty men, you shall march armed before your brothers, the children of Israel. ¹⁹ Only your wives, your grandchildren, and your flocks—I know you have many flocks—will remain in the cities I have given you., ²⁰ until the Lord has given rest to your brothers as he has to you, and they too possess the land that the Lord your God is giving them on the other side of the Jordan. Then you will each return to the inheritance I have given you.» ²¹ At that time, I also gave orders to Joshua, saying, «Your eyes have seen all that the Lord your God has done to these two kings: so the Lord will do to all the kingdoms against which you are going to march. ²² Do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God himself fights for you.» ²³ At that time, I begged the Lord, saying: ²⁴ «Lord God, you have begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand, for what God is there in heaven and on earth who can accomplish your works and your mighty deeds? ²⁵ Let me pass by, I beg you, let me see that good country beyond the Jordan, that beautiful mountain and the Lebanon. » ²⁶ But the Lord was angry with me because of you and did not listen to me. The Lord said to me, «That’s enough; do not speak to me about this matter again.”. ²⁷ Go up to the top of Phasgah, look westward, northward, southward, and eastward, and see with your eyes, for you will not cross this Jordan. ²⁸ Give orders to Joshua, Strengthen and encourage him, for he will lead these people before them and will give them possession of the land you will see.» ²⁹ We stayed in the valley opposite Beth-Phogor.

Deuteronomy 4

¹ And now, Israel, listen to the laws and ordinances that I am teaching you to put into practice, so that you may live, and enter and possess the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. ² You shall not add to what I command you and you shall not take away from it, but you shall observe the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. ³ Your eyes have seen what the Lord has done because of Baal-Phogor: the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all those who had followed Baal-Phogor, ⁴ While you, who have joined yourselves to the Lord your God, are all alive today. ⁵ I have taught you statutes and ordinances as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may put them into practice in the land which you are entering to possess. ⁶ You will observe them and put them into practice, for this will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear about all these laws and say: Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. ⁷ For what great nation is there that has gods at its side, as we have the Lord our God, whenever we call upon him? ⁸ And what great nation has laws and ordinances as just as all this law that I am setting before you today? ⁹ Only take care of yourself and carefully guard your soul, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen and let them slip from your heart, not for a single day of your life, but teach them to your children and your children's children. ¹⁰ Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, «Gather the people for me, and I will let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth, and so that they may teach them to their children.» ¹¹ You approached and stood at the foot of the mountain, the mountain was on fire and the flame rose to the depths of the sky, amidst darkness, clouds and gloom. ¹² Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but saw no form: you heard only a voice. ¹³ He promulgated his covenant, which he commanded you to observe, namely the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. ¹⁴ At that time, the Lord commanded me to teach you statutes and ordinances, so that you might observe them in the land you are about to enter and possess. ¹⁵ Since you saw no form on the day the Lord spoke to you out of the fire at Horeb, take heed to yourselves, ¹⁶ lest you corrupt yourselves and make for yourselves a carved image, a likeness of any idol, whether male or female, ¹⁷ any image of an animal that lives on the earth, any image of a bird that flies in the sky, ¹⁸ any image of a beast that crawls on the ground, any image of a fish that lives in the waters beneath the earth, ¹⁹ lest, when you lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun, the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn to bow down to them and worship them, whom the Lord your God has given as an inheritance to all the peoples who are everywhere under heaven. ²⁰ But the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to become his people and his inheritance, as you are today. ²¹ And the Lord was angry with me because of you, and he swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. ²² I will die in this country, without crossing the Jordan, but you will cross it and possess this good land. ²³ Be careful not to forget the covenant the Lord your God made with you, and not to make for yourselves a carved image, or any likeness of anything the Lord your God has forbidden you. ²⁴ For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. ²⁵ When you have children and children after you have lived in the land for a long time, if you become corrupt and make for yourselves any carved image, any likeness of anything, doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, provoking him to anger, ²⁶ I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will soon perish and disappear from the land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess; you will not prolong your days there, for you will be utterly destroyed. ²⁷ The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will remain in small numbers among the nations where the Lord will lead you. ²⁸ And there you will serve gods, the work of human hands, of wood and stone, which do not see, do not hear, do not eat, and do not smell. ²⁹ From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. ³⁰ In the midst of your distress, when all these things have come upon you in the last days, you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice., ³¹ for the Lord your God is a compassionate God: he will not abandon you or destroy you, nor will he forget his covenant with your fathers, which he swore to them. ³² Ask the ancient times that preceded you, from the day God created man on the earth and from one end of heaven to the other: has anything so great ever happened, and has anything like it ever been heard of? ³³ Has any people heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and remained alive? ³⁴ Has any god ever tried to take one nation for himself from among another nation, by trials, signs, wonders, by the war, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? ³⁵ These things were shown to you so that you might know that the Lord is God and there is no other besides him. ³⁶ From heaven, he made you hear his voice to instruct you, and on earth, he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from the midst of the fire. ³⁷ Because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them, and brought you out of Egypt by his presence and by his great power, ³⁸ to drive out before you nations more numerous and stronger than you, to bring you into their land and give it to you as an inheritance, as you see today. ³⁹ Know therefore this day and engrave in your heart that the Lord is God, in heaven above and on earth below, there is no other. ⁴⁰ Observe his laws and commandments that I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you, and so that you may prolong your days throughout all generations in the land the Lord your God is giving you.» ⁴¹ Then Moses set apart three cities on the other side of the Jordan, to the east, ⁴² so that they might serve as a refuge for the murderer who had accidentally killed his neighbor, without having previously been his enemy, and that, by taking refuge in one of these cities, he might save his life. ⁴³ These were: Bozor in the desert, in the plain, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead, for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites. ⁴⁴ This is the law that Moses set before the eyes of the children of Israel, ⁴⁵ These are the precepts, laws, and ordinances that Moses gave to the children of Israel when they left Egypt., ⁴⁶ on the other side of the Jordan, in the valley opposite Beth-Phogor, in the land of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon and who was defeated by Moses and the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt. ⁴⁷ They took possession of his land and that of Og, king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to the east, ⁴⁸ from Aroër on the banks of the Arnon stream to Mount Sion, which is Hermon, ⁴⁹ with all of the Arabah, on the other side of the Jordan, to the east, as far as the Sea of the Arabah, at the foot of the Phasgah.

Deuteronomy 5

¹ Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, «Listen, Israel, to the laws and ordinances that I am giving you today; learn them and carefully observe them. ² The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. ³ The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, who are all alive here today. ⁴ The Lord spoke to you face to face on the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, ⁵ I stood between the Lord and you to report his word, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain. He said: ⁶ «I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ⁷ You shall have no other gods before me. ⁸ You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁹ You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me., ¹⁰ and showing mercy to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. ¹¹ You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. ¹² Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. ¹³ For six days you will work and you will do all your work. ¹⁴ But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God: you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your animals, nor the foreigner who is in your gates, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. ¹⁵ You will remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm: that is why the Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. ¹⁶ Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁷ You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. ¹⁸ You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not desire your neighbor’s house, nor his field, nor his male or female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.» ¹⁹ These are the words that the Lord spoke to your whole assembly on the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the darkness, with a loud voice, and he added nothing more. He wrote them on two tablets of stone, which he gave to me. ²⁰ When you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness, with the mountain ablaze, you approached me, all your tribal chiefs and your elders ²¹ and you say: «Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice from the midst of the fire; today we have seen God speak to man, and man remain alive. ²² And now why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God again, we will die. ²³ For who among all flesh has heard, as we have, the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, and has remained alive? ²⁴ »Go near and listen to everything the Lord our God says, and tell us everything the Lord our God tells you, so that we may listen and do it.” ²⁵ The Lord heard your words as you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, «I have heard the words that this people has spoken to you: everything they have said is good. ²⁶ Oh, if only they would always have that same heart to fear me and to keep my commandments, so that they and their children might be happy forever. ²⁷ Go, tell them: Return to your tents. ²⁸ But you, stay here with me and I will tell you all the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances that you shall teach them, so that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess. ²⁹ You shall be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left., ³⁰ But you must follow in everything the way the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land you will possess.»

Deuteronomy 6

¹ These are the commandments, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord your God has commanded to be taught to you, to be observed in the land that you are crossing over to possess, ² so that you, your son, and your son's son may fear the Lord your God, keeping all his statutes and commandments that I command you all the days of your life, and so that your days may be prolonged. ³ You will listen to them, Israel, and you will be careful to put them into practice, so that you may be happy and multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has told you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. ⁴ Listen, Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one God. ⁵ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. ⁶ And these commandments that I give you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. ⁸ You will attach them to your hand as a sign, and they will be like a forehead between your eyes. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. ¹⁰ When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you—large and prosperous cities that you did not build—, ¹¹ houses full of all kinds of goods that you have not filled, cisterns that you have not dug, vineyards and olive trees that you have not planted, when you eat and are satisfied, ¹² Beware of forgetting the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ¹³ You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him and you shall swear by his name. ¹⁴ You will not go after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples, who will be around you. ¹⁵ For the Lord your God, who is in your midst, is a jealous God; the anger of the Lord your God would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you from the face of the earth. ¹⁶ You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you did at Massah. ¹⁷ But you shall carefully observe the commandments of the Lord your God, his precepts and his laws which he has prescribed for you. ¹⁸ You shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that you may prosper and enter into the good land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to possess., ¹⁹ when he has driven out all your enemies before you, as the Lord has said. ²⁰ When your son asks you one day, «What are these commandments, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?» ²¹ You will tell your son: «We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²² The Lord performed great and awesome miracles and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, against Pharaoh, and against all his household. ²³ and he brought us out of there, to bring us into the land he had sworn to our fathers. ²⁴ The Lord has commanded us to put all these laws into practice and to fear the Lord our God, so that we may always be happy and that he may keep us alive, as he does today. ²⁵ And this will be our righteousness, if we are careful to observe all these precepts before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.»

Deuteronomy 7

¹ When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are about to possess and has driven out before you many nations—the Hittites, Gergaises, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you, ² and that the Lord your God will have delivered them into your hands and you will have defeated them, you shall devote them to curse, you shall make no alliance with them and you shall show them no mercy. ³ You shall not marry them, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. ⁴ because they would turn your sons away from following me, and they would serve other gods, the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you and he would destroy you quickly. ⁵ But this is how you shall deal with them: You shall overthrow their altars, you shall break their pillars, you shall cut down their Asherim and you shall burn their carved images. ⁶ For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be his special people out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. ⁷ The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you exceeded all other peoples in number, for you are the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But because the Lord loved you and because he wanted to keep the oath he had sworn to your fathers, the Lord brought you out with his mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. ⁹ Know therefore that it is the Lord your God, who is God, the faithful God who keeps the covenant and mercy up to a thousand generations, for those who love him and keep his commandments. ¹⁰ But he repays those who hate him to their faces, by destroying them; he does not delay with those who hate him and he repays them to their faces. ¹¹ Therefore, you will observe the commandments, the laws, and the ordinances that I am giving you today, by putting them into practice. ¹² If you listen to these ordinances, if you keep them and put them into practice, in return the Lord your God will keep his covenant with you and mercy that he swore to your fathers. ¹³ He will love you, bless you and multiply you, he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain, your new wine and your oil, the calves of your cows and the young of your sheep, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ You will be blessed more than all peoples; there will be no barren man or woman among you, nor any barren animal among your flocks. ¹⁵ The Lord will keep all sickness away from you; he will not send you any of those evil diseases from Egypt that you know, but he will afflict all those who hate you. ¹⁶ You will devour all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you; your eye will have no pity on them, and you will not serve their gods, for that would be a snare for you. ¹⁷ But if you say in your heart, "These nations are more numerous than I, how can I drive them out?"« ¹⁸ Do not fear them; remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt: ¹⁹ the great trials that your eyes have witnessed, miracles and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out: so the Lord your God will do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ The Lord your God will even send hornets against them, until those who have managed to escape and hide from you are destroyed. ²¹ You will not be afraid because of them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. ²² The Lord your God will drive out these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to destroy them quickly, lest the wild beasts multiply against you. ²³ The Lord your God will deliver them into your hands and will throw them into great dismay until they are destroyed. ²⁴ He will deliver their kings into your hands, and you will blot out their names from under heaven; no one will be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire, you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourself, lest it become a snare to you, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. ²⁶ You shall not bring an abominable thing into your house, lest you become like it, devoted by curse; you shall abhor it exceedingly, you shall abhor it exceedingly, for it is a thing devoted by curse.

