Deuteronomy

Chapter 1

¹ These {are} the words that Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah opposite Suph, between Paran and between Tophel and Laban and Hazeroth and Di Zahab. ² ({It is} 11 days from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea.)

³ And it happened, in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on {day} one of the month, Moses spoke to the sons of Israel according to all that Yahweh commanded him concerning them, ⁴ after he defeated Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth in Edrei.

⁵ Across the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses began explaining this law, saying,

⁶ “Yahweh our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, ‘Too long you have stayed in this mountain. ⁷ Turn and journey yourselves and go {to} the hill {country} of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah {and} in the hill {country} and in the lowland and in the Negev and by the shore of the sea, {to} the land of the Canaanites and in Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. ⁸ Look, I have given the land before your faces. Go and possess the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers—to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob—to give to them and to their seed after them.’

⁹ And I said to you at that time, saying, ‘I am not able to carry you by myself. ¹⁰ Yahweh your God has multiplied you, and behold, you {are} today as the stars of the heavens in number. ¹¹ Yahweh, the God of your fathers, may he add to you, as you {are}, a thousand times, and may he bless you, just as he spoke to you! ¹² How will I carry by myself your loads and your burdens and your disputes? ¹³ Nominate for yourselves wise and understanding and well-known men from your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads.’

¹⁴ And you answered me and said, ‘The thing that you have spoken {is} good to do.’

¹⁵ And I took the heads of your tribes—wise and well-known men—and gave them {as} heads over you, leaders of thousands and leaders of hundreds and leaders of fifties and leaders of tens and officials for your tribes. ¹⁶ And, I commanded your judges at that time, saying, ‘Listen in between your brothers, and you should judge righteously between a man and between his brother, and between his foreigner. ¹⁷ Do not recognize a face in the judgment; you shall hear as the small and the great alike. Do not be afraid from the face of a man, for the judgment, it {belongs} to God. And the matter which is too difficult for you, you shall bring to me, and I shall hear it.’ ¹⁸ And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do.

¹⁹ And we journeyed from Horeb and went through all that great and terrible wilderness that you saw on the way to the hill {country} of the Amorites, as Yahweh our God had commanded us; and we came to Kadesh Barnea. ²⁰ And I said to you, ‘You have come to the hill {country} of the Amorites, which Yahweh our God is giving to us. ²¹ Look, Yahweh your God has given the land before your face; go up, take possession, as Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you. You shall not be afraid, and you shall not be discouraged.’

²² And you drew near to me, all of you, and you said, ‘Let us send men before our faces, and they shall spy out the land for us, and return to us a word {about} the way which we will go up into and the cities which we will come to.’

²³ And the word was good in my eyes, and I took from you 12 men, one man per tribe. ²⁴ And they turned and went up into the hill {country}, and they came to the Valley of Eshkol, and scouted it. ²⁵ And they took with their hands from the fruit of the land and brought {it} down to us. And they returned to us a word and said, ‘Good {is} the land that Yahweh our God is giving to us.’

²⁶ But you were not willing to go up, and you rebelled {against} the mouth of Yahweh your God. ²⁷ And you grumbled in your tents and said, ‘In the hatred of Yahweh against us he brought us from the land of Egypt to give us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. ²⁸ Where {can} we go up? Our brothers have caused our heart to melt, saying, “The people {are} greater and taller than us, {with} cities great and fortified to the heavens; and also, we have seen the sons of the Anakites there.”’

²⁹ And I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified, and do not be afraid of them. ³⁰ Yahweh your God, who walks before your faces, he will fight for you like everything that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes ³¹ and in the wilderness, where you have seen how Yahweh your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place.’

³² But in this word you did not believe Yahweh your God, ³³ the one who went before your faces on the way to seek out a place for you to make your camp, in fire {by} night to show you the way that you should go in it, and in a cloud {by} day.

³⁴ And Yahweh heard the sound of your words and was angry. And he swore, saying, ³⁵ ‘Not {one} man of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers ³⁶ except Caleb son of Jephunneh; he himself shall see it. And to him I will give the land that he has stepped on, and to his sons, because {he is} wholly after Yahweh.’

³⁷ Also Yahweh was angry with me because of you, saying, ‘You also will not go in there; ³⁸ Joshua son of Nun, who stands before your face, he will go in there; encourage him, for he will cause Israel to inherit it.

³⁹ And your children that you said would be plunder, and your sons who today do not know good or evil—they will go in there. And to them I will give it, and they will possess it. ⁴⁰ But you, turn yourselves and journey into the wilderness on the way to the Sea of Reeds.’

⁴¹ And you answered and said to me, ‘We have sinned against Yahweh. We ourselves shall go up and fight, according to all that Yahweh our God has commanded us.’ And {every} man girded on his weapons of war and regarded it as easy to go up to the hill {country}.

⁴² And Yahweh said to me, ‘Say to them, “Do not go up and do not fight, and you will not be defeated before the face of your enemies, because I will not be among you.”’

⁴³ And I spoke to you, but you did not listen. And you rebelled against the mouth of Yahweh, and you were arrogant and went up to the hill {country}. ⁴⁴ And the Amorites, who lived in that hill {country}, came out against you and chased you like the bees do and caused you to scatter in Seir as far as Hormah. ⁴⁵ And you returned and wept before the face of Yahweh; but Yahweh did not listen to your voice, and he did not give ear to you. ⁴⁶ So you stayed in Kadesh many days, according to the days that you stayed {there}.

Chapter 2

¹ And we turned and journeyed into the wilderness on the way to the Sea of Reeds, as Yahweh had spoken to me. And we went around Mount Seir many days.

² And Yahweh spoke to me, saying, ³ ‘Too long you have been going around this mountain. Turn yourselves northward. ⁴ And command the people, saying, “You will be crossing the border of your brothers, the sons of Esau, who live in Seir. And they will be afraid of you. And you shall be exceedingly on guard. ⁵ You shall not fight them, for I will not give to you from their land, {even} as {little} as a step of the sole of a foot, for I have given Mount Seir to Esau {as} a possession. ⁶ You will buy food from them with money, and you will eat. And also, you will purchase water from them with money, and you will drink.’

⁷ For Yahweh your God has blessed you in all the work of your hand. He has known your walking through this great wilderness. These 40 years Yahweh your God {has been} with you. You have not lacked a thing.

⁸ And we passed by beyond our brothers, the sons of Esau who live in Seir, from the Arabah road, from Elath and from Ezion Geber. And we turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab.

⁹ And Yahweh said to me, ‘You shall not trouble Moab, and you shall not fight against them {in} battle, for I will not give to you from its land a possession, because I have given Ar to the sons of Lot, {as} a possession.’

¹⁰ (The Emites lived there previously, a people great and numerous and tall as the Anakites. ¹¹ They {are} also considered Raphaites, like the Anakites; but the Moabites call them Emites. ¹² And the Horites lived in Seir previously, and the sons of Esau dispossessed them. And they destroyed them from their faces and lived in their place, like Israel did to the land of his possession that Yahweh gave to them.)

¹³ “‘Now, for yourselves, rise up and cross the brook Zered.’ And we crossed the brook Zered. ¹⁴ And the days which we came from Kadesh Barnea until we crossed the brook Zered {were} 38 years, until all the generation of the men of war were finished from among the camp, as Yahweh had sworn to them. ¹⁵ And also, the hand of Yahweh was against them, to destroy them from among the camp until they came to an end.

¹⁶ And it happened, when all the men of war came to an end, dying from among the people, ¹⁷ then Yahweh spoke to me, saying, ¹⁸ ‘You are passing over today the border of Moab, Ar. ¹⁹ And you will approach on the other side of the sons of Ammon. You shall not trouble them and you shall not fight them, for I will not give to you from the land of the sons of Ammon {as} a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot {as} a possession.’”

²⁰ (Also, {it} is regarded as a land of the Raphaites. The Raphaites lived there previously—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummites— ²¹ a people great and numerous and tall as the Anakites. But Yahweh destroyed them before their faces, and they dispossessed them and lived in their place, ²² just as he did for the sons of Esau, who live in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites from before their faces, and they dispossessed them and have lived in their place until this day. ²³ And the Avvites who lived in villages as far as Gaza—the Caphtorites, who came from Caphtor, destroyed them and lived in their place.)

²⁴ “‘Rise up, journey, and pass through the Valley of Arnon. Look, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin to possess {it}, and fight against him in battle. ²⁵ This day I will begin to put the fear of you and the terror of you on the faces of the peoples under all the heavens, that they might hear a report of you and might quake and tremble from your face.’

²⁶ And I sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedemoth to Sihon, king of Heshbon, {with} words of peace, saying, ²⁷ ‘I will pass through your land on the road. On the road I will go. I will not turn right or left. ²⁸ You will sell me food for money, and I will eat. And give to me water for money, and I will drink. Only let me pass through on my feet ²⁹ as the sons of Esau who live in Seir, and the Moabites who live in Ar, did for me, until I cross the Jordan into the land that Yahweh our God is giving to us.’ ³⁰ But Sihon, king of Heshbon, was not willing to let us pass by him, for Yahweh your God had hardened his spirit and strengthened his heart in order to give him into your hand, as this day.

³¹ And Yahweh said to me, ‘Look, I have begun giving before your face Sihon and his land. Begin, possess, to possess his land.’

³² And Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to the battle at Jahaz. ³³ And Yahweh our God gave him before our faces, and we struck him down and his son and all his people. ³⁴ And we captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city—men and the women and the children; we left no survivor. ³⁵ We only plundered the cattle for ourselves, and the spoil of the cities that we had captured. ³⁶ From Aroer, which {is} on the lip of the Valley of Arnon, and {from} the city that {is} in the valley, and as far as Gilead, there was not a city that {was} too high for us. Yahweh our God gave the whole before our faces. ³⁷ {It was} only to the land of the sons of Ammon that you did not approach, all the hand of the Jabbok River, and the cities of the hill {country}—and all Yahweh our God had commanded.

Chapter 3

¹ And we turned and went up the road of the Bashan. And Og, the king of the Bashan, came out against us, he and all his people, to the battle {at} Edrei. ² And Yahweh said to me, ‘You shall not fear him; for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hand. And you will do to him as you did to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.’

³ And Yahweh our God also gave Og the king of Bashan and all his people into our hands. And we struck him down until not a survivor of his remained. ⁴ And we captured all his cities at that time. There was not a city of 60 cities that we did not take from them—all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. ⁵ All these {were} inaccessible cities {with} high walls {and} gates and bars, besides very many unwalled villages. ⁶ And we destroyed them, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, destroying every city—men, the women, and the children. ⁷ But all the cattle and the spoil of the cities we plundered for ourselves.

⁸ And we took at that time the land from the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who {were} across the Jordan, from the Valley of Arnon to Mount Hermon ⁹ (The Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, and the Amorites call it Senir), ¹⁰ all the cities of the plain, and all Gilead, and all Bashan, as far as Salekah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.” ¹¹ (For only Og king of Bashan had remained from the remnant of the Raphaites. Behold, his couch {was} a couch of iron. {Is} it not in Rabbah, of the sons of Ammon? {It was} nine cubits long and four cubits wide, by the cubit of man.)

¹² “And we took in possession this land at that time—from Aroer, that {is} by the Valley of Arnon, and half the hill {country} of Gilead, and its cities—I gave to the Reubenites and to the Gadites. ¹³ And the rest of Gilead and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to half of the tribe of Manasseh. (All the region of Argob, to all Bashan. The same is called the land of the Raphaites. ¹⁴ Jair, son of Manasseh, took all the region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maacathites. And he called it, Bashan, by his name, Havvoth Jair, to this day.)

¹⁵ And to Machir I gave Gilead. ¹⁶ And to the Reubenites and to the Gadites I gave from Gilead and as far as the Valley of Arnon, the middle of the valley {as} a border, and as far as the Jabbok River, the border of the sons of Ammon, ¹⁷ and the Arabah, and the Jordan {as} a border, from Kinnereth and to the Sea of Arabah (the Salt Sea) under the slopes of the Pisgah eastward.

¹⁸ And I commanded you at that time, saying, ‘Yahweh your God has given to you this land to possess it. The girded ones, all sons of bravery, will cross over before the faces of your brothers, the sons of Israel. ¹⁹ Only your women and your children, and your cattle (I know that you have much cattle), will stay in your cities that I have given to you ²⁰ until Yahweh causes your brothers, as you, to have rest. And they themselves will also possess the land that Yahweh your God is giving to them across the Jordan. And you will return, {every} man, to his inheritance that I have given to you.’

²¹ And I commanded Joshua at that time, saying, ‘Your eyes have seen all that Yahweh your God has done to these two kings. Thus Yahweh will do to all the kingdoms that you will be passing through there. ²² Do not fear them, for Yahweh your God, he himself will fight for you.’

²³ And I sought compassion from Yahweh at that time, saying, ²⁴ ‘My Lord Yahweh, you yourself have begun to show your servant your greatness and your strong hand. What god {is} in heaven or on earth that does works as your works and as your mighty deeds? ²⁵ Let me cross, please, and see the good land that {is} across the Jordan, that good hill {country}, and Lebanon.’

²⁶ But Yahweh was angry with me because of you, and he did not listen to me. And Yahweh said to me, ‘Enough for you—you shall not continue speaking to me again on this matter. ²⁷ Go up the head of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward, and eastward. And look with your eyes, for you will not cross this Jordan. ²⁸ And instruct Joshua and encourage him and strengthen him, for he himself will cross over before the faces of this people, and he himself will cause them to inherit the land that you will see.’

²⁹ And we stayed in the valley opposite Beth Peor.

Chapter 4

¹ And now, Israel, listen to the statutes and to the ordinances that I will teach you to do so that you will live and go in and possess the land that Yahweh, the God of your fathers, is giving to you. ² Do not add onto the word that I command you, and do not take from them, keeping the commandments of Yahweh your God that I am commanding you.

