1   Now, Israel, listen to the statutes and laws which I am teaching you, and obey them; then you will live, and go in and occupy the land which the Lord the God of your fathers is giving you. 2   You must not add anything to my charge, nor take anything away from it. You must carry out all the commandments of the Lord your God which I lay upon you.

3   You saw with your own eyes what the Lord did at Baal-peor; the Lord your God destroyed among you every man who went over to the Baal of Peor, 4   but you who held fast to the Lord your God are all alive today. 5   I have taught you statutes and laws, as the Lord my God commanded me; these you must duly keep when you enter the land and occupy it. 6   You must observe them carefully, and thereby you will display your wisdom and understanding to other peoples. When they hear about these statutes, they will say, ‘What a wise and understanding people this great nation is!’ 7   What great nation has a god ^note close at hand

Primary charge of Moses to the people as the Lord our God is close to us whenever we call to him? 8   What great nation is there whose statutes and laws are just, as is all this law which I am setting before you today? 9   But take good care: be on the watch not to forget the things that you have seen with your own eyes, and do not let them pass from your minds as long as you live, but teach them to your sons and to your sons' sons. 10   You must never forget that day when you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, and the Lord said to me, ‘Assemble the people before me; I will make them hear my words and they shall learn to fear me all their lives on earth, and they shall teach their sons to do so.’ 11   Then you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was ablaze with fire to the very skies: there was darkness, cloud, and thick mist. 12   When the Lord spoke to you from the fire you heard a voice speaking, but you saw no figure; there was only a voice. 13   He announced the terms of his covenant to you, bidding you observe the Ten Words, ^note and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. 14   At that time the Lord charged me to teach you statutes and laws which you should observe in the land into which you are passing to occupy it.

15   On the day when the Lord spoke to you out of the fire on Horeb, you saw no figure of any kind; 16   so take good care not to fall into the degrading practice of making figures carved in relief, in the form of a man or a woman, 17   or of any animal on earth or bird that flies in the air, 18   or of any reptile on the ground or fish in the waters under the earth. 19   Nor must you raise your eyes to the heavens and look up to the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be led on to bow down to them and worship them; the Lord your God assigned these for the worship of ^note the various peoples under heaven. 20   But you are the people whom the Lord brought out of Egypt, from the smelting-furnace, and took for his own possession, as you are to this day. 21   The Lord was angry with me on your account and swore that I should not cross the Jordan nor enter the rich land which the Lord your God is giving you for your possession. 22   I shall die in this country; I shall not cross the Jordan, but you are about to cross and occupy that rich land. 23   Be careful not to forget the covenant which the Lord your God made with you, and do not make yourselves a carved figure of anything which the Lord your God has forbidden. 24   For the Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous god.

25   When you have children and grandchildren and grow old in the land, if you then fall into the degrading practice of making any kind of carved figure, doing what is wrong in the eyes of the Lord your God and provoking him to anger, 26   I summon heaven and earth to witness against you this day: you will soon vanish from the land which you are

Primary charge of Moses to the people to occupy after crossing the Jordan. You will not live long in it; you will be swept away. 27   The Lord will disperse you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations to which the Lord will lead you. 28   There you will worship gods made by human hands out of wood and stone, gods that can neither see nor hear, neither eat nor smell. 29   But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him, if indeed you search with all your heart and soul. 30   When you are in distress and all these things come upon you, you will in days to come turn back to the Lord your God and obey him. 31   The Lord your God is a merciful god; he will never fail you nor destroy you, nor will he forget the covenant guaranteed by oath with your forefathers.

32   Search into days gone by, long before your time, beginning at the day when God created man on earth; search from one end of heaven to the other, and ask if any deed as mighty as this has been seen or heard. 33   Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the fire, as you heard it, and remain alive? 34   Or did ever a god attempt to come and take a nation for himself away from another nation, with a challenge, and with signs, portents, and wars, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great deeds of terror, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt in the sight of you all? 35   You have had sure proof that the Lord is God; there is no other. 36   From heaven he let you hear his voice for your instruction, and on earth he let you see his great fire, and out of the fire you heard his words. 37   Because he loved your fathers and chose their children after them, ^note he in his own person brought you out of Egypt by his great strength, 38   so that he might drive out before you nations greater and more powerful than you and bring you in to give you their land in possession as it is today. 39   This day, then, be sure and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other. 40   You shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I give you today; then all will be well with you and with your children after you, and you will live long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

41    42   Then Moses set apart three cities in the east, in Transjordan, to be places of refuge for the homicide who kills a man without intent, with no previous enmity between them. If he takes sanctuary in one of these cities his life shall be safe. 43   The cities were: Bezer-in-the-Wilderness on the tableland for the Reubenites, Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.

44    45   This is the law which Moses laid down for the Israelites. These are the precepts, the statutes, and the laws which Moses proclaimed to the Israelites, 46   when they came out of Egypt and were in Transjordan in the valley opposite Beth-peor in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites

Primary charge of Moses to the people who lived in Heshbon. Moses and the Israelites had defeated him when 47   they came out of Egypt and had occupied his territory and the territory of Og king of Bashan, the two Amorite kings in the east, in Transjordan. 48   The territory ran from Aroer on the gorge of the Arnon to Mount Sirion, ^note that is Hermon; 49   and all the Arabah on the east, in Transjordan, as far as the Sea of the Arabah below the watershed of Pisgah.

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