Deuteronomy 8

¹ You will be careful to put into practice all the commandments that I prescribe to you today, so that you may live, multiply, enter and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. ² You will remember the whole way that the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to test you, to know the thoughts of your heart, whether you will keep his commandments or not. ³ He humbled you, made you hungry, and fed you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. ⁴ Your garment did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell, during these forty years: ⁵ so that you may know in your heart that the Lord your God is teaching you, as a man teaches his child, ⁶ and that you observe the commandments of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and fearing him. ⁷ For the Lord your God is going to bring you into a good land, a land of streams, springs, and deep waters, gushing out in the valleys and mountains, ⁸land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees and pomegranate trees, land of olive trees, oil and honey, ⁹ land where you will eat bread in abundance, where you will lack nothing, land whose stones are iron and from whose mountains you will extract bronze. ¹⁰ You will eat and be satisfied, and you will bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. ¹¹ Beware lest you forget the Lord your God, neglecting to observe his commandments, his ordinances, and his laws that I am commanding you today, ¹² lest, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and you build and live in beautiful houses, ¹³ that you will see your oxen and sheep multiply, your silver and gold increase, and all your possessions increase, ¹⁴ Your heart should not be lifted up, and you should not forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, ¹⁵ who led you through that great and terrible desert, where there are fiery serpents and scorpions, in arid and waterless places, and who brought forth water for you out of the flinty rock, ¹⁶ who gave you to eat in the desert manna unknown to your ancestors, to humble you and test you, in order to do you good in the end ¹⁷ and that you do not say in your heart, «It is my strength and the might of my hand that have produced these riches for me.» 18 Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to acquire them, in order to fulfill, as you see today, his covenant which he swore to your fathers. ¹⁹ If you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods to serve and worship them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish. ²⁰ Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so you will perish, because you have not listened to the voice of the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 9

¹ Listen, Israel. Today you are about to cross the Jordan to march on and conquer nations greater and more powerful than you, great cities whose walls reach to the heavens, ² from a people great and tall, the descendants of Enachim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said: Who can stand against the descendants of Enach? ³ Know today that the Lord your God will himself pass before you like a consuming fire; he will destroy them, he will subdue them before you; you will drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has told you. ⁴ Do not say in your heart, when the Lord your God drives them out from before you, «It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me to take possession of this land.» For it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out from before you. ⁵ No, it is not because of your righteousness and uprightness of heart that you come to take possession of their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, it is also to fulfill the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. ⁶ Know therefore that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land as an inheritance, for you are a stiff-necked people. ⁷ Remember, do not forget how you angered the Lord your God in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived in this place, you have rebelled against the Lord. ⁸ Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to anger, and the Lord was angry with you, wanting to destroy you. ⁹ When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord had made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights, neither eating bread nor drinking water, ¹⁰ and the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God, containing all the words that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, «Get up, go down quickly from here, for your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them, and have made themselves a molten image.» ¹³ And the Lord said to me, «I see that this people is a stiff-necked people. ¹⁴ »Leave it to me, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than this people.” ¹⁵ I turned and came down from the mountain and the mountain was all on fire and I had in my two hands the two tablets of the covenant. ¹⁶ I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made yourselves a molten calf, and you had quickly turned aside from the way that the Lord had prescribed for you. ¹⁷ Then, seizing the two tables, I threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes. ¹⁸ And I fell before the Lord, as at the first time, for forty days and forty nights, without eating bread and without drinking water, because of all the sins that you had committed in doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord, so as to provoke him to anger. ¹⁹ For I was afraid when I saw the anger and fury with which the Lord was filled against you, to the point of wanting to destroy you, but this time again the Lord answered me. ²⁰ The Lord was also very angry with Aaron, to the point of wanting to destroy him, and I also interceded for Aaron at that time. ²¹ I took the sin you had committed, the golden calf, and burned it in the fire. I ground it to a fine powder and threw the powder into the stream that flows down from the mountain. ²² In Taberah, in Massah and in Kibroth-Hattaavah, you have again provoked the Lord to anger. ²³ And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-Barne, saying, Go up and take possession of the land that I am giving you, you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, you did not believe in him and you did not obey his voice. ²⁴ You have been rebellious against the Lord since the day I knew you. ²⁵ So I prostrated myself before the Lord for forty days and forty nights, because the Lord spoke of destroying you. ²⁶ I prayed to the Lord and said, «Lord God, do not destroy your people, your inheritance, whom you redeemed by your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt by your mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look at the stubbornness of this people, at their wickedness and their sin., ²⁸ lest the land from which you brought us out should say: Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land he had promised them, and because he hated them, he brought them out to kill them in the wilderness. ²⁹ And yet they are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out of Egypt by your great power and outstretched arm.»

Deuteronomy 10

¹ At that time, the Lord said to me: Cut yourself two tablets of stone, like the first ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and also make an ark of wood. ² I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you will put them in the ark. ³ I made an ark of acacia wood and, having carved two stone tables like the first ones, I went up the mountain, the two tables in my hand. ⁴ He wrote on these tablets what had been written on the first ones, the ten words that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me. ⁵ I turned and, having come down from the mountain, I put the tablets in the ark that I had made, and they remained there, as the Lord had commanded me. ⁶ The Israelites set out from Beeroth Bene Jakan to Moserah. Aaron died there and was buried there; Eleazar his son became high priest in his place. ⁷ From there they set out for Gadgad and from Gadgad to Jetebatha, a land rich in waterways. ⁸ At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to minister to him and to bless in his name: which they have done to this day. ⁹ That is why Levi has no portion or inheritance with his brothers: the Lord is his inheritance, as the Lord your God told him. ¹⁰ I stood on the mountain, as before, forty days and forty nights, and the Lord answered me again this time: the Lord did not want to destroy you. ¹¹ The Lord said to me, «Get up, go and stand at the head of the people, so that they may enter and take possession of the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. ¹² And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, except to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul?, ¹³ by observing the commandments of the Lord and his laws that I am prescribing to you today, so that you may be happy? ¹⁴ See. To the Lord your God belong heaven and the highest heaven, the earth and all that is in it. ¹⁵ And it is only to your fathers that the Lord set his affection to love them, and it is their descendants after them, it is you whom he chose out of all the peoples, as you see today. ¹⁶ Circumcise your heart, then, and do not stiffen your neck. ¹⁷ For the Lord your God is the God of gods, the Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes, ¹⁸ who gives justice to the orphan and the widow, who loves the stranger and gives him food and clothing. ¹⁹ You will love foreigners, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. ²⁰ You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him, you shall cling to him, and you shall swear by his name. ²¹ He is your praise, he is your God, he is the one who has done for you these great and terrible things that your eyes have seen. ²² Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy in number, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Deuteronomy 11

¹You shall love the Lord your God and you shall keep what he requires of you, his statutes, his ordinances and his commandments, all the days of your life. ² Recognize today, for I am not addressing your children, who do not know and have not seen the teachings of the Lord your God, recognize his greatness, his strong hand and his outstretched arm, ³ his wonders and his works which he performed in the midst of Egypt, against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and against all his land, ⁴ what he did to the army of Egypt, to its horses and chariots, how he hurled the waters of the Red Sea upon them when they pursued you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day. ⁵ Acknowledge what he did for you in the desert, leading up to your arrival at this place, ⁶ what he did to Dathan and Abiron, sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, whom the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up, with their houses, their tents, and all the people in their entourage, in the midst of all Israel. ⁷ For your eyes have seen all the great works that the Lord has done. ⁸ Therefore, you must observe all the commandments I am giving you today, so that you may be strong, enter, and take possession of the land you are crossing over to possess. ⁹ and so that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰ For the land you are about to enter and possess is not like the land of Egypt, from which you came, which you sowed and watered with your foot, like a vegetable garden. ¹¹ But the country you will go through to possess it is a land of mountains and valleys, which drinks the rainwater from the sky, ¹² a land which the Lord your God cares for and on which the Lord continually has his eyes, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. ¹³ If you obey my commandments that I am giving you today, loving the Lord your God and serving him with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹⁴ I will give your country the rain in its season, the early rain and the late rain, and you will gather your grain, your new wine, and your oil., ¹⁵ I will also put grass in your fields for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied. ¹⁶ Be careful, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn away and serve other gods and bow down to them. ¹⁷ The Lord’s anger would be kindled against you, he would shut up the heavens and there would be no rain, the earth would not yield its produce, and you would quickly perish in the good land that the Lord is giving you. ¹⁸ Therefore, fix these words that I speak to you on your heart and on your soul. You shall bind them as a sign on your hands, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ¹⁹ You shall teach them to your children and speak of them to them, whether you stay in your house, or whether you go on a journey, or whether you lie down or whether you get up. ²⁰ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates: ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children, in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, may be as numerous as the days of heaven above the earth. ²² For if you carefully observe all these commandments that I command you to fulfill, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways and clinging to him, ²³ The Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will become masters of nations greater and more powerful than you. ²⁴ Every place where the soles of your feet tread will be yours; your border will extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the Euphrates river to the western sea. ²⁵ No one will be able to stand against you; the Lord your God will put fear and terror before you, as he has told you, throughout the land where you set foot. ²⁶ Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: ²⁷ the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am giving you today, ²⁸ the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God and if you turn away from the way that I prescribe to you this day, to go after other gods that you have not known. ²⁹ And when the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are going to possess, you shall pronounce the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰ Are not these mountains on the other side of the Jordan, beyond the road to the west, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, near the terebinth trees of Moreh? ³¹ For you are about to cross the Jordan to enter into possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you; you shall possess it and dwell in it. ³² Therefore, you must take care to observe all the laws and ordinances that I am placing before you today.»

Deuteronomy 12

¹ These are the laws and ordinances that you must carefully observe in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the time you live on this land. ² You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations you are about to drive out served their gods, on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree. ³ You will overthrow their altars, you will break their stelae, you will burn their Asherim, you will smash the carved images of their gods to pieces, and you will erase even their names from these places. ⁴ You shall not do so to the Lord your God. ⁵ But you shall seek it at the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name there and to make his dwelling place, and there you shall go. ⁶ There you shall present your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and what your hand has set aside, your vows and freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your oxen and sheep. ⁷ There you will eat holy meals before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your families, in all the wealth that your hand has acquired and with which the Lord your God has blessed you. ⁸ You will not, according to everything we are doing here now, each do as he pleases, ⁹ because you have not yet reached the rest and the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁰ But you will cross the Jordan and you will live in the land that the Lord your God will give you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all the enemies around you, and you will live in safety. ¹¹ Then in the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there, there you shall present all that I command you, your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and what your hand has set aside, and all the choice offerings for the fulfillment of your vows that you make to the Lord. ¹² And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is in your towns, for he has received neither portion nor inheritance with you. ¹³ Beware of offering your burnt offerings in every place you see, ¹⁴ but you shall offer your burnt offerings at the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, and there you shall do all that I command you. ¹⁵ You may, however, as long as you desire, slaughter cattle and eat meat within all your towns, according to the blessings that the Lord your God will grant you; the unclean and the clean may eat it, as one eats gazelle and deer. ¹⁶ But you shall not eat the blood: you shall pour it out on the earth like water. ¹⁷You may not eat within your gates the tithe of your grain, your new wine, and your oil, nor the firstborn of your oxen and sheep, nor any of the offerings you have dedicated, nor your freewill offerings, nor what your hand has set aside. ¹⁸ Before the Lord your God, in the place the Lord your God will choose, you shall eat them, you, your son and your daughter, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is in your towns; you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, enjoying all the good things that your hand has acquired. ¹⁹ Beware of neglecting the Levite, as long as you live in your land. ²⁰ When the Lord your God has enlarged your territory, as he promised you, and you say, "I want to eat meat," your soul experiencing the desire to eat meat, you may eat meat whenever you desire. ²¹ If the place that the Lord your God will choose to put his name there is far from you, you may slaughter some of your cattle and sheep that the Lord has given you, as I have commanded you, and you may eat of them within your towns, whenever you wish. ²² You may eat it as one eats gazelle or deer: both the clean and the unclean may eat it. ²³ But hold fast not to eat the blood, for the blood is the life and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. ²⁴ You shall not eat it, you shall pour it out on the earth like water. ²⁵ You shall not eat it, so that you and your children after you may be happy, by doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord. ²⁶ But you shall take the holy offerings that are required of you and those that you have vowed, and you shall go to the place that the Lord will choose., ²⁷ and you shall offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of the Lord your God; in the other sacrifices, the blood shall be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God, and you shall eat the flesh. ²⁸ Observe and listen to all these things that I command you, so that you and your children after you may be happy forever, by doing what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord. ²⁹ When the Lord your God has destroyed the nations where you are going, to drive them out from before you, and you have driven them out and settled in their land, ³⁰ Beware lest you be ensnared by imitating them, after they have been destroyed before you. Beware of seeking out their gods, saying, «How did these nations serve their gods? I want to do the same.» ³¹ You shall not act in this way toward the Lord your God, for they did for their gods all the abominations which the Lord hates, and they even gave their sons and daughters to the fire in honor of their gods.

Deuteronomy 13

¹ All the things that I command you, you shall observe by putting them into practice, without adding anything to them and without subtracting anything from them. ² If a prophet or someone who claims to have had a vision in a dream, who gives you a sign or a wonder, arises among you ³ and that the sign or wonder of which he spoke to you may be fulfilled, when he said, «Let us go after other gods, gods you do not know, and let us serve them.» ⁴ You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or of the one who says he has had a vision in a dream, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁵ You shall follow the Lord your God, you shall fear him, you shall keep his commandments, you shall obey his voice, you shall serve him and you shall cling to him. ⁶ And that prophet, or the one who claims to have had a vision in a dream, shall be put to death, for he has preached rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to turn you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. You shall purge the evil from among you. ⁷ If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is like your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, «Let us go and serve other gods,» gods which neither you nor your fathers have known, ⁸ from among the gods of the peoples who surround you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other, ⁹ You will not yield to him or listen to him; your eye will have no pity on him; you will not spare him or shield him. ¹⁰ But you will put him to death; your hand will be the first to be raised against him to put him to death, and then the hand of all the people., ¹¹ You shall stone him until he dies, because he sought to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ¹² All Israel will hear of it and be afraid, so that such a wicked deed will never again be committed in your midst. ¹³ If you hear word concerning one of the cities that the Lord your God has given you to dwell in, ¹⁴ «Evil people have come out from among you and have seduced the inhabitants of their city, saying, «Let us go and serve other gods,» gods you do not know.”. ¹⁵ You shall investigate, you shall examine, you shall question carefully. If this rumor is true and the fact is established, if this abomination has been committed in your midst, ¹⁶ Then you will not fail to put the inhabitants of this city to the sword, dedicating it to anathema with all that it contains, and you will also put its cattle to the sword. ¹⁷ You shall gather all its plunder in the middle of the square and you shall burn the city completely with fire, with all its plunder, to the Lord your God; it shall be forever a heap of ruins, it shall not be rebuilt. ¹⁸ Nothing that has been devoted by curse shall cling to your hand, so that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and show you grace and mercy, and multiply you, as he swore to your fathers, ¹⁹ if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, by observing all his commandments that I command you today, and by doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 14

¹ You are the children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves or cut the hair on your foreheads as a sign of mourning. ² For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be his special people out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. ³ You shall not eat anything abominable. ⁴ These are the animals you will eat: beef, sheep, and goats., ⁵ the deer, the gazelle and the fallow deer, the ibex, the antelope, the wild ox and the wild goat. ⁶ You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and a cloven foot and that chews the cud. ⁷ But you shall not eat those that only chew the cud, or that only have a divided hoof and a cloven foot, such as the camel, the hare, and the rabbit, which chew the cud but do not have a divided hoof: they shall be unclean for you, ⁸ This is also the case with the pig, which has a divided horn but does not chew the cud: it shall be unclean for you. You shall not eat their flesh nor touch their carcasses. ⁹ These are the animals you may eat from among all those that live in the waters: you may eat anything that has fins and scales, ¹⁰ But anything that does not have fins and scales, you shall not eat: it shall be unclean for you. ¹¹ You shall eat any pure bird. ¹² These are the ones you shall not eat: the eagle, the osprey, and the vulture, ¹³ the harrier, the vulture and the different species of kites, ¹⁴ all kinds of crows, ¹⁵ the ostrich, the owl, the seagull, and all kinds of hawks, ¹⁶ the owl, the ibis and the barn owl, ¹⁷ the pelican, the cormorant and the loon, ¹⁸ the stork and all kinds of herons, the hoopoe and the bat. ¹⁹ You shall regard as unclean every winged insect: it shall not be eaten. ²⁰ You shall eat any pure bird. ²¹ You shall not eat anything that dies of itself. You may give it to a foreigner residing in your towns to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. ²² You shall tithe all the produce of your sowing, of what your field yields each year. ²³ And you shall eat before the Lord your God, in the place which he will choose to make his name dwell there, the tithe of your grain, of your new wine and of your oil, and the firstborn of your oxen and of your sheep, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God forever. ²⁴ But if the journey is too long for you, and you cannot carry it there, because the place the Lord will choose to make his name dwell there will be too far from you, when the Lord your God has blessed you: ²⁵ You shall exchange your tithe for money and, having taken the money in your hand, you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose. ²⁶ There you will buy with the money whatever your soul desires, oxen, sheep, wine, fermented drinks, whatever your soul asks for, and you will eat there before the Lord your God, and you will rejoice, you and your household. ²⁷ You shall not neglect the Levite who is within your gates, for he has no portion or inheritance with you. ²⁸ At the end of every third year, you shall set aside all the tithe of your produce of that year and deposit it in your gates. ²⁹ Then the Levite, who has no portion or inheritance with you, and the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, who are in your towns, shall come and eat and be satisfied, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the works that you undertake with your hands.