³ Your eyes have seen what Yahweh did in Baal Peor; for all the men who walked after the Baal of Peor, Yahweh your God has destroyed them from your midst. ⁴ And you who clung to Yahweh your God {are} alive, all of you, today.

⁵ Look, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as Yahweh my God had commanded me, to do so in the midst of the land which you are going into to possess it. ⁶ And you shall keep and do {them}, for it {is} your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and may say, ‘Surely this great nation {is} a wise and understanding people.’ ⁷ For which great nation {is there} that has a god near to it, as Yahweh our God {is} whenever we call on him? ⁸ And, which great nation {is there} that has statutes and ordinances {as} righteous as all this law that I am giving before your faces today?

⁹ Only guard yourself and guard your spirit strongly, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they retreat from your heart all the days of your life. But make them known to your sons and to the sons of your sons. ¹⁰ {The} day that you stood before the face of Yahweh your God at Horeb, when Yahweh said to me, ‘Assemble for me the people, and I will make them hear my words, that they will learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth and may teach their sons.’ ¹¹ And you approached and stood under the mountain. And the mountain burned with fire to the heart of the heavens, {with} darkness, cloud, and gloom. ¹² And Yahweh spoke to you from the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words, and you saw no form, only a voice. ¹³ And he declared to you his covenant that he commanded you to do, the Ten Words. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone. ¹⁴ And Yahweh commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments for your doing of them in the land which you are going over to possess it.

¹⁵ And strongly guard your spirits—for you did not see any form on {the} day Yahweh spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire— ¹⁶ lest you act corruptly, and make for yourselves an idol of the form of any image, a likeness of male or female, ¹⁷ a likeness of any animal that {is} on the earth, a likeness of any winged bird that flies in the heavens, ¹⁸ a likeness of any creeping thing on the ground, a likeness of any fish that {is} in the water under the earth. ¹⁹ And lest you lift up your eyes to the heavens and see the sun and the moon and the stars—all the multitude of the heavens—and be seduced and bow down to them and serve them, those which Yahweh your God has allotted for all the peoples under all the heavens. ²⁰ And Yahweh has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people of his inheritance, as this day.

²¹ And Yahweh was angry with me on account of your words. And he swore I would not cross the Jordan, and I would not go in to the good land that Yahweh your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance. ²² But I will die in this land. I will not cross the Jordan, but you will cross over and possess that good land. ²³ Guard yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he cut with you, and make for yourselves an idol {in} a form of anything that Yahweh your God has commanded you. ²⁴ For Yahweh your God {is} a devouring fire, he {is} a jealous God.

²⁵ When you beget sons, and sons of sons, and you grow old in the land, and you act corruptly and make an idol {in} a form of anything, and do evil in the eyes of Yahweh your God, to cause him to be angry, ²⁶ I will make the heavens and the earth witness against you today, that you will surely perish quickly from the land to which you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong {your} days on it, but you will be completely destroyed. ²⁷ And Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left men of {small} number in the nations, where Yahweh will drive you there. ²⁸ And there you will serve gods, the work of the hands of man, wood and stone, which do not see and do not hear and do not eat and do not smell. ²⁹ And from there you will search for Yahweh your God, and you will find {him} when you seek him with all your heart and with all your spirit. ³⁰ When {there is} trouble for you, and you find all these things in the later days, then you will return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice. ³¹ For Yahweh your God {is} a merciful God; he will not fail you, and he will not destroy you, and he will not forget the covenant of your fathers that he swore to them.

³² But ask, please, about previous days, which were before your face, since the day that God created man on the earth, and from one end of the heavens and to the other end of the heavens, whether there has been a great thing as this, or {anything} like it been heard. ³³ Did a people hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you yourself have heard, and live? ³⁴ Or has God attempted to go and take for himself a nation from the midst of {another} nation, by trials, by signs and by wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great terrors, as everything that Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

³⁵ You yourself have been shown, to know that Yahweh, he is the God; there is no other besides him. ³⁶ From the heavens he caused you to hear his voice, to instruct you. And on the earth he caused you to see his great fire, and you heard his words from the midst of the fire. ³⁷ And because he loved your fathers, then he chose his seed after him and brought you out from Egypt with his face, with his great power ³⁸ to drive out from before your faces nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give to you their land {as} an inheritance, as this day.

³⁹ And you shall know today, and you shall return {it} to your heart, that Yahweh, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. There is none else. ⁴⁰ And you shall keep his statutes and his commandments that I command you today, that it will go well for you and for your sons after you, and so that you may prolong {your} days in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you all the days.”

⁴¹ Then Moses selected three cities on the side of the Jordan toward the rising of {the} sun, ⁴² for a manslayer to flee there, who killed his neighbor without knowing and he did not hate him previously before; and he shall flee to one of these cities, and he shall live: ⁴³ Bezer in the wilderness in the land of the plain for the Reubenites, and Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.

⁴⁴ And this {is} the law that Moses placed before the faces of the sons of Israel. ⁴⁵ These {are} the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments that Moses spoke to the sons of Israel when they came out from Egypt, ⁴⁶ across the Jordan, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon, whom Moses and the sons of Israel had struck down when they came out from Egypt. ⁴⁷ They took his land as a possession, and the land of Og king of Bashan—two kings of the Amorites who {were} on the side of the Jordan {toward} the rising of {the} sun, ⁴⁸ from Aroer, that {is} on the lip of the Valley of Arnon, and as far as Mount Sion (that {is} Hermon), ⁴⁹ and all the Arabah eastward across the Jordan, to the Sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of the Pisgah.

Chapter 5

¹ Then Moses called to all Israel and said to them,

“Listen, Israel, to the statutes and the ordinances that I will speak in your ears today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. ² Yahweh our God cut a covenant with us at Horeb. ³ Yahweh did not cut this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those of us here today, all who are living. ⁴ Yahweh spoke with you face to face on the mountain, from the midst of the fire, ⁵ —I stood between Yahweh and between you at that time, to reveal to you the word of Yahweh. For you were afraid of the face of the fire, and you did not go up the mountain—saying, ⁶ I {am} Yahweh your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves.

             ⁷ There shall not be for you other gods above my face.

             ⁸ Do not make for yourself a carved figure of any likeness that {is} in heaven above or that {is} in the earth beneath or that {is} in the water under the earth. ⁹ You shall not bow down to them, and you shall not serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, {am} a jealous God. I visit the iniquity of the fathers on the sons, and on the third and on the fourth {generation} of the haters of me, ¹⁰ But I show covenant faithfulness to thousands, to lovers of me and keepers of my commandments.

             ¹¹ Do not lift up the name of Yahweh your God with emptiness, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished he who lifts up his name with emptiness.

             ¹² Keeping the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as Yahweh your God commanded you. ¹³ Six days you may labor and do all your work. ¹⁴ but the seventh day {is} a Sabbath for Yahweh your God. Do not do any work—you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or a foreigner who {is} within your gates, so that your male servant and your female servant can rest like you. ¹⁵ And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, Yahweh your God has commanded you to celebrate the Sabbath day.

             ¹⁶ Honor your father and your mother, as Yahweh your God has commanded you, so that you may prolong your days and so that it may go well with you on the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you.

             ¹⁷ Do not murder.

             ¹⁸ And do not commit adultery.

             ¹⁹ And do not steal.

             ²⁰ And do not testify against your neighbor false testimony.

             ²¹ And do not desire the wife of your neighbor, and you shall not covet the house of your neighbor, his field, and his male servant and his female servant, his ox and his donkey and anything that {is} of your neighbor. ²² These words Yahweh spoke {in} a great voice to all your assembly on the mountain in the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the gloom, and he did not add {more}. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.

²³ And it happened, when you heard the voice in the midst of the darkness, and the mountain was burning with fire, then you approached me—all the heads of your tribes and your elders. ²⁴ And you said, ‘Behold, Yahweh our God has shown us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice from the midst of the fire. This day we have seen that God speaks to man, yet he lives. ²⁵ And now, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us if we continue anymore to hear the voice of Yahweh our God, and we will die. ²⁶ For who {is there of} all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speak from the midst of the fire like us and has lived? ²⁷ You approach and listen to everything that Yahweh our God says, and speak to us everything that Yahweh our God says to you, and we will listen and obey.’

²⁸ And Yahweh heard the sound of your words when you spoke to me. And Yahweh said to me, ‘I have heard the sound of the words of this people that they spoke to you. All that they have spoken is good. ²⁹ Who will give and have this heart in them, to fear me and keep all my commandments all the days, so that it will be well for them and for their sons forever?

³⁰ Go say to them, “Return yourselves to your tents.” ³¹ But you, stand here by me, and I will tell you all the commandment and the statutes and the ordinances that you will teach them and they will do in the land that I am giving to them to possess it.’

³² And you shall keep {them}, doing as Yahweh your God has commanded you. Do not turn aside, right nor left. ³³ In all the ways that Yahweh your God has commanded you, you shall walk so that you might live, and goodness {might be} for you, and you might prolong {your} days in the land that you will possess.

Chapter 6

¹ And these {are} the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances that Yahweh your God has commanded to teach you to do in the land which you are going over to possess it ² so that you will fear Yahweh your God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments that I am commanding you and your son and the son of your son, all the days of your life, and so that your days will be prolonged. ³ And you shall listen, Israel, and carefully do, that it will go well for you, and that you will greatly multiply, as Yahweh, the God of your fathers spoke to you, {in} a land flowing with milk and honey.

⁴ Listen, Israel: Yahweh {is} our God; Yahweh {is} one. ⁵ And you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ And these words that I am commanding you today will be on your heart. ⁷ And you shall diligently teach them to your sons and speak about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ And you shall tie them as a sign on your hand. And they will be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

¹⁰ And it will happen that Yahweh your God will bring you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to you, {with} large and good cities that you did not build, ¹¹ and houses full of every good thing that you did not gather, and hewn cisterns that you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant. And you will eat and be satisfied. ¹² Guard yourselves lest you forget Yahweh who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves.

¹³ Yahweh your God you shall fear and him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. ¹⁴ Do not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who surround you, ¹⁵ for Yahweh your God in your midst {is} a jealous God, lest the nose of Yahweh your God burns against you, and he destroys you from the face of the earth.

¹⁶ Do not test Yahweh your God as you tested {him} at Massah. ¹⁷ Keeping, you shall keep the commandments of Yahweh your God and his testimonies and his statutes that he has commanded you. ¹⁸ And you shall do the right and the good in the eyes of Yahweh, so that it may be well for you, and you may go in and possess the good land that Yahweh swore to your fathers, ¹⁹ to thrust away all your enemies from before your faces, as Yahweh has spoken.

²⁰ When your son asks you tomorrow, saying, ‘What {are} the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances that Yahweh our God commanded you?’ ²¹ And you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt. And Yahweh brought us out from Egypt with a mighty hand. ²² And Yahweh gave signs and wonders, great and terrible, on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on all his house, before our eyes. ²³ And he brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give to us the land that he swore to our fathers. ²⁴ And Yahweh commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear Yahweh our God for good to us all of the days, to keep us alive as this day. ²⁵ And it will be righteousness to us, if we keep doing all these commandments before the face of Yahweh our God, as he has commanded us.’

Chapter 7

¹ When Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you are going into to possess it, then he will drive out many nations from before your face—the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites—seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and Yahweh your God will give them before your face, and you shall strike them down, destroying, you shall destroy them. Do not cut with them a covenant, and do not show them favor. ³ And do not arrange marriages with them. Do not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son. ⁴ For they will turn away your son from after me, and they will serve other gods. And the nose of Yahweh will burn against you, and he will destroy you quickly. ⁵ Thus you shall do to them: You shall break down their altars and smash their pillars and cut their Asherah poles to pieces and burn their idols in the fire.

⁶ For you {are} a sacred nation for Yahweh your God. Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for his possession, above all the peoples that {are} on the face of the earth.

⁷ Yahweh loved you and chose you, not {that} you {were} more numerous over all the nations, for you {were} the fewest of all the peoples, ⁸ but Yahweh loves you, and he kept the oath that he had sworn to your fathers. Yahweh has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slaves, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. ⁹ And you shall know that Yahweh your God, he {is} God, the faithful God, who keeps covenants and faithfulness for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments, ¹⁰ and he repays those who hate him to his face, to destroy him. He will not delay with him who hates him; he will repay him to his face.

¹¹ And you shall keep the commandments and the statutes and the ordinances that I command you today, to do them. ¹² And it will be, on account of you listening to these regulations and keeping and doing them, then Yahweh your God will keep for you the covenant and the faithfulness that he swore to your fathers. ¹³ And he will love you and bless you and multiply you. And he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground—your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flocks, on the land that he swore to your fathers to give to you. ¹⁴ You will be blessed more than all the peoples. There will not be a barren male or a barren female among you or among your cattle. ¹⁵ And Yahweh will take away from you all sickness. And all of the evil diseases of Egypt that you have known, he will not put them on you, and he will set them on all those who hate you. ¹⁶ And you shall consume all the peoples whom Yahweh your God will give to you; your eye shall not pity them. And do not serve their gods, for it will be a snare for you.

¹⁷ If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are more numerous than I; how can I dispossess them?’— ¹⁸ do not be afraid of them. Remembering, you shall remember what Yahweh your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, ¹⁹ the great trials that your eyes saw, and the signs and the wonders and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which Yahweh your God brought you out. Thus Yahweh your God will do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid of their faces. ²⁰ And also, Yahweh your God will send the hornet against them until those who are left and who hide themselves perish from your face. ²¹ Do not be frightened from their faces, for Yahweh your God {is} among you, a great and fearsome God. ²² And Yahweh your God will drive out those nations from your face little {by} little. You will not be able to finish them quickly, lest the animals of the field multiply against you. ²³ And Yahweh your God will give them before your faces. And he will confuse them {with} great confusion, until they are destroyed. ²⁴ And he will give their kings into your hand, and you will cause their name to perish from under the heavens. No man will stand before your face, until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You shall burn idols of their gods in fire—do not covet silver and gold on them and take {it} for yourself, lest you become trapped by it—for it {is} an abomination to Yahweh your God. ²⁶ And do not bring an abomination to your house and become banned like it. Detesting, you shall detest it, and abhorring, you shall abhor it, for it {is} devoted to destruction.

