Deuteronomy 4:1-49
4 “And now, Israel, listen to the usages and laws that I am teaching you to abide by, so that you may live and go in and take possession of the country that your fathers’ God Jehovah is giving you.
2 You shall never add to the word I am enjoining on you, nor subtract from it, keeping to the commandments of your God Jehovah which I am enjoining on you.
3 Your eyes it was that saw what Jehovah did at Baal-Peghor, that your God Jehovah rooted out from among you all the men that followed Baal-Peghor,
4 but you who stood by Jehovah are all alive today.
5 * See, I have taught you such usages and laws as Jehovah commissioned me to, for you to do right within the country that you are going across to to take possession of it;
6 and you shall be careful to live up to them, because that will be your wisdom and good sense before the eyes of the peoples who shall hear of all these usages and say ‘Decidedly this great nation is a wise and sensible people.’
7 For what great nation is there that has a God near it, as our God Jehovah is whenever we call on him?
8 and what great nation is there that has such just usages and laws as all this code that I am putting before you today?
9 Only be on your guard and guard yourselves well against forgetting all the things your eyes saw, and against letting them pass from your minds as long as you live; but make them known to your children and grandchildren—
10 the day when you stood before your God Jehovah at Horeb when Jehovah said to me ‘Assemble me the people and I will let them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me as long as they are alive above ground, and may teach their children’;
11 and you drew near and stood under the mountain while the mountain blazed with fire up to the heart of the sky, with darkness and cloud and thickened air;
12 and your God Jehovah spoke out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but did not see any form, nothing but a voice.
13 * And he announced to you his covenant which he commanded you to live by, the Ten Things, and wrote them on two stone tablets.
14 * “And Jehovah commanded me at that time to teach you usages and laws for you to live by in the country you are going over into to take possession of it.
15 And keep a sharp watch on your own selves, because you did not see any form on the day when Jehovah spoke to you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire,
16 that you do not viciously make yourselves a statue, a form of any effigy, a figure male or female,
17 a figure of any beast on the earth, a figure of any winged bird that flies in the air,
18 a figure of anything that creeps on the ground, a figure of any fish in the water under the earth,
19 and that you do not raise your eyes skyward and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the legions of the sky, and get astray and do reverence to them and worship them; when your God Jehovah has allotted them to all the peoples under the sky,
20 but you Jehovah has taken and brought you out of the blast-furnace Egypt, that he might have in you a people who should be an estate of his own, as you are this day.
21 And Jehovah was angry at me on your account and swore I was not to cross the Jordan and not to go into the good country your God is giving you as your estate;
22 for I am dying in this country, I am not crossing the Jordan, but you are crossing it and taking possession of this good country.
23 Be on your guard that you do not forget your God Jehovah’s covenant which he made with you, and make yourselves a statue, a form of anything, as your God Jehovah has forbidden you to;
24 for your God Jehovah is a devouring fire, a jealous deity.
25 “When you beget children and grandchildren and come to be natives of the country, and grow vicious and make a statue, a form of anything, and do what displeases your God Jehovah, provoking him,
26 I call the sky and the earth to witness against you today that you shall perish quickly off the country you are crossing the Jordan into to take possession of it; you shall not have a long time on it, but shall be rooted out,
27 and Jehovah will scatter you among the peoples and you shall be left a few persons among the nations to which Jehovah will drive you,
28 and there you shall worship man-made gods, wood and stone, that cannot see nor hear nor eat nor smell.
29 * And from there you shall look about for your God Jehovah, and find him when you seek him with all your heart and soul,
30 when you are in distress and all these things have befallen you in the future days, and you turn back to your God Jehovah and obey him.
31 For your God Jehovah is a tenderhearted deity who will not neglect you nor make away with you, nor forget your fathers’ covenant sworn to by him.
32 * For ask as to olden days before your time, since the day that God created man on earth, and as to any place from edge to edge of the sky, whether the like of this great thing has taken place or been heard of:
33 whether a people has heard a God’s voice speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you did, and has lived,
34 or whether a God has tried coming to take himself a people out from among another people with tests and tokens and prodigies and war and with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with great terrors, like all that your God Jehovah did for you in Egypt before your eyes.
35 “You have been shown, so that you may know, that Jehovah is God: there is no other besides him.
36 Out of the sky he let you hear his voice to bring it home to you, and on earth he showed you his great fire and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire.
37 ** And in return for his having loved your fathers and chosen their descendants after them and personally taken you out of Egypt by his great power,
38 dispossessing before you nations greater and more numerous than you, bringing you in to give you their country as your domain, as he is this day doing,
39 recognize today and put yourselves in mind that Jehovah is God in the heavens above and on the earth below; there is no other;
40 and you are to keep his usages and commandments which I am enjoining on you today, that it may be well with you and with your sons after you, and in order that you may have a long time on the soil your God Jehovah is giving to you for all time.”
41 Then Moses set apart three cities on the east side of the Jordan
42 for the homicide to flee to who had committed manslaughter without knowing it, and had not been hating his neighbor previously, and should flee to one of these cities and have his life:
43 Beser in the wilderness, in the level country, for the Reubenites, and Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites, and Golan in the Bashan for the Manassites.
44 And this is the code Moses set before the sons of Israel;
45 these are the lessons and usages and laws that Moses pronounced to the sons of Israel at their coming out of Egypt,
46 on the other side of the Jordan in the valley in front of Beth-Peghor in the country of King Sihon of the Amorites, whose capital was Heshbon, whom Moses and the sons of Israel defeated at their coming out of Egypt
47 and took possession of his country and of the country of King ʽOg of the Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites on the east side of the Jordan,
48 * from ʽAroʽer on the brink of Arnon Arroyo to Mount Sion, that is, Hermon,
49 and all the Rift Valley on the east side of the Jordan, and to the Dead Sea under the steeps of the Pisgah:
Footnotes
^ 4:5 Or to do so within
^ 4:13 Lit. commanded you to do, the
^ 4:14 Lit. and laws to do in the
^ 4:29-30 Conj. nor smell, when you are in distress and all these things befall you. In later days you shall turn back to your God Jehovah and obey him, and you shall look about from there for your God Jehovah, and find him when you seek him with all your heart and soul.
^ 4:32 Lit. ask for first days that were before you, for from the day that God created man on the earth, and for from the edge of the sky to edge of the sky
^ 4:37 Conj. fire, and lived, because he loved
^ 4:37 Var. his posterity after him
^ 4:48 Var. Mount Sirion