Deuteronomy 15

¹ At the end of each seventh year, you will be granted remission. ² This is how the remission will be carried out: every creditor who has made a loan will grant remission for what he has lent to his neighbor: he will not press his neighbor and his brother, when the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed. ³ You may press the stranger, but as for what belongs to you in your brother's possession, your hand will grant forgiveness., ⁴ so that there will be no poor among you. For the Lord will surely bless you in the land that the Lord your God has given you as an inheritance to possess, ⁵ provided only that you obey the voice of the Lord your God, by carefully putting into practice all his commandments that I prescribe to you today. ⁶ For the Lord your God will bless you, as he has said, you will lend to many nations but you will not borrow; you will rule over many nations but they will not rule over you. ⁷ If there is a poor person among you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns, in the land the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother. ⁸ But you will open your hand to him and lend him what he needs according to what he lacks. ⁹ Beware lest this base thought arise in your heart: «The seventh year, the year of forgiveness, is approaching.» and lest your eye be evil toward your poor brother, lest you give him nothing and he cry out to the Lord against you, and you be charged with sin. ¹⁰ You must give to him, and in giving to him, let your heart not be regretful, for because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings. ¹¹ There will never be a lack of poor people in the midst of the land; therefore I give you this commandment: You shall open your hand to your brother, to the needy and the poor in your land. ¹² If one of your Hebrew brothers, male or female, sells himself to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall set him free from your house. ¹³ And when you send him back from your home, free, you won't send him back empty-handed., ¹⁴ but you shall not fail to give him gifts from your flock, from your threshing floor and from your winepress, you shall give him a share of the wealth with which the Lord your God has blessed you. ¹⁵ You will remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I am giving you this commandment today. ¹⁶ But if your servant says to you, «I do not want to leave you,» because he loves you and your home and is happy with you, ¹⁷ Then take an awl and pierce his ear against the door of your house, and he shall be your servant forever; you shall do the same for your female servant. ¹⁸ You will not find it difficult to send him away free from your home, for by serving you six years he has earned you twice the wages of a hired worker, and the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do. ¹⁹ You shall dedicate to the Lord your God every firstborn male that is born among your cattle, both herds and flocks; you shall not work with the firstborn of your ox, nor shear the firstborn of your sheep., ²⁰ but you and your family shall eat it every year before the Lord your God, in the place that he will choose. ²¹ But if he has a deformity, if he is lame or blind, or if he has any other bad deformity, you shall not offer him as a sacrifice to the Lord your God. ²² You may eat it within your gates; both the unclean and the clean may eat it, as one eats gazelle or deer. ²³ Only you shall not eat its blood: you shall pour it out on the earth like water.

Deuteronomy 16

¹ Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover in honor of the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. ² You shall sacrifice the Passover lamb to the Lord your God, the sheep and the oxen, in the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there. ³ With these victims, you shall not eat leavened bread, but for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you came out of the land of Egypt in haste, so that you may remember all your life the day when you came out of Egypt. ⁴ No leaven shall be seen in you throughout all your territory for seven days, and none of the sacrifices that you have slain on the evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning. ⁵ You may not sacrifice the Passover in each of your towns that the Lord your God will give you, ⁶ But it is in the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there that you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening, at sunset, at the time of your coming out of Egypt. ⁷ You shall cook the sacrifice and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose, and you shall return in the morning to go to your tents. ⁸ For six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day shall be the solemn assembly in honor of the Lord your God: you shall do no work. ⁹ You will count seven weeks, as soon as the sickle is placed on the wheat, you will begin to count seven weeks. ¹⁰ and you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks in honor of the Lord your God, with the freewill offerings of your hands, which you shall make according to the blessing of the Lord your God upon you. ¹¹ You shall rejoice before the Lord your God in the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there, you, your son and your daughter, your male and female servant, the Levite who is in your towns, as well as the foreigner, the orphan and the widow who are among you. ¹² You will remember that you were a slave in Egypt and you will take care to put these laws into practice. ¹³ You shall celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days, when you have gathered in the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress, ¹⁴ You shall rejoice at this feast, you, your son and your daughter, your male and female servants, as well as the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow who are in your towns. ¹⁵ You shall celebrate the festival for seven days in honor of the Lord your God, in the place that the Lord will choose, for the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvests and in all the work of your hands and you will be entirely at joy. ¹⁶ Three times a year, every male among you shall appear before the Lord your God in the place he chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles; he shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. ¹⁷ Each one will make his offerings according to what he can give, according to the blessings that the Lord your God has granted him. ¹⁸ You shall appoint judges and magistrates in all the cities that the Lord your God will give you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteousness. ¹⁹ You shall not pervert justice, you shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and corrupt the words of the righteous. ²⁰ You shall strictly follow justice, so that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ²¹ You shall not plant an altar, or any other sacred pole, beside the altar that you shall erect to the Lord your God. ²² You shall not erect these pillars, which are an abomination to the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 17

¹ You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God any ox or lamb that has any blemish or deformity, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. ² If there is found among you, in one of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, by transgressing his covenant, ³ who go to other gods to serve them and bow down before them, before the sun, or the moon, or all the host of heaven, which I have not commanded, ⁴ When the matter is reported to you, when you learn of it, you shall make a thorough investigation. If the report is true and the fact well established, if this abomination has been committed in Israel, ⁵ Then you shall bring to the gates of your city the man or woman guilty of this evil deed, the man or woman, and you shall stone them until they die. ⁶ On the testimony of two or three witnesses, the person who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness. ⁷ The hands of the witnesses will be the first to be raised against him to put him to death, and then the hands of all the people. So you will purge the evil from your midst. ⁸ If a matter concerning murder, dispute, or injury, which is the subject of litigation within your gates, seems too difficult for you, you shall arise and go up to the place that the Lord your God will choose. ⁹ You shall go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office at that time, you shall consult them and they shall tell you what is in accordance with the law. ¹⁰ You shall act according to the sentence they have made known to you in the place that the Lord will have chosen, and you shall be careful to act according to all that they teach. ¹¹ You shall act according to the law which they teach and according to the judgment which they pronounce, without turning aside to the right hand or to the left from what they have made known to you. ¹² Anyone who acts arrogantly and does not listen to the priest who stands there to minister to the Lord your God, or to the judge, shall be put to death. In this way you shall purge the evil from the midst of Israel. ¹³ And all the people, upon learning of it, will be afraid and will no longer give in to pride. ¹⁴ When you have entered the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, if you say, «I want to set a king over me, like all the nations around me,», ¹⁵ You shall set over you a king whom the Lord your God has chosen; from among your brothers you shall take a king to establish over you; you may not set over you a foreigner who is not your brother. ¹⁶ But he must not acquire a large number of horses and must not lead the people back to Egypt to acquire many horses, for the Lord has told you, «You will never return that way again.» ¹⁷ He should not have a large number of wives, lest his heart turn away, and he should not amass large quantities of silver and gold. ¹⁸ As soon as he sits on his royal throne, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, according to the copy that is with the Levitical priests. ¹⁹ He shall have it with him and read it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to observe all the words of this law and all these ordinances, putting them into practice., ²⁰ so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers and that he may not turn aside from the commandments to the right or to the left, so that he and his sons may prolong his days in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.

Deuteronomy 18

¹ The Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, will have no portion or inheritance with Israel; they will feed on the Lord’s sacrifices made by fire and on his inheritance. ² They will have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as he told them. ³ This is the right of the priests over the people, over those who sacrifice an ox or a sheep: the shoulder, the jawbone, and the stomach shall be given to the priest. ⁴ You shall give him the firstfruits of your wheat, your new wine, and your oil, and the firstfruits of the fleece of your sheep, ⁵ for it is he whom the Lord your God has chosen out of all the tribes to stand before the Lord and to minister in the name of the Lord, he and his sons forever. ⁶ If a Levite leaves one of your cities, or any place in the territory of Israel where he lives, to come, according to his heart's desire, to the place the Lord will choose ⁷ and that he should minister in the name of the Lord his God, like all his brothers the Levites who stand there before the Lord, ⁸ He will have an equal portion of food to theirs, regardless of the proceeds from the sale of his property. ⁹ When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the abominations of those nations. ¹⁰ Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination, sorcery, divination, or witchcraft;, ¹¹ who resorts to charms, who consults conjurers and sorcerers, and who questions the dead. ¹² For every man who does these things is an abomination to the Lord, and it is because of these abominations that the Lord your God will drive out these nations before you. ¹³ You will be blameless before the Lord your God. ¹⁴ For these nations that you are about to drive out listen to omens and diviners, but to you, the Lord your God does not allow it. ¹⁵ The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people, from your own brothers; you must listen to him. ¹⁶ This is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, «Let me not hear the voice of the Lord my God again, nor see this great fire, lest I die.» ¹⁷ The Lord said to me, «What they have said is good.”. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. ¹⁹ And if anyone does not listen to the words that he speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. ²⁰ But the prophet who boasts and speaks in my name a word that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.» ²¹ But if you say in your heart, «How will we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?» ²² When the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if what he has said does not come to pass and is not fulfilled, that is the word which the Lord has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously: you shall not be afraid of him.

Deuteronomy 19

¹ When the Lord your God has destroyed the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, when you have driven them out and settled in their cities and in their houses, ² You shall separate three cities in the midst of the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. ³ You shall maintain the roads that lead to it and you shall divide into three parts the territory of the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, so that every murderer may flee into those cities. ⁴ Here is the case in which the murderer who takes refuge there will have his life spared: if he killed his neighbor inadvertently, without having previously been his enemy. ⁵ So a man goes to cut wood in the forest with another man, his hand raises the axe to cut down a tree, the iron slips from the handle, hits his companion and kills him: this man will flee to one of these cities and his life will be spared. ⁶ Otherwise the avenger of blood, pursuing the murderer in the heat of his anger, would catch him, if the path was too long, and strike him a mortal blow, and yet this man would not have deserved death, since he had no prior hatred against the victim. ⁷ That is why I am giving you this order: Set aside three cities. ⁸ And if the Lord your God enlarges your borders, as he swore to your ancestors, and gives you all the land he promised to give your ancestors, ⁹ provided that you observe and put into practice all these commandments that I am giving you today, loving the Lord your God and always walking in his ways, you shall add three more cities to these three, ¹⁰ so that innocent blood may not be shed in the midst of the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and that there may be no bloodshed upon you. ¹¹ But if a man, harboring hatred for his neighbor, ambushes him, attacks him, and strikes him a fatal blow, and then flees to one of these cities, ¹² The elders of his city will send to seize him and deliver him into the hands of the avenger of blood, so that he may die. ¹³ Your eye will not spare him, and you will cleanse Israel of innocent blood, and you will prosper. ¹⁴ You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary stone, set up by the ancestors, in the inheritance that you will have in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. ¹⁵ A single witness shall not be admitted against a man to ascertain a crime or a sin, whatever the sin committed. It shall be established on the testimony of two witnesses or on the testimony of three witnesses. ¹⁶ When a witness for the prosecution testifies against a man to accuse him of a crime, ¹⁷ The two men in dispute will appear before the Lord, before the priests and judges then in office., ¹⁸ The judges will conduct a thorough investigation and, if the witness turns out to be a false witness, if he has given false testimony against his brother, ¹⁹ You will make him suffer what he intended to make his brother suffer. In this way you will remove the evil from your midst. ²⁰ The others, upon learning of it, will be afraid, and such a bad deed will no longer be committed in your midst. ²¹ Your eye will show no mercy: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Deuteronomy 20

¹ When you go out to fight against your enemies and you see horses and chariots, and an army greater than 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. ² When you prepare for battle, the priest will come forward and speak to the people. ³ He will say to them: «Listen, Israel. Today you are preparing for battle against your enemies. Do not lose heart; do not be afraid, do not be terrified, and do not be overwhelmed by them.”, ⁴ For the Lord your God goes with you to fight for you against your enemies and to save you.» ⁵ The officers will then speak to the people, saying: "Who has built a new house and has not yet dedicated it? Let him go and return home, lest he die in battle and another dedicate it. ⁶ Who has planted a vineyard and has not yet enjoyed its fruit? Let him go and return home, lest he die in battle and another enjoy it. ⁷ Who is betrothed to a woman and has not yet married her? Let him go and return home, lest he die in battle and another marry him.» ⁸ The officers will speak to the people again and say, "Who is afraid and whose heart is weak? Let him go and return home, so that the hearts of his brothers may not fail like his."« ⁹ When the officers have finished speaking to the people, the leaders of the troops will be placed at the head of the people. ¹⁰ When you approach a city to attack it, you will offer it peace. ¹¹ If she gives you a peaceful response and opens her gates to you, all the people who are there will be indebted to you and will serve you. ¹² If she doesn't peace with you and that she wants to do it to you the war, You will besiege it and, ¹³ When the Lord your God has delivered it into your hands, you shall put all the males to the edge of the sword. ¹⁴ But women, The children, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its plunder, you shall take for yourself, and you may eat the plunder of your enemies that the Lord your God has given you. ¹⁵ This is how you should treat all the cities that are far from you and that are not among the cities of these nations. ¹⁶ But as for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes in them. ¹⁷ For you shall devote these peoples to destruction: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded you, ¹⁸ so that they do not teach you to imitate all the abominations they commit against their gods, and that you do not sin against the Lord your God. ¹⁹ If you besiege a city for many days, fighting against it to capture it, you shall not destroy the trees by taking an axe to them, for you will eat their fruit and you shall not cut them down: is the tree of the field a man that you should besiege it? ²⁰ But the trees that you know are not food trees, you can destroy and cut down and build machines from them against the city that is at war with you, until it falls.