Chapter 8

¹ You shall keep doing all the commands that I am commanding you today so that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers. ² And you shall remember all the way that Yahweh your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness so that he might humble you, to test you to know what {was} in your heart, if you would keep his commandments {or} not. ³ And he humbled you and caused you to hunger and fed you manna, which you had not known and your fathers had not known, so that he might make you know that man does not live upon bread alone, but upon everything coming out of the mouth of Yahweh the man lives. ⁴ Your clothing did not wear out from upon you, and your feet did not swell up these 40 years. ⁵ And you shall know with your heart that, as a man instructs his son, Yahweh your God instructs you.

⁶ And you shall keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways and to fear him. ⁷ For Yahweh your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, fountains and springs coming out in valleys and in hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat bread in it not with poverty, you will not lack anything in it; a land where its stones {are} iron, and from the hills you may dig copper. ¹⁰ And you will eat and be full, and you will bless Yahweh your God for the good land that he has given to you.

¹¹ Guard yourself lest you forget Yahweh your God by failing to keep his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes that I am commanding you today, ¹² lest you eat and are satisfied, and you build good houses and live {in them}, ¹³ and your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply for you, and all that you have multiplies, ¹⁴ and your heart is lifted up and you forget Yahweh your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves. ¹⁵ He led you in the great and terrible wilderness, fiery serpent and scorpion and thirsty ground where there was no water, he brought out water for you from the rock of flint. ¹⁶ He fed you manna in the wilderness that your fathers had not known so that he might humble you and so that he might test you, to do you good in your end. ¹⁷ And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made for me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ And you shall remember Yahweh your God, for he is the one who gives to you power to make wealth so that he may establish his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as this day.

¹⁹ And it will happen, if forgetting, you forget Yahweh your God and walk after other gods and serve them and bow down to them, I testify against you today that perishing, you will perish. ²⁰ Like the nations that Yahweh is causing to perish from before your faces, thus you will perish, because you would not listen to the voice of Yahweh your God.

Chapter 9

¹ Hear, Israel! You are crossing the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, {with} cities great and fortified to the heavens, ² a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakites, whom you yourself know, and you yourself have heard, ‘Who can stand before the faces of the sons of Anak?’ ³ And you shall know today that Yahweh your God, he is the one who goes over before your face, a devouring fire; he himself will destroy them, and he himself will subdue them before your face. And you will drive them out and exterminate them quickly, as Yahweh has spoken to you.

⁴ You shall not say in your heart, when Yahweh your God has thrust them out from before your face, saying, ‘In my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land,’ but in the wickedness of these nations, Yahweh is driving them out from before your face. ⁵ Not in your righteousness or in the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but in the wickedness of these nations, Yahweh your God is driving them out from your face, and so that Yahweh may establish the word that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. ⁶ And you shall know that not in your righteousness is Yahweh your God giving to you this good land to possess, for you {are} a people stiff of neck.

⁷ Remember, you shall not forget how you provoked Yahweh your God to anger in the wilderness; from the day that you went out from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against Yahweh. ⁸ And at Horeb you provoked Yahweh to anger, and Yahweh was angry with you to destroy you. ⁹ When I went up to the mountain to take the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that Yahweh cut with you, and I stayed on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights, bread I did not eat and water I did not drink. ¹⁰ And Yahweh gave to me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God. And on them {was} according to all the words that Yahweh spoke with you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.

¹¹ And it happened, at the end of 40 days and 40 nights, Yahweh gave to me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. ¹² And Yahweh said to me, ‘Get up, go down quickly from here, for your people, whom you brought out from Egypt, have become corrupted. They have quickly turned aside from the path that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a cast figure.’ ¹³ And Yahweh said to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and behold: it {is} a people stiff of neck. ¹⁴ Leave me be, and I will destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens, and I will make you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

¹⁵ And I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with the fire. And the two tablets of the covenant {were} in my two hands. ¹⁶ And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against Yahweh your God. You had made for yourselves a cast-image calf. You had quickly turned aside from the path that Yahweh had commanded you. ¹⁷ And I seized the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands. And I broke them before your eyes.

¹⁸ And I prostrated myself before the face of Yahweh as before, 40 days and 40 nights. Bread I did not eat and water I did not drink, because of all your sin that you had committed, in doing evil in the eyes of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger. ¹⁹ For I was afraid of the face of the nose and the heat with which Yahweh was angry against you to destroy you. And Yahweh listened to me also that time. ²⁰ And Yahweh was very angry against Aaron, to destroy him. And I interceded also for the sake of Aaron at that time. ²¹ And I took your sin, the calf that you had made, and burned it in the fire and crushed it and ground well, until crushed to dust. And I threw its dust into the stream coming down from the mountain.

²² And at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth Hattaavah, you were provoking Yahweh to anger, ²³ and when Yahweh sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land that I have given to you,’ and you rebelled against the mouth of Yahweh your God, and you did not believe him, and you did not listen to his voice.

²⁴ You have been rebellious against Yahweh from {the} day I knew you.

²⁵ And I prostrated myself before the face of Yahweh 40 days and 40 nights, and I prostrated myself because Yahweh had said to destroy you. ²⁶ And I prayed to Yahweh and said, ‘My Lord Yahweh, do not destroy your people and your inheritance whom you have redeemed through your greatness, which you have brought out from Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not turn to the stiffness of this people and to their wickedness and to their sin, ²⁸ lest the land where you brought us out from should say, “From Yahweh not being able to bring them into the land that he spoke to them, or from his hatred of them he has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.” ²⁹ And they {are} your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.’

Chapter 10

¹ At that time Yahweh said to me, ‘Carve for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain, and make for yourself a box of wood. ² And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you will put them in the box.’

³ And I made a box of acacia wood, and I carved two tablets of stone like the first, and I went up the mountain, and the two tablets {were} in my hand. ⁴ And he wrote on the tablets, like the first writing, the Ten Words which Yahweh had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And Yahweh gave them to me. ⁵ And I turned and descended from the mountain and put the tablets in the box that I had made. And there they are, as Yahweh commanded me.”

⁶ (And the sons of Israel journeyed from Beeroth Bene Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried. And Eleazar, his son, was priest in his place. ⁷ From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of streams of water. ⁸ At that time Yahweh separated the tribe of Levi to carry the box of the covenant of Yahweh, to stand before the face of Yahweh to serve him, and to bless in his name, until this day. ⁹ Therefore, Levi has no portion nor inheritance with his brothers. Yahweh himself is his inheritance, as Yahweh your God spoke to him.)

¹⁰ “And I myself stood on the mountain as the first days, 40 days and 40 nights. And Yahweh listened to me that time also. Yahweh was not willing to destroy you. ¹¹ And Yahweh said to me, ‘Get up, go before the faces of the people to journey. And they will go in and possess the land that I swore to their fathers to give to them.’

¹² And now, Israel, what does Yahweh your God ask from you except to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his paths and to love him and to worship Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your spirit, ¹³ to keep the commandments of Yahweh and his statutes, which I am commanding you today for your good?

¹⁴ Behold, to Yahweh your God belong the heavens and the heaven of heavens, the earth, and all that {is} in it. ¹⁵ Only Yahweh took pleasure in your fathers to love them, and he chose you, their seed, after them, from all of the peoples, as this day. ¹⁶ And you shall circumcise the foreskin of your hearts, and do not stiffen your necks anymore. ¹⁷ For Yahweh your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty one and the fearsome one, who does not lift up a face and does not take a bribe. ¹⁸ He makes a judgment {for} the fatherless and widow, and he loves a foreigner, giving to him bread and clothing. ¹⁹ And you shall love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. ²⁰ Yahweh your God you shall fear, him you shall serve, and to him you shall cling, and by his name you shall swear. ²¹ He {is} your praise, and he {is} your God, who has done for you these great and fearsome things, which your eyes have seen. ²² Your fathers went down into Egypt as 70 souls. And now, Yahweh your God has made you like the stars of the heavens in number.

Chapter 11

¹ And you shall love Yahweh your God and keep his charge and his statutes and his ordinances and his commandments all of the days. ² And know today that not to your sons, who have not known and who have not seen, {is} the discipline of Yahweh your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, or his outstretched arm, ³ and his signs and his deeds that he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and to all his land, ⁴ and what he did to the army of Egypt, to its horses and to its chariots, how he caused the water of the Sea of Reeds to flow over their faces in their pursuit after you, and Yahweh has destroyed them until this day, ⁵ and what he did for you in the wilderness until you came to this place, ⁶ and what he had done to Dathan and to Abiram, the sons of Eliab son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up and their houses and their tents and every living thing that {was} in their steps, in the midst of all Israel— ⁷ but your eyes have seen all the great work of Yahweh that he did.

⁸ And you shall keep all the commandments that I am commanding you today so that you may be strong and go in and possess the land to which you are going over to possess it ⁹ and so that you may prolong days in the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers to give to them and to their seed, a land flowing {with} milk and honey. ¹⁰ For the land, where you are going in to possess, is not like the land of Egypt, from where you came, where you sowed your seed and watered with your foot, as {for} a garden of herbs. ¹¹ And the land which you are going over to possess it, {is} a land of hills and valleys, drinks water of the rain of the heavens, ¹² a land where Yahweh your God cares for it. The eyes of Yahweh your God {are} always upon it, from the beginning of the year and to the end of the year.

¹³ And it will happen, if listening, you will listen to my commandments that I am commanding you today, to love Yahweh your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹⁴ then I will give the rain of your land in its season, the former rain and the latter rain, and you will gather your grain and your new wine and your oil. ¹⁵ And I will give grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

¹⁶ Guard yourselves, lest your heart is deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and bow down to them. ¹⁷ And the nose of Yahweh will burn against you. And he will restrain the heavens and there will be no rain, and the land will not give its fruit, and you will perish quickly from off the good land that Yahweh is giving to you.

¹⁸ And you shall place these words of mine on your heart and on your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they will be as frontlets between your eyes. ¹⁹ And you shall teach them to your sons, speaking about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your sons will be multiplied in the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers to give to them as the days of the heavens over the earth.

²² For if keeping, you will keep all these commandments that I am commanding you to do them, to love Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cling to him, ²³ then Yahweh will drive out all these nations from before your faces, and you will dispossess nations larger and mightier than yourselves. ²⁴ Every place where the sole of your foot will tread upon will be yours; from the wilderness to Lebanon, from the river, the Euphrates River, and to the western sea will be your border. ²⁵ No man will be able to stand before your faces. Yahweh your God will give the fear of you and the terror of you upon the face of all the land that you tread on, as he has spoken to you.

²⁶ Look, I am giving before your faces today a blessing and a curse: ²⁷ the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God that I command you today, ²⁸ and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God and turn aside from the way that I command you today, to go after other gods that you have not known. ²⁹ And it will happen, when Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you are going in to possess it, that you will set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰ {Are} they not across the Jordan, following the road of the sun setting, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh? ³¹ For you are crossing over the Jordan to go in to possess the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you, and you will possess it and live in it. ³² And you will keep doing all the statutes and the ordinances that I set before your faces today.

Chapter 12

¹ These {are} the statutes and the ordinances that you shall keep doing in the land that Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given to you to possess it, all the days that you live on the earth. ² Destroying, you shall destroy all the places that the nations that you shall dispossess them served their gods there, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. ³ And you shall break down their altars and shatter their stone pillars and burn their Asherah in the fire. And you shall cut down the carved figures of their gods and destroy their name out of that place.

⁴ You shall not do like so to Yahweh your God. ⁵ But to the place that Yahweh your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, you shall search for his dwelling, and there you shall go. ⁶ And there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices and your tithes and the contribution of your hand and your offerings for vows and your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. ⁷ And there you shall eat before the face of Yahweh your God and rejoice in all the sending out of your hand, you and your households, where Yahweh your God has blessed you.

⁸ You shall not do as everything that we are doing here today, {every} man {doing} whatever {is} right in his eyes; ⁹ for until now you have not come to the rest and to the inheritance that Yahweh your God is giving to you. ¹⁰ And you will cross the Jordan and live in the land that Yahweh your God is causing you to inherit, and he will cause you to rest from all your surrounding enemies, and you will live safely.

¹¹ And it will be that the place in which Yahweh your God will choose for His name to dwell there, there you will bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices and your tithes and the contribution of your hand and all your choice offerings for vows that you will vow to Yahweh. ¹² And you will rejoice before the face of Yahweh your God—you and your sons and your daughters and your male servants and your female servants and the Levites who {are} within your gate, because he has no portion or inheritance among you. ¹³ Watch yourself lest you offer your burnt offerings at every place that you see; ¹⁴ except at the place that Yahweh will choose in one of your tribes, there you will offer your burnt offerings, and there you will do everything that I command you.

¹⁵ Only, you may kill and eat animals within all your gates, in all the desire of your spirit, according to the blessing of Yahweh your God that he has given to you; the unclean and the clean may eat it, such as the gazelle and the deer. ¹⁶ Only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it like water on the earth. ¹⁷ You are not allowed to eat within your gates from the tithe of your grain and your new wine and your oil and the firstborn of your herd or flock, and any of your vows that you vow and your freewill offerings and the contribution of your hand. ¹⁸ But you shall eat them before the face of Yahweh your God in the place that which Yahweh your God will choose—you and your son and your daughter and your male servant and your female servant and the Levite who {is} within your gates; and you shall rejoice before the face of Yahweh your God in all the sending out of your hand. ¹⁹ Watch yourself lest you forsake the Levite all your days on your land.