Deuteronomy 21

¹ If, on the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess, a man is found dead, lying in the field, and it is not known who killed him, ² Your elders and your judges shall go and measure the distances to the surrounding towns of the place where the man who was killed is. ³ And, as for the nearest town to the man killed, the elders of that town shall take a heifer that has not yet been used for work and that has not been yoked. ⁴ The elders of this town will lead the heifer down to a permanent stream, in a place that has received neither cultivation nor seed, and there they will break the heifer's neck in the stream. ⁵ The priests, sons of Levi, shall approach, for they are the ones whom the Lord your God has chosen to serve him and to bless in the name of the Lord, and it is on their word that every dispute and every injury shall be judged. ⁶ All the elders of this town, being the closest neighbors to the man killed, will wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the stream. ⁷Then they will speak, saying: «Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see it shed. ⁸ »Forgive your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, O Lord, and do not leave innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel.” And this blood will be atoned for them. ⁹ This is how you will remove innocent blood from among you, by doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord. ¹⁰ When you go out to fight against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take them captive, ¹¹ If you see among the captives a beautiful woman and, having fallen in love with her, you wish to marry her, ¹² You will bring her inside your house. Then she will shave her head and cut her nails, ¹³ She will take off the clothes of her captivity, she will stay in your house and mourn for a month for her father and her mother, after which you will go to her, you will be her husband and she will be your wife. ¹⁴ If she ceases to please you, you shall let her go wherever she wants and you shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, for you have taken her as your wife. ¹⁵ If a man has two wives, one loved and the other hated, and they bear him sons, both the loved one and the hated one, if the firstborn son is the son of the hated one, ¹⁶ He will not be able, on the day when he puts his sons in possession of his property, to make the son of the one he loves firstborn in preference to the son of the one he hates, the latter being the firstborn. ¹⁷ But he will acknowledge as his firstborn the son of the hated woman and give him a double portion of all her possessions, for this son is the firstfruits of his strength, and the birthright belongs to him. ¹⁸ If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not listen to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and even when they discipline him, he does not listen to them, ¹⁹ His father and mother will seize him and bring him to the elders of the city and to the gate of the place where he lives. ²⁰ They will tell the elders of the city, «This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he does not listen to our voice, but indulges in debauchery and drunkenness.» ²¹ And all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You shall thus remove the evil from among you, and all Israel, when they hear of it, shall fear. ²² When a man, having committed a capital crime, has been put to death and you have hanged him on a tree, ²³ His body shall not spend the night on the wood, but you shall not fail to bury him the same day, for a hanged man is the object of God's curse and you shall not defile your land, which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

Deuteronomy 22

¹ If you see your brother’s ox or sheep straying in the field, you shall not turn away from them, but you shall bring them back to your brother. ² If your brother does not live near you and you do not know him, you shall take the animal into your house and it shall stay with you until your brother looks for it and then you shall give it back to him. ³ You shall do the same for his donkey and you shall do the same for his cloak and you shall do the same for any lost item that your brother may have lost and that you may find; you must not turn away from it. ⁴ If you see your brother’s donkey or ox fall down on the road, you shall not turn away from it, you shall not fail to help him get them up. ⁵ A woman shall not wear men's clothing, nor shall a man put on women's clothing, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. ⁶ If you come across a bird's nest on your path, whether in a tree or on the ground, with chicks or eggs and the mother lying on the chicks or eggs, you shall not take the mother with the chicks, ⁷ You will not fail to let the mother go and you will only take the little ones for yourself, so that you may be happy and prolong your days. ⁸ When you build a new house, you shall make a railing around your roof, so that you do not put blood on your house, in case someone should fall from it. ⁹ You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest both the seed that you have sown and the fruit of the vine be declared holy. ¹⁰ You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey harnessed together. ¹¹ You shall not wear a garment of a fabric mixed with wool and linen put together. ¹² You shall make tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself. ¹³ If a man, after taking a wife and going in to her, comes to feel aversion for her, ¹⁴ and accuses him of dishonorable things and damages his reputation, saying, "I took this woman and when I came to her, I did not find her a virgin,", ¹⁵ The young woman’s father and mother shall take the signs of her virginity and produce them before the elders of the city at the gate. ¹⁶ The girl's father will say to the elders: "I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, and having come to dislike her, ¹⁷ He accuses her of shameful things, saying, "I did not find your daughter a virgin." But here are the signs of my daughter's virginity." And they shall spread her garment before the elders of the city. ¹⁸ Then the elders of the city will seize this man and punish him, ¹⁹ Furthermore, they will impose a fine of one hundred shekels of silver on him, which they will give to the young woman's father, for having defamed the reputation of a virgin of Israel. She will remain his wife, and he will not be able to divorce her as long as he lives. ²⁰ But if this is true and the young woman is not found to be a virgin, ²¹ The young woman shall be brought out to the entrance of her father's house, and she shall be stoned to death by the men of her town, because she has committed an outrage in Israel by prostituting herself in her father's house. You shall purge the evil from among you. ²² If a man is found lying with a married woman, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman and the woman as well. You shall thus remove the evil from the midst of Israel. ²³ If a young virgin girl is engaged to someone and a man meets her in the city and sleeps with her, ²⁴ You shall bring them both to the city gate and stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. ²⁵ But if this man meets the betrothed girl in the fields and rapes her and sleeps with her, the man who slept with her will die alone. ²⁶ You shall do nothing to the young girl, there is no crime in her worthy of death, for it is like when a man throws himself upon his neighbor and kills him, the case is the same. ²⁷ The man met her in the fields, the young betrothed girl cried out, but there was no one to help her. ²⁸ If a man meets a young, unmarried virgin girl, seizes her and sleeps with her, and they are caught in the act, ²⁹ The man who has slept with her shall give the girl's father fifty shekels of silver and she shall be his wife, because he has dishonored her, he shall not be able to divorce her as long as he lives.

Deuteronomy 23

¹ No one shall take his father's wife or lift the covers of his father's bed. ² Anyone whose testicles have been crushed or whose urethra has been cut off will not enter the assembly of the Lord. ³ The fruit of an illicit union shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, not even its tenth generation shall enter the assembly of the Lord. ⁴ The Ammonite and the Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, not even the tenth generation shall enter the assembly of the Lord, they shall never enter it., ⁵ because they did not meet you with bread and water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because the king of Moab hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Mesopotamia to curse you. ⁶ But the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, and the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. ⁷ You will not have to worry about their prosperity or their well-being as long as you live, forever. ⁸ You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother; you shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land: ⁹ The sons born to them will be able, in the third generation, to enter the assembly of the Lord. ¹⁰ When you march in encampments against your enemies, guard yourself against all evil. ¹¹ If there is among you a man who is not cerebral due to an involuntary discharge of semen during sleep, he shall go outside the camp and not return to the middle of the camp, ¹² In the evening, he will bathe in the water and, after sunset, he will be able to return to the middle of the camp. ¹³ You will have a place outside the camp and that's where you will go. ¹⁴ You will have in your luggage a shovel with which you will dig a hole, when you go to sit apart and, when leaving, you will cover your excrement. ¹⁵ For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to protect you and to deliver your enemies before you; therefore your camp must be holy, so that the Lord may not see anything indecent in you and turn away from you. ¹⁶ You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has run away from his master and taken refuge with you. ¹⁷ He will dwell with you in the midst of your country, in the place he chooses, in one of your cities, where he will be well settled: you shall not oppress him. ¹⁸ There shall be no prostitute among the daughters of Israel and there shall be no prostitute among the sons of Israel. ¹⁹ You shall not bring into the house of the Lord your God the wages of a prostitute or the wages of a dog to pay any vow, for both are an abomination to the Lord your God. ²⁰ You shall not charge your brother any interest, whether on money, food, or anything else that is lent at interest. ²¹ You may charge interest to a foreigner, but you shall not charge interest to your brother, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are going into to possess. ²² When you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not delay in fulfilling it, otherwise the Lord your God will certainly demand an accounting from you and you will be charged with sin. ²³ If you refrain from making vows, there will be no sin in you. ²⁴ But the word that comes out of your lips you shall keep and fulfill, according to the vow that you freely made to the Lord your God and that you uttered with your mouth. ²⁵ When you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat as much grape as you like and be satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket. ²⁶ If you enter your neighbor’s grain field, you may pluck ears of grain with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle into your neighbor’s grain.

Deuteronomy 24

¹ When a man takes a wife and marries her, if she does not find favor in his eyes because he has found something repulsive in her, he shall write her a certificate of divorce and, after putting it in her hand, send her out of his house. ² Once she leaves his house, she will go away and be able to become another man's wife. ³ But if this last husband takes a dislike to her, writes her a letter of divorce and, having given it to her, sends her away from his house, or if this last husband who took her as his wife happens to die, ⁴ then the first husband, who divorced her, may not take her back as his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not cause the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to sin. ⁵ When a man is newly married, he shall not go to the army and shall not be charged with any public duty, he shall be free for his household for a year and he shall rejoice in the wife whom he has taken. ⁶ We will not take the two millstones, nor the upper millstone, as a pledge: that would be taking life itself as a pledge. ⁷ If anyone is found to have kidnapped one of his brothers, from among the children of Israel, and made him his slave, or sold him, that kidnapper shall be put to death. You shall purge the evil from among you. ⁸ Beware of the plague of leprosy, observing carefully and putting into practice all that the Levitical priests teach you; all that I have commanded them, you shall carefully put into practice. ⁹ Remember what the Lord your God has done to Married during the journey, upon your departure from Egypt. ¹⁰ If you lend your neighbor anything, you shall not enter his house to take back his pledge., ¹¹ You will wait outside and the person to whom you lend will bring the pledge to you outside. ¹² If this man is poor, you will not sleep with his pledge., ¹³ You will not fail to return the pledge to him at sunset, so that he may sleep in his garment and bless you, and this will be righteousness for you before the Lord your God. ¹⁴ You shall not oppress the poor and needy worker, whether one of your brothers or one of the foreigners residing in your land, within your gates. ¹⁵ Each day you shall give him his wages, without the sun going down on that debt, for he is poor and his soul waits for it. Otherwise he will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. ¹⁶ Fathers will not be put to death for their children, nor will children be put to death for their fathers; each will be put to death for their own sin. ¹⁷ You shall not violate the rights of the foreigner or the orphan, nor take the widow's garment as a pledge. ¹⁸ You will remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your God delivered you: that is why I command you to act in this way. ¹⁹ When you reap your harvest in the field, if you have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work from your hands. ²⁰ When you shake your olive trees, you will not search the branches afterwards: the rest will be for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. ²¹ When you harvest your vineyard, you shall not pick the remaining bunches of grapes afterward; they shall be for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. ²² You will remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt: that is why I command you to act in this way.

Deuteronomy 25

¹ When a dispute arises between men, and they have come before the court, and have been judged, and the innocent have been acquitted and the guilty condemned, ² If the guilty party deserved to be beaten, the judge will have him laid on the ground and beaten in his presence with a number of blows proportionate to his offense. ³ He will not have him given more than forty blows, lest, if he were to be struck with many more blows in addition to these, your brother would be disgraced in your eyes. ⁴ You shall not muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain. ⁵ When brothers live together and one of them dies without leaving a son, the wife of the deceased shall not marry outside, to a stranger, but her brother-in-law shall go to her, take her as his wife and fulfill to her the duty of a brother-in-law. ⁶ The firstborn son she bears will succeed the deceased brother and take his name, so that his name will not be blotted out of Israel. ⁷ If this man does not wish to marry his sister-in-law, his sister-in-law will go up to the gate to the elders and say, "My brother-in-law refuses to revive his brother's name in Israel; he does not want to fulfill his duty as a brother-in-law by marrying me."« ⁸ Then the elders of the town will summon him and speak to him. If he persists and says, "I do not wish to take her,"« ⁹His sister-in-law will approach him in the presence of the elders, take his sandal off his foot, and spit in his face, saying, "This is what will be done to the man who does not rebuild his brother's house."« ¹⁰ And his house will be called in Israel the house of the barefoot. ¹¹ When men fight together, a man and his brother, if the wife of one comes forward to rescue her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and reaches out her hand and seizes the latter by the genitals, ¹² You will cut off his hand; your eye will show no mercy. ¹³ You won't have two kinds of weights in your bag, one big and one small. ¹⁴ You shall not have in your house two kinds of ephah, a great one and a small one. ¹⁵ You will have a precise and just weight, you will have a precise and just ephah, so that your days may be prolonged in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁶ For he who does these things, who commits iniquity, is an abomination to the Lord your God. ¹⁷ Remember what Amalek did to you on the journey, when you left Egypt, ¹⁸ how he met you on the road and fell upon you from behind, upon all those who were exhausted behind you, and you were tired and without strength, and he had no fear of God. ¹⁹ When the Lord your God has given you rest, having delivered you from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven: do not forget.

Deuteronomy 26

¹ When you have entered the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and have taken possession of it and settled there, ² You shall take some of the firstfruits of all the produce of the ground which you have extracted from your land, which the Lord your God gives you, and having put it in a basket, you shall go to the place which the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there. ³ You shall present yourself to the priest who is in office at the time and say to him, «I declare today to the Lord your God that I have entered the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.» ⁴ The priest will receive the basket from your hand and place it before the altar of the Lord your God. ⁵ And speaking again, you shall say before the Lord your God: «My father was an Aramean, ready to perish, who went down to Egypt with a few people and lived there as a stranger, and there he became a great, powerful and numerous nation. ⁶ The Egyptians mistreated us, oppressed us, and imposed harsh servitude upon us. ⁷ Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our sufferings, our misery, and our oppression. ⁸ And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders. ⁹ He led us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰ And now I bring the firstfruits of the produce of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.» You shall set them before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. ¹¹ Then you shall rejoice, with the Levite and with the foreigner who is among you, in all the good things that the Lord your God has given to you and to your household. ¹² When you have finished collecting all the tithes of your produce in the third year, the year of tithing, and have given them to the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be satisfied, ¹³ you shall say before the Lord your God: «I removed from my house the consecrated things and gave them to the Levite, to the foreigner, to the orphan and to the widow, according to all your precepts that you gave me; I have not transgressed nor forgotten any of your precepts. ¹⁴ I did not eat any of these things during my mourning, I did not carry any of them out of my house in a state of uncleanness, and I did not give any of them on the occasion of a dead person; I obeyed the voice of the Lord my God, I acted according to all that you commanded me. ¹⁵ Look down from your holy dwelling place in heaven and bless your people Israel and the land you have given us, as you swore to our ancestors, a land flowing with milk and honey.» ¹⁶ Today the Lord your God commands you to put these laws and ordinances into practice; you shall observe them and put them into practice with all your heart and with all your soul. ¹⁷ You have declared to the Lord today that he will be your God, and you have committed yourself to walk in his ways, to observe his laws, his commandments and his ordinances, and to obey his voice. ¹⁸ And the Lord has declared to you today that you will be his special people, as he has told you, if you observe all his commandments, ¹⁹ He, for his part, promises to give you superiority over all the nations he has made, in glory, renown, and splendor, so that you may be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he has said.»

Deuteronomy 27

¹ Moses, with the elders of Israel, gave this order to the people: «Observe all the commandments that I am giving you today. ² When you have crossed the Jordan into the land the Lord your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones and plaster them with lime, ³ and you shall write on it all the words of this law, after you have gone over, so that you may enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has told you. ⁴ When you have crossed the Jordan, you shall set up on Mount Aebal these stones that I command you today, and you shall plaster them with lime. ⁵ And you shall build there an altar to the Lord, an altar of stones on which you shall not use an iron tool. ⁶ You shall build the altar of the Lord your God of uncut stones. And you shall offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God, ⁷ You will offer peaceful sacrifices and eat there and rejoice before the Lord your God. ⁸You shall write on these stones all the words of this law in clear characters.» ⁹ Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to all Israel, saying: «Be silent and listen, O Israel. Today you have become the people of the Lord your God. ¹⁰ »You will therefore obey the voice of the Lord your God and put into practice his commandments and his statutes, which I command you today.” ¹¹ On the same day, Moses gave this order to the people: ¹² «"When you have crossed the Jordan, these men will stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. ¹³ And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. ¹⁴ And the Levites shall speak and say in a loud voice to all the men of Israel: ¹⁵ Cursed be the man who makes a carved image or a cast image, an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen. ¹⁶ Cursed be he who despises his father and mother. And all the people shall say: Amen. ¹⁷ Cursed be he who moves his neighbor's boundary stone. And all the people will say: Amen. ¹⁸ Cursed be he who leads a blind man astray on the road. And all the people shall say: Amen. ¹⁹ Cursed be he who violates the rights of the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. And all the people shall say: Amen. ²⁰ Cursed be he who lies with his father's wife, for he uncovers his father's bed. And all the people shall say, Amen. ²¹ Cursed be he who lies with any kind of animal. And all the people shall say: Amen. ²² Cursed be he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say: Amen. ²³ Cursed be he who sleeps with his mother-in-law. And all the people shall say: Amen. ²⁴ Cursed be he who strikes his neighbor in secret. And all the people shall say: Amen. ²⁵ Cursed be he who receives a gift to strike a life, to shed innocent blood. And all the people shall say: Amen. ²⁶Cursed be he who does not uphold the words of this law by putting them into practice. And all the people shall say: Amen.

Deuteronomy 28

¹ If you strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, observing and putting into practice all his commandments that I prescribe to you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. ² Here are all the blessings that will come upon you and reach you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God: ³ You will be blessed in the city and you will be blessed in the fields. ⁴ Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the fruit of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. ⁵ Blessed shall be your basket and your bread bin. ⁶ You will be blessed when you enter and you will be blessed when you leave. ⁷ The Lord will cause the enemies who rise up against you to be routed before you; they will come against you from one way, but they will flee before you from seven ways. ⁸ The Lord will command the blessing to be with you in your barns and in all the work of your hands. He will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ⁹ The Lord will preserve you as a holy people for himself, as he swore to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. ¹⁰ and all peoples will see that the name of the Lord is named upon you, and they will fear you. ¹¹ The Lord will make you abundantly prosperous, multiplying the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your livestock, and the fruit of your ground, in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. ¹² The Lord will open for you his good treasure, heaven, to send rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work from your own hands. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. ¹³ The Lord will put you at the head and not at the tail; you will always be at the top and you will never be at the bottom, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, if you carefully observe them and put them into practice. ¹⁴ and if you do not turn aside, either to the right or to the left, from all the commandments that I am giving you today, to go after other gods and serve them. ¹⁵ But if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe and put into practice all his commandments and all his statutes which I command you today, here are all the curses which will come upon you and overtake you: ¹⁶ You will be cursed in the city and you will be cursed in the fields. ¹⁷ Your basket and your bread bin will be cursed. ¹⁸ Cursed will be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the offspring of your herd and your flock. ¹⁹ You will be cursed when you enter and you will be cursed when you leave. ²⁰ The Lord will send against you curses, trouble, and threats in everything you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and until you soon perish, because of the perversity of your actions, by which you have forsaken me. ²¹ The Lord will afflict you with pestilence until it has eliminated you from the face of the earth, which you are about to enter to possess. ²² The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat, drought, smut, and mildew, plagues that will pursue you until you perish. ²³ Your sky above your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath your feet will be iron. ²⁴ The Lord will send dust and sand as rain on your land, which will fall from the sky upon you until you are destroyed. ²⁵ The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you will go out against them by one way and by seven ways you will flee before them, and you will be an object of terror among all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶ Your corpse will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. ²⁷ The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with hemorrhoids, with rashes, and with scabies, from which you will not be able to recover. ²⁸ The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and delirium tremens., ²⁹ You will grope at midday, like a blind man in the dark; you will not succeed in your ways; you will be oppressed and robbed every day, with no one to help you. ³⁰ You will become engaged to a woman and another will possess her, you will build a house and you will not live in it, you will plant a vineyard and you will not enjoy its fruits. ³¹ Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes and you will not eat it, your donkey will be taken from before you and it will not be returned to you, your sheep will be given to your enemies and no one will come to your aid. ³² Your sons and daughters will be given to another people; your eyes will see it and long for them all day long, and your hand will be powerless. ³³ The fruit of your soil and all the produce of your labor, a people you have not known will eat, and you will be oppressed and crushed all day long. ³⁴ You will go mad at the sight of the things you will see with your own eyes. ³⁵ The Lord will strike you on your knees and thighs with terrible boils from which you cannot be healed; he will cover you from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. ³⁶ The Lord will lead you and the king you have set over you to a nation neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will serve other gods, gods of wood and stone. ³⁷ and you will become a subject of astonishment, fable, and ridicule among all the peoples to whom the Lord will lead you. ³⁸ You will sow much seed on your field but gather little, because the locusts will devour it. ³⁹ You will plant vines and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or harvest anything, because worms will eat them. ⁴⁰ You will have olive trees throughout your territory, but you will not anoint yourself with oil, because your olives will fall. ⁴¹ You will father sons and daughters, but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. ⁴² Insects will take over all your trees and the fruits of your soil. ⁴³ The stranger living among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you yourself sink ever lower. ⁴⁴ He will lend to you and you will not lend to him; he will be in the lead and you will be at the tail. ⁴⁵ All these curses will come upon you, they will pursue you and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe his laws and commandments that he has prescribed for you. ⁴⁶ They will be a sign and a wonder to you and to your descendants forever. ⁴⁷ Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart, in return for the abundance of all things, ⁴⁸ you will serve, in hunger, In thirst, in nakedness, in want of everything, your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, he will put an iron yoke on your neck, until he has destroyed you. ⁴⁹ The Lord will bring against you from afar, from the ends of the earth, a nation as swift as the flight of an eagle, a nation whose language you will not understand., ⁵⁰ a fierce-looking nation, which will have neither regard for the old man nor pity for the child. ⁵¹ It will devour the fruit of your flocks and the fruit of your land, until you are destroyed; it will leave you neither grain, nor new wine, nor oil, nor the offspring of your herds and flocks, until it has destroyed you. ⁵² It will besiege you in all your gates, until your high and strong walls, in which you have put your trust, fall throughout your land; it will besiege you in all your gates, throughout all the land that the Lord your God has given you. ⁵³ You will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, so great will be the anguish and distress to which your enemy will reduce you. ⁵⁴ The most refined and luxury-loving man among you will look with malice upon his brother, the woman he cherishes, and the rest of his children whom he has spared., ⁵⁵ He will not give any of them the flesh of his children to eat, because he will have nothing left, so great will be the anguish and distress to which your enemy will reduce you in all your gates. ⁵⁶ The most delicate and luxury-loving woman among you, too tender and delicate to even attempt to set foot on the ground, will look malevolently upon the husband who lay upon her breast, as well as upon her son and daughter., ⁵⁷ and even her newborn baby and the placenta from which she will just be delivered, for, lacking everything, she will secretly feed on it, so great will be the anguish and distress to which your enemy will reduce you in your gates. ⁵⁸ If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law, written in this book, revering this glorious and awesome name: the Lord your God, ⁵⁹ The Lord will make your wounds and the wounds of your descendants extraordinary, great and continuous wounds, grievous and persistent illnesses. ⁶⁰ He will bring back upon you all the diseases of Egypt, before which you trembled, and they will cling to you. ⁶¹ Moreover, the Lord will bring on you all kinds of diseases and plagues, which are not written in the book of this law, until you are destroyed. ⁶² You will be left only a few in number, after having been as numerous as the stars of heaven, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God. ⁶³ Just as the Lord delighted in doing good to you and multiplying you, so the Lord will delight in destroying you and uprooting you from the land you are about to enter and possess. ⁶⁴ The Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. ⁶⁵ Among those very nations, you will not be at rest, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your feet; there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, dull eyes, and a faint soul. ⁶⁶ Your life will be as if suspended before you, you will tremble night and day and you will not believe in your life. ⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, «If only I were in the evening!» and in the evening you will say, «If only I were in the morning!» because of the fear that will agitate your heart and the things that your eyes will see. ⁶⁸ And the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, by the way I told you, «You will never see it again.» And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, and no one will buy you.» ⁶⁹ These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant that he had made with them in Horeb.

Deuteronomy 29

¹ Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, «You have seen all that the Lord did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to all his land, ² the great trials that your eyes have seen, these signs and great wonders. ³ But the Lord has not given you, to this day, a heart that understands, eyes that see, ears that hear. ⁴ I led you for forty years in the desert; your clothes did not wear out on you, and your sandals did not wear out on your feet., ⁵ You have not eaten bread and you have not drunk wine or fermented drink, so that you may know that I am the Lord your God. ⁶ So you arrived at this place. Sehon, king of Heshbon, and Og, king of Bashan, came out to meet us, to fight us, and we defeated them. ⁷ We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and half of the tribe of Manassites. ⁸ Therefore, observe the words of this covenant and put them into practice, so that you may be successful in everything you do. ⁹ Today you all stand before the Lord your God, your leaders, your tribes, your elders, your officers, all the men of Israel, ¹⁰ your children, your wives, and the stranger who is in the midst of your camp, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water: ¹¹ You are standing here to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God and into his oath, the covenant that the Lord your God is making with you this day, ¹² to establish you today as his people and to be his God, as he told you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ¹³ It is not with you alone that I make this alliance and take this oath, ¹⁴ but it is with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God and with whoever is not here with us on this day. ¹⁵ You know, in fact, how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we passed through the midst of the nations among whom you passed: ¹⁶ You have seen their abominations and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which are in their homes. ¹⁷ Therefore, let there be no man or woman or family or tribe among you whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these nations; let there be no root among you that produces poison and wormwood. ¹⁸ Let no one, upon hearing the words of this oath, flatter himself in his heart, saying, «I will have peace, even though I walk in the hardness of my heart» so that the one who is satisfied draws out the one who is thirsty. ¹⁹ The Lord will not forgive this man, but then the Lord’s anger and jealousy will burn against this man, all the curses written in this book will rest upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. ²⁰ The Lord will separate him, to deliver him to calamity, from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law. ²¹ The next generation, your children who will be born after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, when they see the plagues and diseases of this land, with which the Lord has struck it, ²² of sulfur and salt, of the burning of all this land, which will not be sown, will not produce fruit, on which no grass will grow, as happened to the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Adam, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and fury, ²³ All these nations will say, «Why has the Lord treated this land in this way? What is the source of this fierce anger?» ²⁴ And it will be said: «It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, ²⁵ They went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know and whom the Lord had not given them as their inheritance. ²⁶ The Lord's anger was kindled against this land, and he brought upon it all the curses written in this book. ²⁷ The Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, fury, and great indignation, and cast them into another land, as we see today.» ²⁸ The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may put into practice all the words of this law.