²⁰ When Yahweh your God broadens your borders, as he has spoken to you, and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ due to the desire of your soul to eat meat, you may eat meat in all the desire of your soul. ²¹ If the place that Yahweh your God chooses to put his name there is too far from you, then you may sacrifice from your herd and from your flock that Yahweh has given to you, as I have commanded you; and you may eat within your gates, in all the desire of your spirit. ²² Surely as the gazelle and the deer are eaten, so you will eat it; the unclean and the clean alike may eat it. ²³ Only be strong, do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and do not eat the life with the meat. ²⁴ Do not eat it; you shall pour it out on the earth like water. ²⁵ Do not eat it, so that it may go well for you and for your sons after you, when you will do right in the eyes of Yahweh.

²⁶ But your sacred things that you have and your vow offerings—you shall take and go to the place that Yahweh will choose. ²⁷ And you shall make your burnt offerings, the meat and the blood, on the altar of Yahweh your God; and the blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of Yahweh your God, and you shall eat the meat. ²⁸ Keep and listen to all these words that I command you so that it may go well for you and for your sons after you until forever, when you do the good and the right in the eyes of Yahweh your God.

²⁹ When Yahweh your God cuts off the nations from before your face, when you go in there to dispossess them, and you dispossess them and live in their land, ³⁰ watch yourself, lest you are trapped after them, after they are destroyed from before your face, and lest you inquire for their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods? And thus I also will do.’ ³¹ Do not do thus to Yahweh your God, for every abomination {to} Yahweh, which he hates—they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire for their gods.

³² Every word that I command you, keep doing it. Do not add on it and do not take away from it. ^[1]

Chapter 13

¹ If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises from among you, and he gives to you a sign or a wonder, ² and the sign or the wonder comes about, which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (which you have not known) and let us worship them,’ ³ do not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of dreams; for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your spirit. ⁴ You shall walk after Yahweh your God and honor him and keep his commandments and listen to his voice, and you shall serve him and cling to him.

⁵ And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he has spoken rebellion against Yahweh your God—who brought you out from the land of Egypt, and who redeemed you from the house of slaves—to drive you out from the way in which Yahweh your God commanded you to walk. And you shall remove the evil from among you. ⁶ 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 life, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods that you have not known—you nor your fathers— ⁷ from the gods of the peoples that surround you, near to you or far from you, from {one} end of the earth and to the {other} end of the earth,’ ⁸ do not yield to him and do not listen to him, and your eye shall not pity him, and do not spare nor hide him. ⁹ Instead, killing, you shall kill him. Your hand shall be the first on him to put him to death, and afterwards, the hand of all the people. ¹⁰ And you shall stone him to death with stones because he seeks to drive you away from Yahweh your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves. ¹¹ And all Israel will hear and fear and will not continue to do as the things of this wickedness among you.

¹² If you hear in one of your cities that Yahweh your God gives to you to live there, saying: ¹³ ‘Men, sons of wickedness, have gone out from among you and have driven out the inhabitants of their city saying, “Let us go and serve other gods that you have not known,”’ ¹⁴ and you shall investigate and search out and ask thoroughly, and behold, {it is} true, the matter {is} certain, this abomination has been done in your midst, ¹⁵ striking, you shall strike the inhabitants of that city with the mouth of the sword, destroying it, and all who {are} in it, and its livestock, with the mouth of the sword. ¹⁶ And you shall gather all the spoil to the middle of its street and burn the city in fire, and all its spoil completely—for Yahweh your God. And it shall be a heap forever; it shall not be built again. ¹⁷ And in your hand you shall not cling to anything from the things for destruction, so that Yahweh will turn from the burning of his nose and give to you compassion and have compassion on you and make you increase, as he has sworn to your fathers, ¹⁸ when you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, to keep all his commandments that I am commanding you today, to do right in the eyes of Yahweh your God.

Chapter 14

¹ You {are} the sons of Yahweh your God. Do not cut yourselves, and do not make a baldness between your eyes for the dead, ² for you {are} a nation set apart for Yahweh your God, and Yahweh has chosen you to be a people for his possession, over all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.

³ Do not eat any abominable thing. ⁴ These {are} the animals that you may eat: the ox, the sheep from the flock and the goat from the flock, ⁵ the deer and the gazelle and the roebuck and the wild goat and ibex and the antelope and the mountain sheep. ⁶ And you may eat any animal among the animals parting the hoof or {with} a cleft splitting {into} two hooves, chewing the cud. ⁷ Despite this, from chewers of the cud and from splitters of the hoof, the cloven-footed, you must not eat: the camel and the rabbit and the rock badger; because they cause the cud to go up and do not part the hoof, they {are} unclean to you. ⁸ And the pig, because he parts the hoof and {chews} not the cud, he {is} unclean to you. From their meat do not eat, and do not touch their carcasses.

⁹ You may eat this from all that is in the water: all that has fins and scales you may eat. ¹⁰ And all that does not have fins and scales you must not eat; it {is} unclean to you.

¹¹ All clean birds you may eat. ¹² And this {is} what you must not eat from them: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard ¹³ the kite ^[1] and the falcon, and the kite in its kinds ¹⁴ and any raven ^[2] in its kind ¹⁵ and the daughter of clamor and the owl and the gull and the hawk in its kinds ¹⁶ the little owl and the great owl and the waterhen ¹⁷ and the pelican and the ibis and the cormorant ¹⁸ and the stork and the heron in its kind and the hoopoe and the bat.

¹⁹ And all winged, swarming things are unclean to you; they must not be eaten. ²⁰ You may eat all clean flying things.

²¹ You must not eat anything dying {of itself}; you may give it to the sojourner who {is} within your gates, and he may eat it or sell to a foreigner. For you {are} a nation sanctified to Yahweh your God.

You must not boil a young goat in the milk of its mother.

²² Tithing, you shall tithe all the produce of your seed that comes out of the field year {after} year. ²³ And you shall eat before the face of Yahweh your God, in the place that he will choose for his name to dwell there, the tithe of your grain, your new wine, and your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and your flock, so that you will learn to honor Yahweh your God all the days. ²⁴ And if the journey is too long for you—that you are not able to carry it because the place that Yahweh your God will choose to place his name there is too far from you—when Yahweh your God blesses you, ²⁵ then you may give it in money, and bind the money in your hand, and go to the place that Yahweh your God will choose it. ²⁶ And give the money for anything that your soul desires: for oxen or for sheep or for wine or for strong drink or for anything that your soul desires; and you shall eat there before the face of Yahweh your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household. ²⁷ And the Levite who {is} within your gates—do not forsake him, for he has no portion or inheritance with you.

²⁸ At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in that year, and you shall deposit {it} within your gates; ²⁹ and the Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow who {are} within your gates will come and eat and be satisfied so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hand that you do.

Chapter 15

¹ At the end of seven years, you shall make a remission. ² And this {is} the word of the remission: Every owner of debt shall release his hand that he has loaned to his neighbor; he shall not oppress his neighbor or his brother, because the remission of Yahweh has been proclaimed. ³ You may collect {from} a foreigner; and what is yours {with} your brother your hand shall release. ⁴ However, there should be no poor among you (for blessing, Yahweh will bless you in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance, to possess it), ⁵ if only listening, you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, to keep doing all these commandments that I am commanding you today. ⁶ For Yahweh your God will bless you, as he spoke to you; you will lend to many nations, and you yourself will not borrow; and you will rule over many nations, and they will not rule over you.

⁷ If there is a poor man among you, from one of your brothers, within one of your gates in your land that Yahweh your God is giving to you, do not harden your heart and do not shut your hand from your poor brother; ⁸ but opening, you shall open your hand to him and lending, you shall lend him enough {for} his need that he has need. ⁹ Watch yourselves, lest you have a wicked matter in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, {is} near,’ and you do wrong in your eyes against your poor brother and do not give to him, and he calls out to Yahweh about you, and it would be sin for you. ¹⁰ Giving, you shall give to him, and your heart shall not do evil in your giving to him; because of this matter Yahweh your God will bless you in all your work and in all the sending out of your hand. ¹¹ For the poor will not cease to be among the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘Opening, you shall open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor in your land.’

¹² If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you must send him out, free from you. ¹³ And when you send him out free from you, you must not send him emptily. ¹⁴ Providing, you shall liberally provide for him from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your winepress. As Yahweh your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. ¹⁵ And you must remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God redeemed you; therefore I am commanding you today this matter.

¹⁶ And it will be, if he says to you, ‘I will not go from you,’ because he loves you and your house, because {it is} good for him {to be} with you, ¹⁷ then you shall take an awl and put {it} in his ear and to a door, and he shall be your slave forever. And also you shall do thus to your female servant.

¹⁸ It must not seem difficult in your eyes for you to send him out free from you, because he has served you six years {with} twice the value of a hired man. And Yahweh your God will bless you in all that you do.

¹⁹ All the firstborn that are born in your herd and your flock, you shall sanctify the males to Yahweh your God. You shall not work with the firstborn of your herd, and you shall not shear the firstborn of your flock. ²⁰ You must eat it year by year before the face of Yahweh your God in the place that Yahweh will choose, you and your house. ²¹ And if it has on it a blemish—lame or blind, any severe blemish—you must not sacrifice it to Yahweh your God. ²² You shall eat it within your gates; the unclean and the clean alike, as a gazelle or a deer. ²³ Only you must not eat its blood; you must pour it out on the ground like water.

Chapter 16

¹ Keeping the month of Aviv, and you shall make the Passover to Yahweh your God, for in the month of Aviv, Yahweh your God brought you out from Egypt {by} night. ² And you shall sacrifice the Passover to Yahweh your God, the flock and the herd, in the place that Yahweh will choose {for} his name to dwell there. ³ You shall not eat with it leavened bread; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread on it, the bread of affliction; for you came out from the land of Egypt in haste. Thus, you will remember the day of your exit from the land of Egypt all the days of your life. ⁴ And no yeast shall be seen among you in all your borders seven days; and nothing from the meat that you sacrifice in the evening on the first day shall remain until the morning.

⁵ You may not sacrifice the Passover within any of your gates that Yahweh your God is giving to you. ⁶ Instead, at the place that Yahweh your God will choose {for} his name to dwell, there you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening at the going down of the sun, at the appointed time of your exit from Egypt. ⁷ And you shall cook and eat in the place which Yahweh your God will choose it; and in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents. ⁸ Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day {is} a festive assembly for Yahweh your God; do not do work.

⁹ You shall count seven weeks for yourself; from the beginning of the sickle on the grain you shall start counting seven weeks. ¹⁰ And you shall make the Festival of Weeks for Yahweh your God {with} the contribution of a freewill offering of your hand that you shall give, as Yahweh your God has blessed you. ¹¹ And you will rejoice before the face of Yahweh your God—you and your son and your daughter and your male servant and your female servant and the Levite who {is} within your gates and the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow who {are} among you, in the place that Yahweh your God will choose {for} his name to dwell there.

¹² And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall keep and do these statutes.

¹³ You must make the Festival of Shelters for yourselves seven days into your gathering from your threshing floor and from your winepress. ¹⁴ And you shall rejoice in your festival—you and your son and your daughter and your male servant and your female servant and the Levite and the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow who {are} within your gates. ¹⁵ Seven days you shall celebrate for Yahweh your God at the place that Yahweh will choose, because Yahweh your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and you will be completely joyful.

¹⁶ Three times in a year all your males shall appear before the face of Yahweh your God at the place that he will choose: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and at the Festival of Weeks, and at the Festival of Shelters. And he shall not appear before the face of Yahweh emptily; ¹⁷ {every} man according to the giving of his hand, according to the blessing of Yahweh your God that he has given to you.

¹⁸ You shall set for yourself judges and officers within all your gates that Yahweh your God is giving to you, from your tribes, and they shall judge the people {with} righteous judgment. ¹⁹ You shall not twist a judgment; you shall not recognize a face and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise ones and perverts the words of the righteous ones. ²⁰ Righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue, so that you will live and possess the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you.

²¹ You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah, any pole, beside the altar of Yahweh your God, which you shall make for yourself. ²² And you shall not erect for yourself a pillar, which Yahweh your God hates.

Chapter 17

¹ Do not sacrifice to Yahweh your God an ox or a sheep that has on it a blemish, any bad thing, for it {is} an abomination to Yahweh your God.

² If {there} is found among you, in any of your gates that Yahweh your God is giving to you, a man or a woman who does evil in the eyes of Yahweh your God, transgressing his covenant, ³ —and follows and serves other gods and bows down to them and to the sun or to the moon or to any of the multitude of the heavens, which I have not commanded— ⁴ and {it} is told to you, and you listen, and you investigate thoroughly, and behold, {it is} true {and} certain the matter has been done, this abomination in Israel, ⁵ then you shall bring that man or that woman who has done this evil thing to your gates, the man or the woman, and you shall stone them with stones, and they shall die. ⁶ At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall die. He shall not die at the mouth of one witness. ⁷ The hand of the witnesses shall be the first on him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people; and you shall remove the evil from among you.

⁸ If a case is too difficult for you to judge, between blood and blood, between a lawsuit and a lawsuit, and between an assault and an assault, cases of dispute in your gates, then you shall arise and go up to the place which Yahweh your God will choose it. ⁹ And you shall go to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge who will be {there} at that time; and you shall inquire, and they will tell you the word of the judgment. ¹⁰ And you shall do according to the mouth of the word that they tell you, from that place that Yahweh will choose, and keep doing according to all that they teach you. ¹¹ According to the mouth of the law that they teach you, and according to the judgment that they say to you, you shall do. Do not turn aside from the word that they tell you, right or left. ¹² And the man who does arrogantly, not listening to the priest who is standing there to serve Yahweh your God or to the judge—then that man shall die, and you shall remove the evil from Israel. ¹³ And all the people will hear and fear, and be arrogant no more.