Deuteronomy 30

¹ When all these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse that I have set before you, and you have again taken them to heart, in the midst of all the nations among which the Lord your God has driven you, ² If you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, according to all that I command you today, ³ Then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you; he will gather you again from among all the peoples among whom the Lord your God has scattered you. ⁴ Even if your exiles are at the ends of the earth, the Lord your God will gather you from there and will come down to take you. ⁵ The Lord your God will bring you back to the land your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it; he will make you prosper and increase your numbers beyond those of your ancestors. ⁶ The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. ⁷ The Lord your God will bring all these curses down on your enemies, on those who have hated and persecuted you. ⁸ And you, again, will listen to the voice of the Lord and put into practice all these commandments that I am giving you today, ⁹ and the Lord your God will bless you abundantly in all the work from your hands, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your flocks, and in the fruit of your land, for the Lord will again rejoice over you and do you good, as he rejoiced over your ancestors, ¹⁰ if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, observing his commandments and precepts written in this book of the law, if you return to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. ¹¹ This commandment that I am giving you today is not above you nor beyond your reach. ¹² It is not in heaven, so that you should say, «Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us and declare it to us, so that we may do it?» ¹³ It is not beyond the sea, so that you should say, «Who will cross the sea for us and bring it to us and tell us, so that we may do it?» ¹⁴ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may fulfill it. ¹⁵ See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, ¹⁶ commanding you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways and to observe his commandments, his statutes and his ordinances, so that you may live and multiply and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. ¹⁷ But if your heart turns away, if you do not listen, and if you allow yourself to be drawn to bow down before other gods and serve them, ¹⁸ I declare to you this day that you will certainly perish; you will not prolong your days in the land which you are about to enter and possess after crossing the Jordan. ¹⁹ I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Therefore choose life, so that you and your descendants may live., ²⁰ by loving the Lord your God, by obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for this is your life and long life in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.»

Deuteronomy 31

¹ Moses addressed these words again to all Israel. ² He told them, «Today I am one hundred and twenty years old, I can no longer go out and come in, and the Lord has said to me, ‘You shall not cross this Jordan.’”. ³ It is the Lord your God who will pass before you; he will destroy those nations before you, and you will possess them. Joshua will be the one who passes before you, as the Lord has said. ⁴ The Lord will treat them as he treated Sihon and Og, king of the Amorites, whom he destroyed along with their land. ⁵ The Lord will deliver them to you, and you shall treat them according to all the orders I have given you. ⁶ Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.» ⁷ Moses called Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel: «Be strong and courageous, for you are the one who will lead this people into the land that the Lord swore to their fathers to give them, and you are the one who will cause them to possess it. ⁸ For the Lord will go before you and be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid or fear.» ⁹ Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. ¹⁰ And he gave them this commandment: «After every seventh year, at the time of the year of atonement, at the Feast of Tabernacles, ¹¹ When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel, so that they may understand it. ¹² Assemble the people, the men, women, the children and the stranger who is in your gates, so that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and be careful to do all the words of this law. ¹³ And their children, who will not know it, will hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God, all the time you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to go and possess.» ¹⁴ And the Lord said to Moses, «The time is near for you to die. Call Joshua and present yourselves at the tent of meeting, so that I may give him my instructions.» Moses and Joshua they went to present themselves in the meeting tent. ¹⁵ And the Lord appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood at the entrance of the tent. ¹⁶ And the Lord said to Moses, «Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers, and this people will rise up and prostitute themselves to foreign gods of the land into which they are going. They will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them.”. ¹⁷ And my anger will burn against him on that day, I will abandon them and hide my face from them, they will be devoured, a multitude of evils and afflictions will fall upon him, and he will say on that day: Is it not because my God is not in my midst that these evils have befallen me? ¹⁸ And I will hide my face on that day because of all the evil he will have done by turning to other gods. ¹⁹ Write down this song. Teach it to the children of Israel, put it in their mouths, so that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. ²⁰ For when I have brought this people into the land that I swore to their fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey, which they have eaten and been satisfied and fattened: then they will turn to other gods and they will serve them, they will despise me and they will break my covenant. ²¹ And when a multitude of evils and afflictions have befallen him, this song will testify against him, for it will not be forgotten, nor will it depart from the mouths of his descendants. For I know his intentions even now, before I have brought him into the land I promised him on oath.» ²² On that day Moses wrote this song and taught it to the children of Israel. ²³ The Lord gave his orders to Joshua, son of Nun, and said to him, «Be strong and courageous, for you are the one who will bring the children of Israel into the land I swore to them, and I will be with you.» ²⁴ When Moses had completely finished writing the words of this law in a book, ²⁵ He gave this order to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: ²⁶ «Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and it will be there as a witness against you.”. ²⁷ For I know your rebellious spirit and your stiff neck. Today, while I am still alive among you, you have rebelled against the Lord; how much more will you be after my death!  ²⁸ Assemble around me all the elders of your tribes and your officials, and I will speak these words in their hearing, and I will call heaven and earth to witness against them. ²⁹ For I know that after my death you will certainly become corrupt and turn away from the way I have commanded you, and that in later times disaster will overtake you because you have done what is evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger by the work of your hands.» ³⁰ Moses recited the words of this song to the end in the hearing of the entire assembly of Israel:

Deuteronomy 32

¹ Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. ² May my teaching spread like rain, may my words fall like dew, like showers on green plants, like drops of water on grass. ³ For I want to proclaim the name of the Lord: Give glory to our God. ⁴ The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are just; he is a faithful God and without iniquity, he is just and upright. ⁵ They sinned against him, not his children, but their defilement, a false and perverse generation. ⁶ Is this how you render to the Lord, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your father, your creator, the one who made you and established you? ⁷ Remember the days of old, consider the years of generations past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will inform you. ⁸ When the Most High assigned an inheritance to the nations, when he separated the children of men, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the children of Israel. ⁹ For the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob is his inheritance. ¹⁰ He found him in a deserted land, in solitude, amidst wild howls; he surrounded him, he took care of him, he kept him like the apple of his eye. ¹¹ Like an eagle that stirs up its nest and flutters above its young, the Lord spread his wings, he took Israel, he carried them on his feathers, ¹² The Lord alone led him; no foreign god was with him. ¹³ He made him ride on the heights of the land, and Israel ate the produce of the fields; he made him suck honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock, ¹⁴ the cream of the cow and the milk of the ewes, with the fat of lambs, of rams born in Bashan and of goats, with the finest wheat and you drank the blood of the grape, the foaming wine. ¹⁵ But Jesus became fat and kicked, you became fat, thick, plump, and he abandoned the God who had formed him and despised the Rock of his salvation. ¹⁶ They aroused his jealousy with foreign gods, they angered him with abominations, ¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons who are not God, to gods they did not know, new gods, recently come, before whom your fathers did not tremble. ¹⁸ You have abandoned the Rock that begot you and forgotten the God who gave you birth. ¹⁹ The Lord saw it and was indignant, provoked by his sons and daughters. ²⁰ He said, «I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no good faith. ²¹ They have aroused my jealousy with what is not God, they have angered me with their worthless idols, and I will arouse their jealousy with what is not a people, I will anger them with a foolish nation. ²² For the fire of my anger is kindled, it burns to the depths of Sheol, it devours the earth and its produce, it sets ablaze the foundations of the mountains. ²³ I will heap evils upon them, I will exhaust my arrows upon them. ²⁴ They will be exhausted by hunger, consumed by fever and deadly plague, and I will send against them the teeth of beasts, with the venom of reptiles that crawl in the dust. ²⁵ Outside the sword will delight the children and inside there will be terror: the young man as well as the young girl, the infant as well as the old man. ²⁶ I will say: "I will sweep them away with a breath, I will erase their memory from among men."« ²⁷ If I did not fear the arrogance of the enemy, may their adversaries not be mistaken and say, "Our hand was mighty, and it was not the Lord who did all these things."« ²⁸ Because it is a nation devoid of sense and there is no intelligence in them. ²⁹ If they were wise, they would understand it, they would consider the end that awaits them. ³⁰ How could one man pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the Lord had given them up? ³¹ For their rock is not like our Rock, as our enemies have judged. ³² But their vine is from the vine of Sodom and the fields of Gomorrah, their grapes are poisonous grapes and their clusters are bitter, ³³ Their wine is the venom of dragons, it is the deadly poison of asps. ³⁴ Is it not hidden near me, sealed in my treasures? ³⁵ Vengeance and retribution are mine, for the time when their foot will stumble. For the day of their misfortune is near and their fate is rushing forward. ³⁶ For the Lord will do justice to his people and he will have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their strength is spent and that there is no longer any slave or free. ³⁷ He will say: «Where are their gods, the rock near which they took refuge, ³⁸ These gods who ate the fat of their victims, who drank the wine of their libations? Let them rise up, let them come to your aid, let them cover you with their protection. ³⁹ See now that it is I, I who am God, and there is no God beside me. It is I who kills and I who gives life, I have wounded and it is I who will heal, and there is no one who can deliver from my hand. ⁴⁰ Yes, I raise my hand to heaven and say: I live forever. ⁴¹ When I sharpen the flash of my sword and my hand grasps the judgment, I will take vengeance on my enemies and repay those who hate me. ⁴² I will intoxicate my arrows with blood and my sword will feast on flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the hairy head of the enemy.» ⁴³ Nations, shout for joy in honor of his people. For the Lord avenges the blood of his servants, he takes vengeance on his adversaries, and he makes atonement for his land, for his people. ⁴⁴ Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people; with him was Joshua, son of Nun. ⁴⁵ When he had finished addressing all these words to all Israel, ⁴⁶ He said to them, «Take to heart all the words that I proclaim before you today, which you must command your children to carefully observe all the words of this law. ⁴⁷ For this is not a trivial matter for you; it is your life, and by fulfilling this command you will prolong your days in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.» ⁴⁸ That same day the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ⁴⁹ «Go up to this mountain of Abarim, to Mount Nebo, in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and look at the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel as their possession. ⁵⁰ You will die on the mountain you are about to climb and you will be reunited with your people, just as Aaron, your brother, died on Mount Hor and was reunited with his people., ⁵¹ because you sinned against me in the midst of the children of Israel, at the waters of Meribah Kadesh, in the wilderness of Sin, and you did not sanctify me in the midst of the children of Israel. ⁵² You will see the land before you, but you will not enter it, the land that I am giving to the children of Israel.»

Deuteronomy 33

¹ This is the blessing with which Moses, a man of God, blessed the children of Israel before he died. ² He said: The Lord came from Sinai, he rose up for them from Seir, he shone forth from Mount Paran, he came forth from the midst of myriads of holy ones, from his right hand flashed forth beams of light for them, ³ He also loves the peoples; all his saints are in your hand, they sit at your feet, and each one receives your word. ⁴ Moses prescribed a law for us, an inheritance from the assembly of Jacob. ⁵ He became king in Jesurun, when the leaders of the people, with the tribes of Israel, assembled. ⁶ May Reuben live and not die, and may his men not be reduced to a small number. ⁷ This is for Judah; he said: Hear, O Lord, the voice of Judah and bring him back to his people. With his own arm he will fight for Israel, and you will help him against his enemies. ⁸ He said concerning Levi: Your Urim and Thummim are entrusted to your holy man, whom you tested at Massah, with whom you contended at the waters of Meribah, ⁹ who said of his father and mother, «I have not seen them,» who did not recognize his brothers and knew nothing of his children. For they have observed your word and kept your covenant, ¹⁰ They teach your ordinances to Jacob and your law to Israel; they offer incense to your nostrils and burnt offerings on your altar. ¹¹ Bless his strength, O Lord, accept the work of his hands, break the backs of his adversaries and those who hate him, that they may rise no more. ¹² He said of Benjamin: Beloved of the Lord, he will dwell securely beside him. The Lord protects him continually; he rests between his shoulders. ¹³ He said of Joseph: Blessed by the Lord is his land, his is the precious gift of heaven, the dew, the waters of the deep that lies below, ¹⁴ the excellent produce ripened by the sun, the excellent fruits of the months, ¹⁵ the finest products of the ancient mountains, the excellent gifts of the eternal hills, ¹⁶ the excellent gifts of the earth and its abundance. May the favor of him who dwelt in the bush come upon the head of Joseph, upon the crown of the head of the prince among his brothers. ¹⁷ To his firstborn bull belongs the glory; his horns are the horns of a wild ox; with them he will gore all peoples together, to the ends of the earth. Such are the myriads of Ephraim, such are the thousands of Manasseh. ¹⁸ He said to Zebulun: Rejoice, Zebulun, in your running, and you, Issachar, in your tents. ¹⁹ They call the peoples to come to the mountain, there they will offer sacrifices of righteousness, for they will draw the abundance of the sea and the riches hidden in the sand. ²⁰ He said of Gad: Blessed is he who puts Gad out into space. He lies prostrate like a lioness, tearing at his arm, even his head. ²¹ He chose for himself the firstfruits of the land: for there was hidden a portion of leadership, and he went before the people, he carried out the righteousness of the Lord and his judgments with Israel. ²² He said of Dan: Dan is a young lion, who leaps from Bashan. ²³ He said of Naphtali: Naphtali, satisfied with favors and full of the blessings of the Lord, takes possession of the sea and the south. ²⁴ He said of Asher: Blessed be Asher among the sons of Jacob. May he be the favorite of his brothers, and may he dip his foot in oil. ²⁵ May your locks be of iron and bronze, and may your rest last as long as your days. ²⁶ No one, O Jesus, is like God, who walks on the heavens to come to your aid and, in his majesty, on the clouds. ²⁷ It is a refuge that the God of ancient times upholds you with his eternal arms, he drives the enemy before you and says: "Destroy."« ²⁸ Israel dwells securely, Jacob's spring flows apart, in a land of wheat and wine, and its sky distills dew. ²⁹ Blessed are you, Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help and the sword of your glory? Your enemies will feign defeat before you, and you will tread upon their heights.

Deuteronomy 34

¹ Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, opposite Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land: Gilead as far as Dan, ² all of Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea, ³ the Negev, the Jordan district, the valley of Jericho which is the city of palm trees, as far as Segor. ⁴ And the Lord said to him, «This is the land about which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, »I will give it to your offspring.’ I have shown it to you with your eyes, but you shall not enter it.” ⁵ Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the command of the Lord. ⁶ And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-Phogor. No one has known his grave to this day. ⁷ Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died; his sight was not impaired and his strength had not passed away. ⁸ The children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab for thirty days, and the days of weeping for Moses were completed. ⁹ Joshua, Nun's son was filled with the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. The Israelites obeyed him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses. ¹⁰ Since then, no prophet like Moses has arisen in Israel, whom the Lord knew face to face, ¹¹ nor as to all the signs and wonders that God sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh, against all his servants, and against all his land, ¹² nor as to all his mighty hand and all the terrible things that Moses accomplished in the sight of all Israel. 