¹⁴ When you have come to the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you, and you take possession of it and live in it, and you say, ‘I shall set a king over myself, like all the nations that surround me,’ ¹⁵ setting, you shall set as king over yourself him whom Yahweh your God will choose. You shall set as king over yourself from among your brothers. You shall not put a foreign man, who is not your brother, over yourself. ¹⁶ Only he shall not multiply horses for himself; and he shall not cause the people to return to Egypt so that he may multiply horses, for Yahweh said to you, ‘You will no longer return that way again.’ ¹⁷ And he shall not multiply wives for himself, and his heart will not turn aside. And he shall not multiply for himself silver and gold excessively.

¹⁸ And it will be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, then he shall write for himself in a scroll a copy of this law before the faces of the priests, the Levites, ¹⁹ and it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear Yahweh his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them, ²⁰ so that his heart is not lifted up above his brothers and so that he does not turn aside from the commandments, right or left, so that he will prolong days in his kingdom, he and his sons, in the midst of Israel.

Chapter 18

¹ The priests, the Levites, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion nor inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the gifts of Yahweh as their inheritance. ² And they shall have no inheritance among their brothers; Yahweh is their inheritance, as he spoke to them.

³ And this is the ordinance of the priests, from the people, from those who offer a sacrifice, whether an oxen or a sheep: and they shall give the shoulder and the two cheeks and the innards to the priest. ⁴ The firstfruits of your grain, your new wine and your oil and the first of the fleece of your sheep you shall give to him. ⁵ For Yahweh your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand to serve in the name of Yahweh, him and his sons, all of the days.

⁶ And if a Levite comes from one of your towns from all Israel where he is living there and desires with all his soul to come to the place that Yahweh will choose, ⁷ then he shall serve in the name of Yahweh his God as all his brothers the Levites, who stand there before the face of Yahweh. ⁸ They shall eat portions alike portions, besides from the sale of his fathers.

⁹ When you have come into the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you, you shall not learn to do as the abominations of those nations. ¹⁰ There shall not be found among you one who causes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, a user of divination, a soothsayer or a diviner or a sorcerer ¹¹ or a maker of charms or a questioner of mediums or a conjurer of spirits or a seeker of the dead. ¹² For all who do these {are} an abomination {to} Yahweh; and because of these abominations, Yahweh your God is driving them out from before your face. ¹³ You shall be blameless with Yahweh your God.

¹⁴ For these nations, those which you will dispossess, listen to sorcerers and to diviners; but you, thus Yahweh your God has not allowed you. ¹⁵ Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet from among you, from your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him, ¹⁶ according to all that you asked from Yahweh your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘We will not continue to hear the voice of Yahweh our God, and we will not see this great fire anymore or we will die.’

¹⁷ And Yahweh said to me, ‘What they have said is good. ¹⁸ I shall raise up a prophet for them from among their brothers, just like you. And I shall set my words on his lips, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. ¹⁹ And it will happen, the man who does not listen to my words that he speaks in my name, I will require {it} from him. ²⁰ But the prophet who speaks a word arrogantly in my name what I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet shall die.’

²¹ And thus you must say in your heart: ‘How will we recognize a word that Yahweh has not spoken?’ ²² When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, and the thing does not happen and does not come to pass, it {is} a word that Yahweh has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it arrogantly; you shall not be afraid of him.

Chapter 19

¹ When Yahweh your God cuts off the nations, that Yahweh your God is giving their land to you, and you dispossess them and live in their cities and their houses, ² you shall select three cities for yourself in the midst of your land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to possess it. ³ You shall prepare for yourself a road and make the borders of your land three, which Yahweh your God is causing you to inherit, and it will be, everyone who murders shall flee there.

⁴ And this {is} the matter of the killer who flees there and lives—who strikes his neighbor without knowledge, and he did not hate him from previous times, ⁵ and who goes into the forest {with} his neighbor to chop wood and his hand swings the ax to cut the wood, and the iron detaches from the wood and finds his neighbor, and he dies—he shall flee to one of these cities and live. ⁶ Lest the avenger of blood pursues after the killer when his heart is heated and overtakes him, because the way is long, and he strikes him {to} the life, and he did not have a judgment of death, for he had not hated him from previous times. ⁷ Therefore I command you, saying, ‘Select three cities for yourself.’

⁸ And if Yahweh your God enlarges your borders, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives to you all the land that he spoke {about} to give to your fathers; ⁹ if you keep all these commandments to do them, which I am commanding you today—to love Yahweh your God and to walk in his ways all of the days, then you shall add three more cities for yourself, more than these three. ¹⁰ And you shall not spill innocent blood in the midst of the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance, and bloodshed will be upon you.

¹¹ And if there is a man who hates his neighbor and ambushes him and rises up against him and strikes him {to} the life, and he dies, and he flees into one of these cities— ¹² then the elders of his city shall send out and take him from there and give him into the hand of the redeemer of blood, then he shall die. ¹³ Your eye shall not pity him; and you shall remove the blood of the innocent from Israel, and it will go well for you.

¹⁴ You shall not displace the boundary of your neighbor of which he first set the bounds, in your inheritance that you will inherit, in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to possess it.

¹⁵ One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sins; upon the mouth of two witnesses or upon the mouth of three witnesses a matter may be raised.

¹⁶ If a false witness rises up against a man to testify falsehood against him, ¹⁷ then the two men that have the controversy shall stand before the face of Yahweh, before the faces of the priests and the judges who will be in those days. ¹⁸ And the judges shall inquire thoroughly; and behold, {if the} witness {is} false—the false witness testified against his brother— ¹⁹ then you shall do to him as he had planned to do to his brother, and you shall remove the evil from among you. ²⁰ Then the remnant will hear and fear, and will not continue to do anymore as this evil thing among you. ²¹ And your eyes shall not have pity; a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.

Chapter 20

¹ When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses and chariots, a people more numerous than you, you shall not be afraid of them; for Yahweh your God {is} with you, who raised you up from the land of Egypt. ² And it will be, as you draw near to the battle, then the priest shall approach and speak to the people. ³ And he shall say to them, ‘Listen, Israel, you are approaching today to battle against your enemies. You shall not soften your hearts. You shall not fear or panic or be terrified of them, ⁴ for Yahweh your God goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.’

⁵ And the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘Who {is} the man that has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man dedicates it. ⁶ And who {is} the man that has planted a vineyard and has not put it into use? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man puts it to use. ⁷ And who {is} the man that is engaged {to} a woman and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man takes her.’

⁸ And the officers shall continue to speak to the people and say, ‘Who {is} the man who fears and {is} soft of heart? Let him go and return to his house, and the heart of his brother will not melt like his heart.’ ⁹ And it will be, as the officers finish speaking to the people, then they shall appoint leaders of the armies as heads of the people.

¹⁰ When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then you shall call to it for peace. ¹¹ And it will be, if it answers, ‘Peace,’ and opens to you, then it will be, all the people found in it shall become for you as forced labor and serve you. ¹² And if it does not make peace with you and makes war with you, then you shall siege upon it, ¹³ and Yahweh your God will give it into your hand, and you shall strike every foreigner by the mouth of the sword. ¹⁴ But the women and the children and the cattle and everything that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself, and you shall consume the spoil of your enemies, whom Yahweh your God has given to you. ¹⁵ Thus you shall do to all the cities very far from you, which {are} not from the cities of these nations here.

¹⁶ Only from the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance, all breathing things shall not live. ¹⁷ But, you shall indeed destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, as Yahweh your God has commanded you ¹⁸ so that they do not teach you to do like any of their abominations that they do for their gods, for you will sin against Yahweh your God.

¹⁹ When you lay siege to a city many days, battling against it to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against it. For you shall eat from them, and you shall not cut them down. For is the tree of the field a man coming before your face to besiege? ²⁰ But a tree that you know that is not a tree for food, you shall destroy it and cut down; and you shall build siege works against the city which it makes war with you, until it falls.

Chapter 21

¹ If one slain is found in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to possess it, fallen in the field, {and} it is not known who has struck him, ² then your elders and your judges shall go out, and they shall measure to the cities that surround the slain. ³ And it will be, the town nearest to the slain, and the elders of that town shall take a heifer of the herd, one that has not been put to work, which has not drawn a yoke. ⁴ And the elders of that city shall cause the heifer to descend to a valley with running water, that has not been worked in, nor sown, and there they shall break the neck of the heifer in the valley. ⁵ And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for Yahweh your God has chosen them to serve him and give blessing in the name of Yahweh, and upon their mouth is every dispute and every assault. ⁶ And all the elders of that city, the nearest one to the slain, shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; ⁷ and they shall respond and say, ‘Our hands have not spilled this blood, and our eyes have not seen {it}. ⁸ Cover, Yahweh, your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and you will not put the blood of the innocent in the midst of your people Israel.’ And the blood will be covered for them. ⁹ And you shall remove the blood of the innocent from your midst, when you do right in the eyes of Yahweh.

¹⁰ When you go out to battle against your enemies, and Yahweh your God gives them into your hands and you deport it {as} captive, ¹¹ and you see among the captives a woman of beautiful form, and you desire her and take for yourself as a wife, ¹² then you shall bring her to the midst of your house. And she shall shave her head and do her nails, ¹³ and she shall remove the clothes of her captivity from upon her, and she shall live in your house and weep {for} her father and her mother a month of days. And afterwards, you shall go in to her and marry her, and she shall be your wife. ¹⁴ And it will be, if you do not delight in her, then you shall send her to her desires, but you surely shall not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her in return for humiliating her.

¹⁵ If a man has two wives, one loved and one hated, and they have borne him sons—the loved and the hated—and it happens that the firstborn son {is} of the hated, ¹⁶ then it will be, on the day he causes his sons to inherit what he has, he shall not {make} the son of the beloved as the firstborn upon the face of the son of the hated, the firstborn. ¹⁷ But, he shall recognize the firstborn, the son of the hated, giving to him a double portion of all that is found of his; for he {is} the beginning of his strength; the regulation of the firstborn {is} his.

¹⁸ If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and they chastise him, but he will not listen to them, ¹⁹ then his father and his mother shall seize him and bring him to the elders of his city and to the gate of his place. ²⁰ And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours {is} stubborn and rebellious; he will not listen to our voice; {he is} a glutton and a drunkard.’ ²¹ And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, and he shall die; and you shall remove the evil from among you. And all Israel will hear and fear.

²² And if a man has sinned, a judgment of {which is} death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, ²³ his corpse shall not remain on the tree. Instead, you shall surely bury him that day; for cursed of God {is} a hanged man. And you shall not defile your land that Yahweh your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance.

Chapter 22

¹ You shall not see the ox of your brother or his sheep be scattered and hide yourself from them; you shall surely return them to your brother. ² And if your brother {is} not near to you, or you do not know him, then gather it to the middle of your house, and it must be with you until your brother seeks it, and you shall return it to him. ³ And thus you shall do for his donkey; and thus you shall do for his clothing; and thus you shall do for every lost thing of your brother, which is lost from him and you have found it; you shall not hide yourself.

⁴ You shall not see the donkey of your brother or his ox fallen down in the road and hide yourself from them; you shall surely lift it up.

⁵ The garments of a man shall not be on a woman, and neither shall a man wear the clothing of a woman; for all who do these {are} an abomination to Yahweh your God.

⁶ If the nest of a bird is encountered before your face on the road, in any tree or on the ground, {with} young ones or eggs, and the mother lying down on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the children. ⁷ You shall surely send out the mother, but the children you may take for yourself, so that it may go well with you, and you may prolong {your} days.

⁸ When you build a new house, then you shall make a railing for your roof, and you will not bring blood on your house if one who falls should fall from it.

⁹ You shall not plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest all the produce of the seed that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard is made holy.

¹⁰ You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

¹¹ You shall not wear mixed material—wool and linen together.

¹² You shall make tassels for yourself on the four corners of your garment with which you cover {yourself}.

¹³ If a man takes a wife, and he goes in to her and hates her ¹⁴ and accuses her of shameful things and brings against her a bad name and says, ‘I took this woman, and I came near to her, and I did not find her virginity,’ ¹⁵ then the father of the girl and the mother shall take and bring the virginity of the girl to the elders {at} the city gate. ¹⁶ And the father of the girl shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man as a wife, and he hates her. ¹⁷ And behold, he has set forth shameful things, saying, “I did not find virginity in your daughter.” But these {are} the virginity of my daughter.’ And they shall spread the garment out before the faces of the elders of the city. ¹⁸ And the elders of that city shall take the man and rebuke him; ¹⁹ and they shall fine him 100 silvers, and give them to the father of the girl, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife; he shall not send her away all his days.

²⁰ But if this thing is true, virginity was not found in the girl, ²¹ then they shall bring out the girl to the door of the house of her father, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones, and she shall die, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel, to commit fornication {in} the house of her father; and you shall remove the evil from among you.

²² If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall die, even the two of them, the man lying with the woman and the woman; and you shall remove the evil from Israel.

²³ If {there} is a virgin girl, engaged to a man, and {another} man finds her in the city and lies with her, ²⁴ then you shall take both of them to the gate of that city, and stone them with stones, and they shall die—the girl, on account of the matter that she did not cry out in the city, and the man, on account of the matter that he humiliated the wife of his neighbor; and you shall remove the evil from among you.

²⁵ And if the man finds the engaged girl in the field, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die. ²⁶ But to the girl you shall not do a thing; there is no sin of death in the girl. For as a man rises up against his neighbor and murders him, the life, thus {is} this matter. ²⁷ For he found her in the field; the engaged girl cried out, {but there} was no one to save her.

²⁸ If a man finds a virgin girl that is not engaged, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, ²⁹ then the man who lay with her shall give 50 silvers to the father of the girl, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not send her away all his days.

³⁰ A man shall not take the wife of his father; and he shall not uncover the hem of his father.

Chapter 23

¹ The injured {by} mutilation or male organ being cut off shall not enter the assembly of Yahweh.

² No illegitimate child shall enter the assembly of Yahweh; even his tenth generation shall not enter the assembly of Yahweh.

³ An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the assembly of Yahweh; even their tenth generation shall not enter the assembly of Yahweh, until forever ⁴ on account of the matter that they did not meet you with bread and with water on the road when you had come out from Egypt, and that they hired against you Balaam son of Beor from Pethor {in} Aram Naharaim, to curse you. ⁵ But Yahweh your God was not willing to listen to Balaam, and Yahweh your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because Yahweh your God loved you. ⁶ You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity, all your days, to forever.

⁷ You shall not detest an Edomite, for he {is} your brother; you shall not detest an Egyptian, because you were a foreigner in his land. ⁸ The sons that are born to them, the third generation, they may enter the assembly of Yahweh.

⁹ When you go out, encamped against your enemies, then you shall keep from every evil thing. ¹⁰ If there is among you a man who is not clean, happening {at} night, then he shall go to the outside of the camp; he shall not come to the middle of the camp. ¹¹ And it will happen, turning evening, he shall bathe himself in water, and as the sun goes, he shall go in to the middle of the camp. ¹² And you shall have a place outside the camp, and you may go outside there, ¹³ and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it happens when you are sitting yourself out, then you shall dig with it and put back and cover up your excrement. ¹⁴ For Yahweh your God walks in the midst of your camp to give you victory and to give your enemies before your faces. And your camp shall be holy, and he will not see an unclean thing among you and turn away from you.

¹⁵ You shall not deliver a slave to his master who has escaped to you from his master. ¹⁶ He shall live with you, in your midst, in the place that he chooses, in one of your gates as good to him. Do not oppress him.

¹⁷ No cultic prostitute shall be from the daughters of Israel, and no cultic prostitute shall be from the sons of Israel. ¹⁸ You shall not bring the wages of a prostitute or the price of a dog {into} the house of Yahweh your God for any vow; for even both of them {are} abominations to Yahweh your God.

¹⁹ You shall not charge interest to your brother—interest of money, interest of food, interest of each thing that is charged interest. ²⁰ You may charge interest to a foreigner; but to your brother you shall not charge interest, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the sending out of your hand, in the land which you are going into to possess it.

²¹ When you vow a vow to Yahweh your God, you shall not delay to fulfill it, for Yahweh your God shall surely require it from you; and {it} would be sin for you. ²² And if you refrain from vowing, {it} will not be sin for you. ²³ What has gone out from your lips you shall keep and do as you have vowed to Yahweh your God, a vow that you have spoken with your mouth.

²⁴ When you go into the vineyard of your neighbor, then you may eat grapes as your spirit {is} satisfied, but you shall not put {any} in your vessel. ²⁵ When you go in the stalks of your neighbor, then you may pluck ears of wheat with your hand, but you shall not wave a sickle on the stalks of your neighbor.

Chapter 24

¹ When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens, if she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found an indecent thing in her, then he shall write for her a letter of divorce and put {it} into her hand and send her out from his house. ² And she shall go out from his house, and she may go and be another man’s. ³ And {if} the latter husband hates her and writes her a letter of divorce and puts {it} into her hand and sends her out from his house; or if the latter husband dies, who took her as his wife, ⁴ her first husband, who had sent her away, shall not be able to take her again to be his wife after she has become impure; for it {is} an abomination before the face of Yahweh, and you shall not make the land sinful, which Yahweh your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance.

⁵ When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out with the army, neither shall he pass on himself any matter; he shall be free for his house one year and will cheer his wife whom he has taken.

⁶ He shall not impound a mill or an upper millstone, for it {is} a life for a pledge.

⁷ If a man is found stealing a life from his brothers from the sons of Israel, and mistreats him and sells him, then that thief shall die; and you shall remove the evil from among you.

⁸ Guard against a plague of skin disease, to firmly keep and do according to all that the priests, the Levites, teach you; as I commanded them, you shall keep doing. ⁹ Remember what Yahweh your God did to Miriam on the way when you were coming out from Egypt.

¹⁰ When you lend to your neighbor any loan, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. ¹¹ You shall stand outside, and the man whom you have lent to shall bring the pledge outside to you. ¹² And if he {is} a poor man, you shall not lie asleep with his pledge. ¹³ You shall certainly restore to him the pledge as the sun goes down, and he will sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be righteousness for you before the face of Yahweh your God.

¹⁴ You shall not oppress a poor and needy hired man from your brothers or from the foreigners who {are} in your land, within your gates. ¹⁵ In his day you shall give his wage, and the sun shall not go down on it, for he {is} poor and he lifts up his life to it. Then he will not call against you to Yahweh and have it be for you a sin.

¹⁶ Fathers shall not be put to death on account of sons, and sons shall not be put to death on account of fathers. A man shall be put to death for his sin.

¹⁷ You shall not twist the judgment of the foreigner {or} the fatherless, and you shall not take for a pledge the garment of a widow. ¹⁸ And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and Yahweh your God redeemed you from there. Therefore, I command you to do this word.

¹⁹ When you reap your harvest in your field, and you forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to take it; it shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, or for the widow, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. ²⁰ When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the branches after yourself; it shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, or for the widow. ²¹ When you gather your vineyard, you shall not glean after yourself. It shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, or for the widow. ²² And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Therefore, I command you to do this word.

Chapter 25

¹ If there is a dispute between men and they go to the judgment, and they judge them, then they shall declare the righteous as just and declare the wicked as unjust. ² And if the wicked man is a son of striking, then the judge shall cause him to lie down and be beaten before his face as {is} enough in number {for} his wickedness. ³ He shall not add to his 40 blows, lest he add his striking of him {with} many {more} blows than these, and your brother is humiliated before your eyes.

⁴ You shall not muzzle an ox in his threshing.

⁵ If brothers live together and one of them dies, and he does not have a son, the wife of the dead man shall not be for a strange man from outside. Her brother-in-law shall go in to her and take her for himself as a wife, and {be} her brother in law. ⁶ And it will happen, the firstborn that she bears will rise up upon the name of his brother who died, and his name will not be wiped out from Israel.

⁷ But if the man does not delight in taking his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My brother-in-law refuses to raise up for his brother a name in Israel; he is not willing {to be} my brother-in-law.’ ⁸ And the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him. If he stands and says, ‘I do not delight in taking her.’ ⁹ Then his brother’s wife shall come to him before the eyes of the elders and take off his sandal from his foot and spit in his face. And she shall respond and say, ‘Thus is done to the man who does not build up the house of his brother.’ ¹⁰ And his name will be called in Israel, ‘The house of the sandal taken off.’

¹¹ If men fight with each other, a man and his brother, and the wife of one comes to rescue her husband from the hand of his attacker, and she stretches out her hand and seizes him by his genitals, ¹² then you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall have no pity.

¹³ You shall not have in your bag a weight and a weight, a large and a small. ¹⁴ You shall not have in your house a measure and a measure, a large and a small. ¹⁵ A perfect and just weight you shall have; a perfect and just measure you shall have, so that your days will be long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you. ¹⁶ For all who do these, all who do injustice {are} an abomination {to} Yahweh your God.

¹⁷ Remember what Amalek did to you on the road as you came out from Egypt, ¹⁸ how he met you on the road and attacked you from behind, all the stragglers following you, and you {were} faint and weary; and he did not fear God. ¹⁹ And it will happen, when Yahweh your God has given to you rest from all your surrounding enemies, in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to possess {as} an inheritance, you shall wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens; you shall not forget.

Chapter 26

¹ And it will happen, when you have come into the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance and you possess it and live in it, ² then you shall take from the first of all the harvest of the land that you have brought in from the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you. And you shall put {it} in a basket and go to the place that Yahweh your God will choose {for} his name to dwell there. ³ And you shall go to the priest who will be in those days and say to him, ‘I declare today to Yahweh your God that I have come to the land that Yahweh swore to our fathers to give to us.’ ⁴ And the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it before the face of the altar of Yahweh your God. ⁵ And you shall respond and say before the face of Yahweh your God, ‘My father {was} a wandering Aramean. And he went down to Egypt and stayed there—his people {were} few—and there he became a great, mighty, and numerous nation. ⁶ And the Egyptians treated us badly and afflicted us. And they set it—hard work—upon us. ⁷ And we cried out to Yahweh, the God of our fathers, and Yahweh heard our voice and saw our affliction and our labor and our oppression. ⁸ And Yahweh brought us out from Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with great fearsomeness and with signs and with wonders; ⁹ and he has brought us to this place and has given to us this land, a land flowing {with} milk and honey.

             ¹⁰ And now, behold, I have brought the first of the harvest of the land that Yahweh has given to me.’ And you shall set it down before the face of Yahweh your God and bow down before the face of Yahweh your God; ¹¹ and you shall rejoice in all the good that Yahweh your God has given to you and to your house—you and the Levite and the foreigner who {is} among you.

¹² When you have finished tithing all the tithe of your harvest in the third year—the year of tithing—then you shall give {it} to the Levite, to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, and they may eat within your gates and be satisfied. ¹³ And you shall say before the face of Yahweh your God, ‘I have removed from my house the things set apart, and also have given it to the Levite, and to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all your commandments that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, neither have I forgotten. ¹⁴ I have not eaten from it in my mourning, nor have I removed from it in sin, nor have I given from it to the dead. I have listened to the voice of Yahweh my God; I have done according to all that you have commanded me. ¹⁵ Look down from your holy habitation, from the heavens, and bless your people, Israel, and the land that you have given to us, as you had sworn to our fathers, a land flowing {with} milk and honey.’ ¹⁶ This day Yahweh your God is commanding you to obey these statutes and ordinances; and you shall keep and do them with all your heart and with all your spirit. ¹⁷ You have declared today: Yahweh is your God, and you shall walk in his ways and keep his statutes and his commandments and his ordinances, and you shall listen to his voice. ¹⁸ Today Yahweh has declared that you are his, a people for a possession, as he had spoken to you, and to keep all his commandments, ¹⁹ and he will set you high above all the nations that he has made, for praise and for a name and for beauty. And you will be a sanctified people for Yahweh your God, just as he has spoken.”

Chapter 27

¹ And Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people, saying, “Keep all the commandments that I command you today. ² And it will be, on the day when you cross the Jordan to the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you, then you shall erect for yourself large stones and plaster them with plaster. ³ And you shall write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over; so that you may go into the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you, a land flowing {with} milk and honey, as Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you. ⁴ And it will be, when you have crossed the Jordan, erect these stones that I am commanding you today, on Mount Ebal, and plaster them with plaster. ⁵ And there you shall build an altar to Yahweh your God, an altar of stones; you shall not brandish an iron tool on them. ⁶ You shall build the altar of Yahweh your God of untouched stones; and you shall sacrifice burnt offerings on it to Yahweh your God, ⁷ and you shall sacrifice peace offerings and eat there; and you shall rejoice before the face of Yahweh your God. ⁸ And you shall write on the stones all the words of this law very plainly.”

⁹ And Moses and the priests, the Levites, spoke to all Israel, saying, “Be silent and listen, Israel: This day you have become the people of Yahweh your God. ¹⁰ And hear the voice of Yahweh your God and do his commandments and statutes that I am commanding you today.”

¹¹ And Moses commanded the people on that day, saying, ¹² “These shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people when you have crossed the Jordan: Simeon and Levi and Judah and Issachar and Joseph and Benjamin. ¹³ And these shall stand for the curse on Mount Ebal: Reuben, Gad and Asher and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.

¹⁴ And the Levites shall respond and say to all the men of Israel {in} a loud voice: ¹⁵ ‘Cursed {is} the man who makes a carved image or cast figure, an abomination {to} Yahweh, the work of the hands of a craftsman, and sets up secretly.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’

             ¹⁶ ‘Cursed {is} the one who dishonors his father or his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ¹⁷ ‘Cursed {is} the one who displaces the boundary of his neighbor.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ¹⁸ ‘Cursed {is} the one who misleads a blind man on the road.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

¹⁹ ‘Cursed {is} the one who twists a judgment of a foreigner, fatherless, or widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ²⁰ ‘Cursed {is} the one who lies with the wife of his father, because he has uncovered the hem of his father.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ²¹ ‘Cursed {is} the one who lies with any beast.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ²² ‘Cursed {is} the one 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 {is} the one who lies with his mother-in-law.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ²⁴ ‘Cursed is the one who strikes his neighbor secretly.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ²⁵ ‘Cursed is the one who takes a bribe to strike a life of innocent blood.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

             ²⁶ ‘Cursed is the one who does not keep the words of this law, to do them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

Chapter 28

¹ And it will be, if you indeed listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, to keep doing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, then Yahweh your God will set you higher than all the nations of the earth. ² And all these blessings will come on you and reach you, if you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God. ³ Blessed you {will be} in the city, and blessed you {will be} in the field. ⁴ Blessed {will be} the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock. ⁵ Blessed {will be} your basket and your kneading trough. ⁶ Blessed you {will be} in your coming in, and blessed you {will be} in your going out.

⁷ Yahweh shall let your enemies who rise up against you be struck down before your faces; they will come out against you one way but will flee before your faces seven ways. ⁸ Yahweh will command for you the blessing in your barns and in all the sending out of your hand; and he will bless you in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you. ⁹ Yahweh will establish you as his sanctified people, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, and walk in his ways. ¹⁰ And all the peoples of the earth will see that the name of Yahweh is called on your side, and they will be afraid of you. ¹¹ And Yahweh will make you abound in prosperity in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground, in the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers to give to you. ¹² Yahweh will open to you his treasure, the good of the heavens, to give rain {for} your land at the appointed time, and to bless all the work of your hand; and you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. ¹³ And Yahweh will set you as head, and not as tail; and you will be only above, and you will not be beneath, if you listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God that I am commanding you today, to keep and do. ¹⁴ and do not turn away from any of the words that I am commanding you today, right or left, going after other gods to serve them.