Notes on Deuteronomy

1.1; 1.5 Beyond the Jordan. See, regarding this expression, Numbers, 32, 32. ― Pharan, the desert of that name. ― Thophel, perhaps the current Tabyleh.― Laban, undoubtedly the Lebna of Numbers, 33, 21.

1.2 Horeb, Mount Sinai. Séir, Idumea. ― Cadès-barné or Cadès. See Numbers, 20, 1.

1.4 See Numbers, 21, 24. ― Hesebon. See Numbers, 21, 25. ― Basan, see Numbers, 21, 33. ― Astaroth, east of the Jordan, in the land of Bashan, became a Levitical city in the half-tribe of Transjordanian Manasseh. ― Edraï. See Numbers, 21, 33.

1.6 Here begins the first speech of Moses which ends in chapter 4, verse 43.

1.7 From the Euphrates. See Genesis, 15, 18.

1.10 See Exodus 18:18.

1.15 See Exodus, 18, 21.

1.16 See John 7:24.

1.17 See Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 16:19; Proverbs 24:23; Ecclesiasticus 42:1; James 2:1.

1.22 See Numbers, 13, 3.

1.24 The valley d'Escol. See Numbers, 13, 24.

1.28 Enacim is the Hebrew plural of’Enac and means the descendants of Enac, a fearsome giant. Compare to Numbers, 13, 34.

1.33 See Exodus 13:21; Numbers 14:14. in a fire during the night ; that is to say, by the column of fire.

1.35 See Numbers 14:23; Psalms 94:11.

1.41 See Numbers, 14, 40.

1.42 See Numbers, 14, 42.

1.44 Mountain from southern Palestine. ― Horma, see Numbers, 14, 45.

2.4 A Séir, Idumea.

2.8 Elath and Asiongaber, cities located at the northern end of the Gulf of Aelani.

2.9 Ar, capital of Moab, south of the Arnon.

2.11 Enacim. See Deuteronomy 1:28. Emim, that's to say terrors.

2.12 The Horrheans, or Chorreans, since only the spelling is different. Cave dwellers. See Genesis, 14, 6.

2.13 Zared. See Numbers, 21, 12.

2.14 Cadès-barné. See Numbers, 20, 1.

2.18 The borders of Moab, The Arnon. See Numbers, 21, 13.

2.19 Places near the children of Ammon. The Ammonites, descendants of Lot, lived east of the Jordan between the Arnon and the Jaboc. They appear to have led a nomadic life and retreated further east where they were pushed back.

2.24 The Arnon, which flows into the Dead Sea to the east, then separated the Moabites from the Amorites. Its bed is very deep and very steep. ― Hesebon. See Numbers, 21, 25.

2.26 See Numbers, 21, 21.

2.30 The Lord, your God, etc. See Exodus, 4, 21.

2.31 See Amos 2:9.

2.36 Aroër, on the’Arnon, formed the westernmost part of the kingdom of Sehon, opposite Ar Moab.

3.1 See Numbers 21:33; Deuteronomy 29:7. Basan. See Numbers 21, 33. ― Edraï. See Numbers, 21, 33.

3.2 See Numbers, 21, 33.

3.3 See Numbers, 21, 34-35.

3.4 Sixty cities, refers, as an explanation, to the preceding words all its cities ; That's why we put the sentence that separates it in parentheses. the entire region of Argob, called in the time of Our Lord Trachonitis. ― The sixty cities They were later called Havoth-Jair, because they belonged to Jair, of the tribe of Manasseh. Argob is a volcanic country, covered with basaltic rocks.

3.8 Beyond of the Jordan. See Numbers, 32, 32. ― Arnon, a river that flows into the Dead Sea to the east. ― Hermon, mountain range in northern Palestine, branch of the Anti-Lebanon.

3.11 Rabbath of the children of Ammon. Moses adds the last words, because there was another city of the same name, located in the land of Moab. The large number of insects in eastern countries makes metal beds almost indispensable. According to the measurement, That is to say, probably, according to the size of an ordinary man's cubit, and not according to the length taken from Og's own measurement. Rabbath Ammon, capital of the Ammonites, east of the Jordan, southeast of Ramoth-Gilead, on the road from Bozrah of the Hauran to Hesebon. ― His iron bed, probably the sarcophagus in which he had been placed after his death. By iron, it is probably referring to black basalt, common in the country, which contains twenty percent iron, which is why the Arabs still call iron basalt today.

3.12 See Numbers, 32, 29.

3.17 The desert plain, the plain of Moab. ― Cenereth It became a city of Naphtali. It is this city that gave its name to the lake of Cenereth, Gennesaret, or Tiberias. The sea is very salty is the Dead Sea. ― Phasga. See Numbers, 21, 20.

3.21 See Numbers, 27, 18.

3.25 This beautiful mountain ; Mount Moriah, on which Abraham offered Isaac, and where the city of Zion and its temple were to be built, or the mountains of Bethel, higher than Mount Moriah, closer to the Jordan, and not far from Jericho. THE Lebanon was to form the northern border of Palestine.

3.27 See Deuteronomy 31:2; 34:4. Phasga. See Numbers, 21, 20.

3.28 Of the country you will see. Compare to Deuteronomy, 34, 4.

4.2 Heretics wrongly claim that this verse condemns all the traditions and ordinances of the Church as additions made to Scripture. If they were consistent, they would say the same of all other parts of the Bible, and even of the other books of the Pentateuch, where there are ordinances that were no less obligatory to be observed. The clear meaning of this passage is that no one could do anything that God had forbidden, nor omit anything that he had commanded; that is to say, the entire law had to be strictly observed by all of God's people.

4.3 See Numbers, 25, 4. ― Baal-Phogor, Baal was worshipped in Phegor through an impure cult.

4.10 Horeb, Mount Sinai.

4.11 See Exodus 19:18.

4.12-15 These passages clearly prove, against some unbelievers, that the Hebrews did not attribute a body to God.

4.16 You didn't do it, etc. See Exodus, 20, 4.

4.21 See Deuteronomy 1:37.

4.24 See Hebrews 12:29.

4.35 The Lord is God and that there is no other but him. This magnificent passage from Deuteronomy is like the Jewish profession of faith. Even today, Israelites copy it by hand onto a piece of parchment along with that of...’Exodus, 13, vv. 2-10, 11-16, and attach it to their forehead and left arm to recite their morning prayer. This is the essential part of the speech bubbles. This parchment is called by the Hebrew word with which it begins. plan.

4.37 See Exodus 13:21.

4.41 See Numbers, 35, 14.

4.41; 4.47; 4.49 On the other side of the Jordan. See Numbers, 32, 32.

4.43 See Joshua, 20, 8. ― Bosor, on the plateau of the land of the Amorites, in Gilead, now Kesûrel-Bescheir, southwest of Dibon, was later taken from the Reubenites by the Moabites. ― Ramoth-Gilead, in a very strong position, on a hill surrounded by deep ravines, covered with vines and olive trees, probably the es-Salt of today. ― Golan, unknown site.

4.46 The Temple of Phogor, in Hebrew Beth Phogor, a city of Moab, then Reuben, near the Jordan, opposite Jericho. ― Hesebon. See Numbers, 21, 25.

4.49 Phasga. See Numbers, 21, 20.

5.1 Here begins the second discourse of Moses, which extends to chapter 26 and forms the main part of the book of Deuteronomy.

5.6 See Exodus 20:2; Leviticus 26:13; Psalms 80:11.

5.7 See Exodus 20:3; Psalms 80:10.

5.8 See Exodus 20:4; Leviticus 26:1; Psalms 96:7.

5.9 See Exodus 34:14.

5.11 See Exodus 20:7; Leviticus 19:12; Matthew 5:33.

5.14 See Genesis 2:2; Exodus 20:10; Hebrews 4:4. Your doors ; Hebraism, for your cities.

5.16 See Exodus 20:12; Ecclesiasticus 3:9; Matthew 15:4; Mark 7:10; Ephesians 6:2.

5.21 See Matthew 5:28; Romans 7:7.

6.5 See Deuteronomy 11:13; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27.

6.13 See Deuteronomy 10:20; Matthew 4:10; Luke 4:8.

6.16 See Matthew 4:7; Luke 4:12.

7.1 See Exodus 23:23; 33:2.

7.2 See Exodus 23:32; 34:15-16.

7.3 See Exodus 34:16.

7.5 See Exodus 23:24; Deuteronomy 12:3; 16:21. Cut off their ascherim : their sacred groves. See Exodus 34, 13.

7.6 See Deuteronomy 14:2; 26:18.

7.14 See Exodus 23:26.

7.20 See Exodus 23:28; Joshua, 24, 12.

7.25 See 2 Maccabees, 12, 40.

7.26 Anathema, is the same thing here as doomed to destruction.

8.3 See Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4.

8.15 See Numbers 20:9; 21:6; Exodus 17:6. 

8.16 See Exodus 16:14.

9.1 Today, in the sense of soon.

9.6 With a stiff neck. See, for this expression, Exodus, 32, 9.

9.8 See Exodus 17:6.

9.9 That is to say, eating and drinking absolutely nothing.

9.10 See Exodus 31:18.

9.12 See Exodus 32:7.

9.21 The Golden Calf. See Exodus, 32, 20.

9.22 See Numbers, 11, 1; 16, 2; 21, 5.

9.23 Cadès-barné Or Cadès. See . Numbers 20, 1.

10.1 See Exodus 34:1.

10.2-3 The ark alliance. 

10.4 The Ten Words ; for the Ten Commandments.

10.6 See Numbers, 33, 31; 20, 28-29. 

10.7 Gadgad. See Numbers, 33, 32.

10.17 See 2 Chronicles, 19, 7; Job, 34, 19; Wisdom, 6, 8; Ecclesiasticus, 35, 15; Acts of the Apostles, 10:34; Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6.

10.20 See Deuteronomy 6:13; Matthew 4:10; Luke 4:8.

10.22 See Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5.

11.6 See Numbers, 16, vv. 1, 32.

11.13 See Deuteronomy 10:12.

11.14 In Palestine, it usually rains only in two seasons: in spring, before the harvest, and in autumn, after sowing. The first rains refer to the autumn rains, which fall in October and November, at the time of sowing, and the recent rains, The spring rains, which fall in March and April, are the main rains. The rest of the year, rain is quite exceptional in Palestine.

11.18 See Deuteronomy 6:6.

11.24 See Joshua, 1, 3. ― Euphrate. See Genesis, 15, 18.

11.29 Gerizim, Hebal, two mountains of Ephraim separated from each other by a very fertile and well-watered valley in which the city of Shechem, now Nablus, is built.

11.30 Beyond the Jordan here means west of the Jordan. Galgala is not the one on the banks of the Jordan, but another Galgala about twenty kilometers south of Mount Gerizim.

12.2 On the high mountains. See Numbers 22, 41.

12.3 See Deuteronomy 7:25; 2 Maccabees 12:40.

12.5 THE in the name of the Lord is sometimes taken, in Scripture, to mean God himself, his majesty, his presence; the words to live there, which immediately follow, seem to indicate that the same is true here.

12.11; 12.17 The beginnings of your hands ; the first fruits of the works of your hands.

12.15 Either impure or pure. The Vulgate applies these two words to animals here, but in verse 22, it rightly applies the same words to those who feed on the flesh of the victims and to whom it is permitted to eat it, even though they would be legally impure.

12.16 Animal blood was poured out like water, that is, as a common and ordinary thing.

12.20 See Genesis 28:14; Exodus 34:24; Deuteronomy 19:8.

12.29 See Deuteronomy 19:1.

13.9 See Deuteronomy 17:7. — Among most ancient peoples, it was the guilty party's own family that was responsible for punishing the crime, and this custom still exists among several nations. But kill him ; not by your private authority, but after referring him to the judge who, on the testimony of two or three witnesses, will condemn him to be stoned (see Deuteronomy, 17, 6-7). 

14.1 See Leviticus 19:27; 21:5.

14.2 See Deuteronomy 7:6; 26:18.

14.3 See Leviticus 11:4. — This verse is not in opposition to the 15th^e from chapter 12, where it is expressly permitted to kill and eat clean and unclean animals without distinction, because the words pure And impure are taken in different senses. Thus there were animals absolutely impure, that is to say, it was not permitted to eat or offer as sacrifices, such as hares, pigs, etc., and animals impure in one respect only, like deer, goats, etc., which could be eaten, but were not permitted to be offered as sacrifices. This explanation shows that chapter 12, verse 15, refers to the latter animals, while here it refers to the former.

14.7 The hare. See Leviticus, 11, 6.

14.21; 14.27; 14.29 Your doors ; Hebraism, for your cities.

14.21 See Exodus 23:19; 34:26.

14.28 In the third year ; That is, every three years. From your doors ; Hebraism, for of your houses.

15.8 See Matthew 5:42; Luke 6:34.

15.11 See Matthew 26:11.

15.12 See Exodus 21:2; Jeremiah 34:14. 

15.14 Which the Lord your God has blessed you with; that is to say, which he has granted you through the effect of his blessing.

15.17 You will pierce his ear. See Exodus 21, 6.

15.21 See Leviticus 22:20-21; Ecclesiasticus 35:14.

15.23 Like water. See Deuteronomy, 12, 16.

16.1 The preparations were made during the night; but the departure took place early the next morning.

16.8 The Lord's Gathering ; the solemn assembly instituted in honor of the Lord.

16.11 His name ; his majesty, his divinity. In Scripture, the name of God is often used to refer to God himself.

16.16 See Exodus 23:15; 34:20; Ecclesiasticus 35:6.

16.18 On the gates near which justice is administered, see Judges, 16, 3.

16.19 See Exodus 23:8; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:17; Ecclesiasticus 20:31.

16.21 This prohibition was intended to distinguish the Israelites from the pagans, who ordinarily did not erect altars or build temples, nor did they plant trees and woods nearby. — Instead of drink, The Hebrew text reads Asherah, that is to say, the cippus representing the goddess Astarte.

17.6 See Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1.

17.7 See Deuteronomy 13:9. The hands of the witnesses, etc. The witnesses had to throw the first stones with their own hands, and the rest of the people continued the stoning.