¹⁵ And it will happen, if you do not listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, to keep doing all his commandments and his statutes that I am commanding you today, then all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. ¹⁶ Cursed you {shall be} in the city, and cursed you {shall be} in the field. ¹⁷ Cursed {shall be} your basket and your kneading trough. ¹⁸ Cursed {shall be} the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock. ¹⁹ Cursed you {shall be} in your coming in, and cursed you {shall be} in your going out.

²⁰ Yahweh will send against you curses, confusion, and rebukes in all the sending out of your hand that you will do until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly from the faces of your wicked deeds by which you will have forsaken me. ²¹ Yahweh will make the plague cling to you until he has finished you from off the land which you are going into to possess it. ²² Yahweh will smite {you} with emaciation and with fever and with inflammation and with fiery heat and with a sword and with scorching winds and with mildew. And they will pursue you until you perish. ²³ And your skies that {are} over your head shall be bronze, and the earth that {is} under you {shall be} iron. ²⁴ Yahweh will allow the rain of your land {to be} powder and dust; from the heavens it will come down on you until you are destroyed.

²⁵ Yahweh shall let you be struck down before the faces of your enemies; you will go out one way against him but will flee before his face seven ways. And you will be trembling before all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶ And your corpse will be as food for all the birds of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth; and there will be none to startle {them}. ²⁷ Yahweh will smite {you} with the boils of Egypt and with ulcers and with rash and with itch, from which you are not able to be healed. ²⁸ Yahweh will smite {you} with madness and with blindness and with confusion of heart. ²⁹ And you will be groping about at noon like the blind grope in the darkness, and you will not succeed in your ways; and you shall be again oppressed and robbed all of the days, and there will be no deliverer. ³⁰ You shall betroth a woman, but another man will violate her. You shall build a house but not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard but not use it. ³¹ Your ox {shall be} slain before your eyes, but you will not eat from it. Your donkey shall be robbed from before your face and will not be returned to you. Your sheep {shall be} given to your enemies, and there will be no deliverer for you. ³² Your sons and your daughters {shall be} given to other peoples, and your eyes will look on and will long for them all the day, and your hand will have no strength. ³³ A nation that you do not know shall eat the fruit of your land and all your labor, and you will be only oppressed and crushed all the days. ³⁴ And you shall become insane from the view of your eyes that you will see. ³⁵ Yahweh will smite {you} with bad boils on the knees and on the legs that you will not be able to heal, from the bottom of your foot and to the top of your head.

³⁶ Yahweh will lead you and your king that you will raise up over yourself to a nation that you have not known, you nor your fathers; and there you shall serve other gods, {of} wood and stone. ³⁷ And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where Yahweh will drive you there. ³⁸ You shall take much seed out {into} the field, but will gather little seed in, for the locusts will consume it. ³⁹ You shall plant vineyards and cultivate {them}, but you will not drink the wine nor harvest, for the worms will eat it. ⁴⁰ You shall have olive trees within all your territory, but you will not grease yourself {with} the oil, for your olives will become detached. ⁴¹ You shall bear sons and daughters, but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. ⁴² All your trees and the fruit of your ground—the crickets will take possession. ⁴³ The foreigner who {is} among you will rise up above you higher {and} higher; and you will descend lower {and} lower. ⁴⁴ He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he will be the head, and you will be the tail. ⁴⁵ And all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed because you did not listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. ⁴⁶ And they shall be on you as signs and as wonders, and on your seed until forever.

⁴⁷ Because you did not serve Yahweh your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart from the abundance of everything. ⁴⁸ so you shall serve your enemies that Yahweh will send against you: in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he destroys you. ⁴⁹ Yahweh will lift up a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, like an eagle flies, a nation whose language you do not understand; ⁵⁰ a nation fierce of face, which does not lift up a face for the elder and does not favor the young. ⁵¹ And it shall eat the fruit of your cattle and the fruit of your land until you are destroyed, which will leave for you no grain, new wine, or oil, young of your cattle or young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. ⁵² And it shall besiege you within all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you had trusted, come down in all your land. And it shall besiege you within all your gates, in all your land that Yahweh your God has given to you. ⁵³ And you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and your daughters, whom Yahweh your God gave to you, in the siege and in the distress when your enemies oppress you. ⁵⁴ The tender man among you and the very delicate, his eye shall do wrong against his brother and against the wife of his bosom and against the remainder of his children that remain. ⁵⁵ without giving to any of them from the flesh of his children that he will eat, since nothing remains for himself {at} all in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy will oppress you within all your gates. ⁵⁶ The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not attempt to set the bottom of her foot on the ground because of delicateness and tenderness—her eye shall do wrong against the husband of her bosom and against her son and against her daughter ⁵⁷ and against her afterbirth coming out from between her legs and against the children whom she will bear, for she will secretly eat them {for} lack of anything else, in the siege and in the distress which your enemy will set upon you within your gates.

⁵⁸ If you do not keep doing all the words of this law that are written in this book, to fear this glorious and dreaded name, Yahweh your God, ⁵⁹ then Yahweh will cause wonderful afflictions—your plagues and the plagues of your seed {will be} great and enduring plagues and great and enduring sicknesses. ⁶⁰ And he will bring back to you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid of their faces; and they will cling to you. ⁶¹ Also every sickness and every plague that {is} not written in the scroll of this law, Yahweh will cause them to rise against you until you are destroyed. ⁶² And you shall remain few in number, although you were like the stars of the heavens in number, because you did not listen to the voice of Yahweh your God. ⁶³ And it will happen, as Yahweh rejoiced over you in doing you good, and in multiplying you, so Yahweh will rejoice over you in causing you to perish and in destroying you. And you will be torn away from the land which you are going into to possess it. ⁶⁴ And Yahweh will scatter you among all the peoples from {one} end of the earth and to the {other} end of the earth; and there you will serve other gods of wood and stone that you have not known, you or your fathers. ⁶⁵ And among these nations you will not have peace, and there will be no rest for the sole of your foot. And there Yahweh will give you a trembling heart and failing eyes and a mourning spirit. ⁶⁶ And it will happen, your life will hang before you, and you will fear, night and day, and you will have no certainty in your life. ⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘Who gives evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘Who gives morning!’ because of the fear in your hearts that you fear and the view of your eyes that you will see. ⁶⁸ And Yahweh will bring you back {to} Egypt by ships, by the route which I had said to you, ‘You will not continue to see it again.’ And there you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male slaves and female slaves, but there will be no buyers.”

Chapter 29

¹ These {are} the words of the covenant that Yahweh commanded Moses to cut {with} the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had cut with them at Horeb.

² And Moses called to all Israel and said to them, “You have seen everything that Yahweh did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land— ³ the great sufferings that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. ⁴ But until this day Yahweh has not given to you a heart to know or eyes to see or ears to hear. ⁵ ‘And I have led you 40 years in the wilderness; your clothes did not wear out on you, and your sandals did not wear out on your feet. ⁶ You did not eat bread, and you did not drink wine or alcohol, so that you might know that I {am} Yahweh your God.’ ⁷ And you came to this place, and Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us for the battle, and we struck them down. ⁸ And we took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites and to the Gadites and to the half tribe of Manasseh. ⁹ And you shall keep the words of this covenant and do them so that you may prosper in everything that you do.

¹⁰ You stand today, all of you, before the face of Yahweh your God—your chiefs, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, ¹¹ your children, your wives, and the foreigner who {is} among you in your camp, from him who cuts your wood to him who draws your water— ¹² to enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God and into the oath that Yahweh your God is cutting with you today ¹³ so that he may raise you up today into a people for himself and he may be God for you, as he spoke to you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, ¹⁴ and not only with you am I cutting this covenant and this oath, ¹⁵ but {with} those who are standing here with us today before the face of Yahweh our God, and {with} those who are not here with us today.

¹⁶ For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we went through in the midst of the nations which you passed through, ¹⁷ and you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood and stone, silver and gold, that {were} among them, ¹⁸ lest there is among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from Yahweh our God to go serve the gods of those nations, lest there is among you a root bearing gall and wormwood. ¹⁹ And it will be, when he hears the words of this curse, then he will bless himself in his heart, saying, ‘I will have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,’ so that the wet {and} the dry are swept away. ²⁰ Yahweh is not willing to forgive him. Instead, the nose of Yahweh and his jealousy will smolder against that man, and all the curses written in this book will rest on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under the heavens. ²¹ And Yahweh will separate him for disaster from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.

²² And the latter generation, your children who will rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, will say, when they see the plagues of that land and the diseases with which Yahweh has made it sick, ²³ ‘All its land {is} sulfur and burning salt; no one sows and nothing sprouts and not any grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which Yahweh destroyed in his nose and in his wrath,’ ²⁴ and all the nations will say, ‘Because of what has Yahweh done such to this land? What {is} the heat of this great nose?’ ²⁵ And they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, that he cut with them when he brought them out from the land of Egypt, ²⁶ and they went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods that they had not known, and they had no portion of. ²⁷ So the nose of Yahweh burned against that land to bring on it all the curses written in this book, ²⁸ and Yahweh has torn them away from their land in nose and in wrath and in great fury and has thrown them into another land, as this day.’ ²⁹ The secret things {are} of Yahweh our God; but the revealed things {are} for us and for our sons until forever, in order to do all the words of this law.

Chapter 30

¹ When it happens that all these things have come on you—the blessings and the curses that I have set before your faces—and you return to your heart among all the nations where Yahweh your God has driven you there, ² and you return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice, according to all that I am commanding you today—you and your sons—with all your heart and with all your spirit, ³ then Yahweh your God will turn back your captivity and have compassion on you, and he will return and gather you from all the peoples where Yahweh your God has scattered you there. ⁴ If your scattered people are in the end of the heavens, from there Yahweh your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. ⁵ And Yahweh your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, and you will possess it; and he will do you good and will multiply you more than your fathers. ⁶ And Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to the love of Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your spirit, so that you may live. ⁷ And Yahweh your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on haters of you, who pursued you. ⁸ And you will return and listen to the voice of Yahweh, and you will do all his commandments that I am commanding you today. ⁹ And Yahweh your God will give you prosperity in all the work of your hand and in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground, for goodness; for Yahweh will again rejoice over you for goodness, as he rejoiced over your fathers, ¹⁰ if you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, keeping his commandments and his statutes written in this book of the law, if you return to Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your spirit.

¹¹ For this commandment that I am commanding you today is not {too} wonderful for you, and it is not far away. ¹² It {is} not in heaven, saying, ‘Who will go up for us to heaven and take it to us and cause us to hear it, and let us do it?’ ¹³ Neither{is} it beyond the sea, saying, ‘Who will go over to beyond the sea for us and take it to us and cause us to hear it, and let us do it?’ ¹⁴ But the word {is} very near to you, in your mouth and your heart, so that you may do it.

¹⁵ See, today I have placed before your faces life and good and death and evil. ¹⁶ For I am commanding you today to love Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, and you will live and multiply, and Yahweh your God will bless you in the land which you are going into to possess it. ¹⁷ But if your heart turns away and you do not listen but are drawn away and bow down to other gods and serve them, ¹⁸ I announce to you today that you will surely perish; you will not prolong {your} days in the land which you are crossing over the Jordan to go into to possess it. ¹⁹ I call the heavens and the earth to witness against you today: I have set before your faces life and death, the blessings and the curses; and choose life so that you may live, you and your seed, ²⁰ to love Yahweh your God, to listen to his voice, and to cling to him—for he {is} your life and the length of your days—so you may live in the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them.”

Chapter 31

¹ Then Moses went and spoke these words to all Israel. ² And he said to them, “I am 120 years old today; I am not able anymore to go out and come in; and Yahweh has said to me, ‘You will not go over this Jordan.’ ³ Yahweh your God, he will go over before your faces; he will destroy these nations from before your faces, and you will dispossess them. Joshua, he will go over before your faces, as Yahweh has spoken. ⁴ And Yahweh will do to them as he did to Sihon and to Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, that which he destroyed. ⁵ And Yahweh will give them before your faces, and you shall do to them according to all the commandments that I commanded you. ⁶ Be strong and courageous, you shall not fear, and you shall not be afraid of their faces; for Yahweh your God, he goes with you; he will not fail you nor forsake you.” ⁷ And Moses called to Joshua and said to him in the eyes of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you will go {with} this people into the land that Yahweh has sworn to their fathers to give to them; and you will cause them to inherit it. ⁸ And Yahweh, he goes before your faces; he will be with you; he will not fail you nor abandon you; you shall not fear and you shall not be dismayed.”

⁹ And Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carry the box of the covenant of Yahweh, and to all the elders of Israel. ¹⁰ And Moses commanded them, saying, “At the end of seven years, at the appointed time of year of the remission, during the Festival of Shelters, ¹¹ when all Israel shall come to appear {before} the face of Yahweh your God in the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their ears. ¹² Assemble the people, the men, and the women, and the children, and your foreigner who is within your gates, so that they may hear and so that they may learn and fear Yahweh your God and keep doing all the words of this law. ¹³ And their sons, who do not know, may hear and learn to fear Yahweh your God all the days that you live in the land to which you are crossing over the Jordan to possess it.”

¹⁴ And Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, your dying day is approaching; call Joshua and present yourselves in the tent of meeting, and I will command him.” And Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tent of meeting. ¹⁵ And Yahweh appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud; and the pillar of cloud stood over the door of the tent. ¹⁶ And Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, you will sleep with your fathers; and this people will rise up and whore after the strange gods of the land in the midst of which it is going to. And they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have cut with them. ¹⁷ And, on that day, my nose will burn against them, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured, and many disasters and troubles will find them. And they will say on that day, ‘Have not these disasters found us because my God is not in my midst?’ ¹⁸ And I will surely hide my face on that day because of all the evil that they will have done, because they have turned to other gods. ¹⁹ And now, write this song for yourselves and teach it to the sons of Israel. Put it in their mouths, so that this song may be a witness for me against the sons of Israel. ²⁰ When I bring them to the land that I swore to their fathers, flowing {with} milk and honey, and they eat and become satisfied and fat, then they will turn to other gods and they will serve them and they will despise me and break my covenant. ²¹ And it will be, when many evils and troubles find it, then this song will testify before its face as a witness (for it will not be forgotten from the mouths of its seed). For I know the intent that it is making today, before I have brought them into the land that I promised.” ²² And Moses wrote this song on that day and taught it to the sons of Israel. ²³ And he commanded Joshua son of Nun and said, “Be strong and courageous; for you shall bring the sons of Israel into the land that I swore to them, and I will be with you.”

²⁴ And it happened as Moses finished writing the words of this law in a scroll until {it was} complete, ²⁵ that Moses commanded the Levites, who carried the box of the covenant of Yahweh, saying, ²⁶ “Take this scroll of the law and put it by the side of the box of the covenant of Yahweh your God, and {it} will be there as a witness against you. ²⁷ For I know your rebellion and your hard neck; behold, while I am still alive with you today, you have been rebellious against Yahweh; and also surely after my death. ²⁸ Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, and let me speak these words in their ears and call the heavens and the earth to witness against them. ²⁹ For I know that after my death you will surely corrupt yourselves and turn aside from the path that I have commanded you; and disaster will meet you in the following days, because you will do evil in the eyes of Yahweh, provoking him to anger through the work of your hands.”

³⁰ And Moses spoke in the ears of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song until {it was} finished.

Chapter 32

     ¹ Give ear, heavens, and let me speak,

         and let the earth listen to the utterances of my mouth.

     ² Let my teaching drop like rain,

         my saying mist like dew,

     like sprinkling on the green,

         and like downpours on the grass.

 

     ³ For the name of Yahweh I proclaim,

         ascribe greatness to our God!

     ⁴ The Rock, his work {is} perfect,

         for all his ways {are} just.

     A faithful God without iniquity,

         righteous and upright {is} he.

 

     ⁵ Did he act corruptly to him?

         No, his sons {are} the disgrace,

         a perverse and crooked generation.

     ⁶ {Is} this how you reward Yahweh,

         people foolish and without wisdom?

     {Is} he not your father, your shaper?

         He made you and established you.

 

     ⁷ Remember the days of eternity,

         consider the years of generation upon generation.

     Ask your father, and he will inform you,

         your elders, and they will tell you.

     ⁸ When the Most High gave the nations an inheritance—

         when he divided the sons of man,

     he defined the boundaries of the peoples,

         numbered the sons of Israel.

     ⁹ For the portion of Yahweh {is} his people,

         Jacob {is} his allotted inheritance.

 

     ¹⁰ He found him in a wilderness land,

         and in the barren, howling desert.

     He surrounded him and gave mind to him,

         watched over him as the apple of his eye.

     ¹¹ Like an eagle rouses his nest,

         over his young he hovers,

     {He} spread his wings, {he} took him,

         carried him on his pinions.

     ¹² Yahweh alone led him,

         and no foreign god with him.

 

     ¹³ He placed him on heights of the land,

         and fed {him} the fruits of the field,

     and he nourished him {with} honey from the crag,

         and oil from the flinty stone,

     ¹⁴ curd of cattle and milk of flocks,

         with fat of lambs,

     and rams of the sons of Bashan, and goats,

         with fat kernels of wheat—

     and the blood of grapes you drank {as} mead.

 

     ¹⁵ And Jeshurun fattened and kicked—

         you were fat, you thickened, you gorged—

     and he abandoned the God {who} made him,

         and he rejected the Rock of his salvation.

     ¹⁶ He provoked him with strangers.

         With their abominations they angered him.

     ¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons, not God—

         gods they had not known,

     new ones come recently,

         {whom} your fathers had not feared.

     ¹⁸ The Rock, your bearer, you neglected

         and you forgot the God {who} gave you birth.

 

     ¹⁹ And Yahweh saw, and he spurned,

         from the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

     ²⁰ And he said, “Let me hide my face from them,”

         “I shall see what their end {will be;}

     for a perverse generation {are} they,

         children {with} no faithfulness in them.

     ²¹ They provoked me with a not-god,

         angered me by their worthless things,

     so I will provoke them with a not-people;

         by a foolish nation I will anger them,

     ²² for a fire flares in my nose,

         and burns to the lowest Sheol,

     and devours the earth and its yield,

         and scorches the foundations of the mountains.

 

     ²³ I will increase disasters on them;

         I will spend my arrows on them,

     ²⁴ wasted {by} hunger

         and weakened {by} plague and bitter contagion,

     and on the teeth of beasts I will send them,

         with the poison of crawlers {in the} dust.

     ²⁵ Outside the sword will bereave,

         and in the bedrooms, terror,

     both young man and virgin,

         the suckling, with the gray-haired man.

     ²⁶ I said I would wipe them out.

         I would remove from mankind their memory

     ²⁷ if the provocation of the enemy I did not fear,

         lest their adversaries misjudge,

     lest they say, ‘Our hand {is} exalted,

         and Yahweh did not carry out all this.’

 

     ²⁸ For a nation devoid of counsel {are} they,

         and without understanding in them.

     ²⁹ If they were wise, they would comprehend this;

         they would understand their latter days!

     ³⁰ How could one chase a thousand,

         or two put to flight ten thousands,

     unless their Rock sold them,

         and Yahweh gave them up?

     ³¹ For not like our Rock {is} their rock,

         and {thus} our enemies assess.

     ³² For from the vine of Sodom {is} their vine,

         and from the vineyards of Gomorrah;

     their grapes {are} grapes of poison;

         their clusters {are} bitter.

     ³³ The venom of serpents {is} their wine,

         and the cruel poison of vipers.

 

     ³⁴ Is it not concealed with me,

         sealed up among my treasures?

     ³⁵ Mine {is} vengeance and recompense,

         at the time when their foot slips,

     for the day of their disaster {is} near,

         and the things prepared for them hasten.

 

     ³⁶ For Yahweh vindicates his people,

         and by his servants he is grieved.

     For he will see that gone is {their} hand,

         and none {are} kept back or let free.

     ³⁷ And he will say, “Where {are} their gods,

         the rock in whom they took refuge?—

     ³⁸ who ate the fat of their sacrifices,

         drank the wine of their libations?

     Let them rise up and help you;

         let them be for you protection.

 

     ³⁹ See, now, that I, I {am} he,

         and there is no god besides me.

     I put to death and give life.

         I wound, and I heal,

         and no one rescues from my hand,

     ⁴⁰ for I lift up my hand to heaven

         and say, ‘{As} I live forever.’

     ⁴¹ When I sharpen my glittering sword,

         and my hand seizes justice,

     I will return vengeance on my enemies,

         and I will pay back those who hate me.

     ⁴² I will make my arrows drunk with blood,

         and my sword will devour flesh,

     with the blood of the slain and the captives,

         from the heads of the leaders of the enemy.”

 

     ⁴³ Rejoice, nations, {with} his people,

         for the blood of his servants he will avenge,

     and vengeance he will return on his enemies,

         and he will cover his land, his people.

⁴⁴ And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Joshua son of Nun. ⁴⁵ And Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel. ⁴⁶ And he said to them, “Set your hearts on all the words which I bore witness to you today, that you may command your children to keep doing all the words of this law. ⁴⁷ For it {is} no empty thing for you, because it {is} your life, and through this thing you may prolong {your} days in the land to which you are crossing over the Jordan to possess it.”

⁴⁸ And Yahweh spoke to Moses on this same day, saying, ⁴⁹ “Go up to this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which {is} in the land of Moab, that {is} on the face of Jericho. And you will see the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel as a possession. ⁵⁰ And you will die on the mountain which you are going up to, and you will be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. ⁵¹ Because you were unfaithful to me among the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribah {in} Kadesh, {in the} wilderness of Zin; because you did not honor me among the sons of Israel. ⁵² For you will see the land from the front, but you will not go there, into the land that I am giving to the sons of Israel.”

Chapter 33

¹ And this {is} the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the sons of Israel before the face of his death. ² And he said:

     Yahweh from Sinai came

         and rose from Seir to them,

         shone forth from Mount Paran,

     and came with ten thousands of holy ones,

         in his right hand, lightning for them.

     ³ Yes, he loves the peoples.

         All his sanctified {are} in your hand,

     and they will be tied to your feet,

         he is lifted up by your words.

     ⁴ ‘A law Moses commanded to us,

         a possession for the assembly of Jacob.’

     ⁵ And he became a king in Jeshurun,

         when the heads of the people had gathered,

         together the tribes of Israel.

 

     ⁶ Let Reuben live and not die,

         but let his men be few.

⁷ And this {is} for Judah. And he said:

     Listen, Yahweh, {to} the voice of Judah,

         and to his people bring him.

     Let his hand strive for himself,

         and a help against his enemies you will be.

⁸ And for Levi, {he} said:

     Your Thummim and your Urim

         are of your godly man,

     whom you tested at Massah.

         You strove against him {at} the waters of Meribah

     ⁹ who said of his father and of his mother,

         ‘I have not seen them,’

     and his brothers he did not acknowledge,

         and his sons he did not know,

     for he guarded your speech

         and your covenant he kept.

     ¹⁰ He teaches your ordinances to Jacob,

         and your law to Israel.

     He will put incense before your nose,

         and whole offerings on your altar.

     ¹¹ Bless, Yahweh, his possessions,

         and the work of his hands accept.

     Shatter the loins of those who rise up against him,

         and haters of him, lest they rise up.

¹² To Benjamin, he said:

     The beloved of Yahweh lives in security beside him.

         He covers him all the day,

         and between his shoulders he lives.

¹³ And to Joseph, he said:

     “Blessed of Yahweh {be} his land,

         from the bounty of heaven, from dew,

         and from the deep lying beneath,

     ¹⁴ and from the bounty of the harvest of the sun,

         and from the bounty of the produce of the months,

     ¹⁵ and from the heads of ancient mountains,

         and from the bounty of eternal hills,

     ¹⁶ and from the bounty of earth and from its fullness,

         and the favor of the bush-dweller.

     Let them come on the head of Joseph,

         and on the top of the head of the prince of his brothers.

     ¹⁷ His firstborn ox {is} his majesty,

         and the horns of a wild ox {are} his horns.

     With them he will ram the peoples

         together to the ends of the earth,

     And they {are} the ten thousands of Ephraim,

         and they {are} the thousands of Manasseh.

¹⁸ And to Zebulun, he said:

     Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out,

         and Issachar, in your tents.

     ¹⁹ Peoples they will call {to} the mountain.

         There they will sacrifice sacrifices of righteousness.

     For the abundance of the seas they suckle,

         and treasures hidden {in the} sand.

²⁰ And to Gad, he said:

     Blessed be the increaser of Gad.

         Like a lioness he will live,

         and tear off an arm, also a head.

     ²¹ And he saw the first for himself,

         for there the decreed portion {is} reserved.

     And he came {with} the heads of the people.

         The justice of Yahweh he carried out,

         and his judgments with Israel.

²² And to Dan, he said:

     Dan {is} a lion cub

         leaping out from Bashan.

²³ And to Naphtali, he said:

     Naphtali, satisfied {with} favor,

         and full of the blessing of Yahweh,

         the west and the south, you will possess.

²⁴ And to Asher, he said:

     Blessed among sons {is} Asher.

         Let him be favored {among} his brothers,

         and bathe in oil his foot.

     ²⁵ Iron and bronze your gate-bolts,

         and as your days, your security.”

 

     ²⁶ {There is} no one like God of Jeshurun,

         riding the heavens to your help,

         and in his majesty {on} the clouds.

     ²⁷ A refuge {is} the God of ancient days,

         and underneath {are} the eternal arms.

     And he thrust out the enemy from before your faces,

         and he said, ‘Destroy!’

     ²⁸ And Israel dwelt {in} safety

         secure, the spring of Jacob

     in a land of grain and new wine.

         Indeed, let his heavens drop dew.

     ²⁹ Your happiness, Israel!

         Who {is} like you, a people saved by Yahweh,

     the shield of your help,

         and who {is} the sword of your majesty?

     And your enemies will fawn over you,

         but you, on their high places will trample.

Chapter 34

¹ Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, {to} the top of Pisgah, which {is} against the face of Jericho. And Yahweh showed him all the land of Gilead as far as Dan, ² and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, to the western sea, ³ and the Negev, and the plain of the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. ⁴ And Yahweh said to him, “This {is} the land that I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your seed.’ I have showed you, to your eyes, but you will not go over there.” ⁵ And Moses, the servant of Yahweh, died there in the land of Moab, according to the mouth of Yahweh. ⁶ And he buried him in the valley, in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor, but no one knows {where} his grave is to this day. ⁷ And Moses {was} 120 years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor had his vigor fled. ⁸ And the sons of Israel mourned Moses in the plains of Moab 30 days, and the days of the tears of mourning {for} Moses were finished.

⁹ And Joshua son of Nun {was} full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. And the sons of Israel listened to him and did what Yahweh had commanded Moses. ¹⁰ And a prophet like Moses has not arisen in Israel since, whom Yahweh knew face to face, ¹¹ for all the signs and wonders that Yahweh sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, ¹² and for all the mighty hand and for all the fearsome {and} great {things} that Moses did before the eyes of all Israel.