17.9 See 2 Chronicles, 19, 8. — the true judgment you should make about it.

18.1 See Numbers 18:20, 23; Deuteronomy 10:9; 1 Corinthians 9:13.

18.4 See Numbers, 18, 21.

18.10 See Leviticus 20:27.

18.11 See 1 Samuel 28:7. Leviticus, 20, 27.

18.15 See John 1:45. — This verse contains a prophecy that should only be understood as referring to the Messiah; for Scripture itself applied it to Jesus Christ (see Acts of the Apostles, (3, 22, etc.; 7, 37). Secondly, the Church Fathers applied it in the same way. Finally, this prophecy cannot be applied to any other person than Jesus Christ without doing violence to the text.

18.16 See Exodus 20:21.

18.18 See John 1:45.

19.2 See Numbers, 35, 11; Joshua, 20, 2.

19.8 See Genesis 28:14; Exodus 34:24; Deuteronomy 12:20.

19.11 See Numbers, 35, 20.

19.12 From his city ; from the fugitive's hometown. 

19.13 You will cleanse Israel of innocent blood ; that is to say, the crime committed by the shedding of innocent blood.

19.14 THE terminals Among pagan peoples—Assyrians, Greeks, Romans—these objects were considered sacred, and were treated with reverence. Moses merely forbade their alteration. Anyone who violates this law is cursed; see further on. Deuteronomy, 27, 17.

19.15 See Deuteronomy 17:6; Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1.

19.18 See Daniel, 13, 62.

19.21 See Exodus 21:23-24; Leviticus 24:20; Matthew 5:38.

20.5 See 1 Maccabees 3:56. — Before taking possession of a newly built house, the Hebrews performed a kind of dedication. The pagans, and the Romans in particular, did not build anything without consecrating it with rites that varied according to time and place.

20.6 The fruits of the first three years were considered impure; those of the fourth were consecrated to the Lord; and after that, the vine and its fruits were placed among common and ordinary things.

20.8 See Judges, 7, 3.

21.8 That is to say, the children of Israel will not be held accountable for the innocent blood that was shed in their midst.

21.19 The door of judgment ; the door where judgments are rendered.

21.23 See Galatians 3:13.

22.1 See Exodus 23:4.

22.9 The simplest and most natural meaning of this verse is this: Do not sow anything in your vineyard, lest both the seed and the fruit of that same vine be sanctified, that is, consecrated to God, and thus be lost to you. Moreover, such a mixture was not pleasing to the Lord. Compare to Leviticus, 19, 19.

22.12 See Numbers, 15, 38.

22.22 See Leviticus 20:10.

22.29 See Exodus 22:16.

23.3 See Nehemiah 13:1.

23.4 See Numbers, 22, 5; Joshua, 24, 9.

23.13 For your excrement. 

23.19 The price of a dog ; that is, of a prostitute (compare to verse 17).

24.1 See Matthew 5:31; 19:7; Mark 10:4.

24.6 The bottom and top grinding wheels. The Hebrews, upon leaving Egypt, carried with them into the desert, as an indispensable item, hand mills, which they used alongside mortars. See Numbers, 11:8. Since there were no public mills or bakers among the peoples of the East, each family had to own a hand mill, and since bread was baked daily, the necessary grain had to be ground daily. Therefore, Deuteronomy forbade taking mills as collateral, lest those deprived of this essential item be exposed to starvation. The hand mill consists of two superimposed millstones, the upper one being turned by one or two women using a handle. This handle is straight and is positioned on the edge of the upper stone, which it rotates against the lower millstone. The upper millstone is called in Arabic rekkab, The millstone, or "the horseman," as the Hebrews once called it, has a hole in the center through which an iron rod is inserted, securely fixed to a stone resting on the ground. Grain is thrown through the hole as needed. The upper millstone is concave where it fits into the lower millstone, which, conversely, is convex. The lower millstone rests on the ground. Both are round. Sometimes the lower millstone is made of a harder material. The coarsely ground wheat emerges from between the two stones and falls onto the cloth above which the mill is placed.

24.9 See Numbers, 12, 10.

24.12See Exodus 22:26.

24.13 His garment. This garment is the cloak that Orientals use at night as a blanket.

24.14 See Leviticus 19:13; Tobit 4:15. From your doors ; Hebraism, for from your city.

24.16 See 2 Kings 14:6; 2 Chronicles 25:4; Ezekiel 18:20.

25.2 The figurative monuments show us those who receive the beating lying down and stretched out on the ground.

25.3 The historian Josephus reports that the custom arose of giving only thirty-nine blows, so as not to risk exceeding forty. Saint Paul confirms Josephus's account when he tells us (see 2 Corinthians, 11, 24), that on five occasions he has received forty lashes, less one.

25.4 See 1 Corinthians 9:9; 1 Timothy 5:18.

25.5 See Matthew 22:24; Mark 12:19; Luke 20:28.

25.7 See Ruth, 4, 5.

25.16 The words these things refer to verses 13 and 14.

25.17-18 See Exodus, note 17.8.

25.17 See Exodus 17:8.

26.2 In the basket ; intended, dedicated to this use.

26.13 See Deuteronomy 14:29.

26.15 See Isaiah 63:15; Baruch 2:16.

26.18 See Deuteronomy 7:6.

27.1 Chapters 27 to 30 contain the third and final major discourse of Deuteronomy.

27.4 See Exodus 20:25; Joshua, 8, 31. ― Hebal, mountain opposite Gerizim, at the foot of which was Shechem, now Nablus.

27.12 Garizim. See Deuteronomy, 11, 29.

27.14 See Daniel, 9, 11.

27.17 The terminal. See Deuteronomy, 19, 14.

27.25 To shed innocent blood. Literally, and using Hebraisms: To strike the soul of innocent blood. 

28.1 History attests to the fulfillment of the promises and threats made to the Jews in this chapter.

28.6 Entering and exiting. In the Hebrew language, enter and exit ordinarily means the whole of one's conduct, all the actions of life.

28.10 The name of the Lord, etc.; or: You bear the name of the Lord; you are called the people of the Lord.

28.15 See Leviticus 26:14; Lamentations 2:17; Baruch 1:20; Malachi 2:2.

28.20 The malice of your actions.

28.26 To the beasts of the earth, that is to say, to wild beasts.

28.27 From the ulcer of Egypt. Compare to Exodus, 9, 9.

28.38 See Micah 6:15; Haggai 1:6.

28.44 He will be in the lead, etc. Compare to verse 13.

28.53 See Lamentations 4:10; Baruch 2:2.

28.55 All your doors ; Hebrew, for all your cities.

28.68 Titus sold many Jews into slavery in Egypt after the capture of Jerusalem. Josephus says that twelve thousand Jews perished from starvation while they were being sorted for sale as slaves. Only those under the age of seventeen were sold.

29.2 See Exodus 19:4.

29.5 See Deuteronomy 8:2.

29.6 See Deuteronomy 3:1. Hesebon. See Numbers, 21, 25. ― Basan. See Numbers, 21, 33.

29.8 See Numbers, 32, 19; Joshua, 22, 4.

29.15 Anyone who is not here with us today ; That is to say, for all those who exist today, and for all those who will come after us.

29.22 See Genesis 19:24. From Sodom. See Genesis 13, 10.

29.24 See 1 Kings 9:8; Jeremiah 22:8.

29.25 To which they did not belong. Literally : To which they had not been assigned. All the nations of the earth given over to idolatry naturally belonged to the false gods; but the true God, having reserved Israel to be his particular people, the Israelites belonged to him alone.

29.29 This verse, which the Vulgate has perfectly translated from Hebrew, is interpreted in various ways; the meaning which seems to us the most natural is that these punishments had until then been a secret hidden in God, and that God was now revealing it to more powerfully engage the Israelites in the observance of his commandments.

30.5 See 2 Maccabees, 1, 29.

30.9 Literally : In all things ; that is to say, by showering him with all kinds of goods.

30.12 See Romans 10:6.

30.15 Good and evil ; that is to say, the goods, the advantages, the evils, the misfortunes.

31.2 See Numbers 27:13; Deuteronomy 3:27. Entering and exiting, that is to say, to drive you.

31.4 See Numbers, 21, 24.

31.5 See Deuteronomy 7:2.

31.7 See Joshua, 1, 6; 1 Kings, 2, 2.

31.27 Stiff neck ; which bears the yoke with great difficulty, completely indomitable.

32.1 «"Scripture surpasses all (Greek and Roman authors) infinitely in naivety, in vivacity, in grandeur. Not even Homer ever approached the sublimity of Moses in his canticles, particularly the last one." (FENELON).

We are not dealing here with a people of shepherds, or with shepherds' ideas about God and life as a whole. We are dealing with a man born and raised in Egypt, for whom Arabia was a second homeland, the stage for his actions, his travels, and his miracles. The spirit of his poetry takes its form and imagery there. The Arabian desert sets the tone everywhere: God is a rock, a fire that burns and consumes; he sharpens the edge of his sword; he shoots his bloodthirsty arrows; the messengers of his wrath are serpents, and so on. Moses' poetry is strong, primal, and simple, like his life and character. His spirit is entirely different from that of Job, David, and Solomon; the energetic and zealous soul of Moses is revealed in this last song. The most joyful and poetic images of the Psalms and the Prophets derive especially from this song of Moses, which is like the primal prophecy, the type and rule for all prophecies.

32.4 Just ; literally judgments. The Hebrew word means what is just, fair.

32.7 See Job 8:8.

32.14 Butter, etc.; butter or cream made with cow's milk. ― Son of Bashan ; That is to say, they were from Bashan, a country very abundant in rich pastures. The marrow of the fore For the wheat flower.

32.21 See Jeremiah 15:14; Romans 10:19. Because of their vanities. This is the name that Scripture gives to the false gods of the pagans.

32.29 See Jeremiah 9:12.

32.32 From Sodom. See Genesis, 13, 10.

32.35 See Ecclesiasticus 28:1; Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30.

32.37 See Jeremiah 2:28.

32.39 See 1 Samuel 2:6; Tobit 13:2; Wisdom 16:13, 15; Job 10:7.

32.40 I live, etc. A formula of oath that is proper to God alone. God swears by himself, because, as Saint Paul notes (see Hebrews, 6, 13), there is no being greater than him by whom he can swear.

32.41 I will sharpen the lightning bolt of my sword ; That is to say, I make it penetrating like lightning, I give it the brilliance, the dazzling splendor of lightning.

32.42 Menochius: I will punish the nations because they shed the blood of the Israelites by killing them, by taking them captive, and by shaving the heads of these same Israelites, their enemies, as one shaves the heads of slaves. For in those ancient times, it was the custom to shave the heads of captives as a sign of slavery.

32.43 See 2 Maccabees, 7, 6.

32.49 The Hebrew word Abarim is a plural. Nebo was one of the mountains that formed the chain of Abarim Mountains.— «One cannot distinguish a single summit, not the slightest peak,» said Chateaubriand in this range. However, according to the general description, Mount Nebo must have been located near the mouth of the Jordan River. Against Jericho. See Joshua 6, 1.

32.50 See Numbers, 20, 26; 27, 13.

32.51 See Numbers 27:14. You have not sanctified me. See Numbers, 20, 12. ― A Cadès du désert de Sin. See Numbers, 20, 1.

33.1 It is generally agreed that this chapter and the following one belong to the Book of Joshua. Formerly, holy books were usually without titles or summaries; they followed one another without any division into sections. However, the blessings contained in this 33^e chapters are the work of Moses.

33.2 Mount Seir was in Edom, and Mount Pharan was in a region of the land of the Ishmaelites, which it named. To explain the apparent difficulty of this passage, it suffices to note that Moses names the three mountains Sinai, Seir, and Pharan, not in relation to their location, for Pharan is closer to Sinai than Seir when coming from Egypt; but in relation to the route the Israelites took before entering the borders of the land of Canaan. Moses was able to link these three places because all three were made famous by the wonders God performed there.

33.3 See Wisdom 3:1; 5:5. — The word peoples It must be understood here, as in many other passages, as referring to a collection, a large gathering of individuals. Moses here means the twelve tribes, the Israelites. In your hand ; that is to say, under his care, under his very special protection. ― Those who approach your feet, his disciples, who come to receive his instructions. In the past, as still today in several Eastern countries, schoolchildren sat at their teachers' feet. Compare to Acts of the Apostles, 22, 3. However, this expression could mean those who are subject to him.

33.5 He became king ; This is what most Jewish and Christian exegetes understand by Moses, who, without bearing the title of king, held all the authority and prerogatives of one. Among the very righteous people. See Deuteronomy, 32, 15.

33.8 Compare to Exodus, 28, 30. ― To the man, etc.; that is to say, to Aaron. ― Waters of contradiction. See Numbers, 20, 13.

33.16 See Exodus 3:2.

33.17 The mountains of Ephraim, the inheritance of Joseph's descendants, gave them the strength foretold by Moses. Judah was to guard the south, like a lion hidden in its fortress of Zion; Ephraim, its rival, was to defend the north, like the bull and the ox, less warlike but no less powerful. The routes of communication between northern and southern Palestine, through the plain of Ezra, passed through the defiles belonging to Manasseh.

33.18 In your shopping ; That is to say, your excursions, your sailing.

33.19 The riches hidden in the sand, the glass made by the Phoenicians, hidden in the sand of Belus.

33.20 Like a lioness. Gad had something of the character of the Lion of Judah. He dwelt, like a lioness, in the forests south of the Jabbok, east of the Jordan. In the time of David, he is mentioned for his valor.

33.22 Basan. See Numbers, 21, 33.

33.24 In oil. See Genesis, 49, 20.

34.1 See Deuteronomy 3:27; 2 Maccabees 2:4. — See on the author of this chapter, Deuteronomy, 33, 1. ― Nebo. See Deuteronomy, 32, 49. ― Phasga. See Numbers, 21, 20.

34.2 The western sea ; that is to say, the Mediterranean Sea.

34.3 Up to Segor, at the southern end of the Dead Sea.

34.4 See Genesis 12:7; 15:18.

34.10-12 The meaning of these three verses is that since the death of Moses, no prophet appeared in Israel with whom the Lord maintained such an intimate relationship, through whom He displayed His mighty hand so brilliantly, and performed wonders like the miracles done in Egypt, before all the people of Israel. Moses' glory was so great among the Jews that God hid his tomb to prevent its idolatrous worship. At the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appear and speak alongside Jesus. Moses represents the Pentateuch, and therefore the Law. Elijah represents the prophets.