Deuteronomy 4

¹Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the ordinances that I am teaching you to do, so that you may live and go in and possess the land that the Lord, the God of the ancestors of you all, is giving you.

²You shall not add to the word that I am commanding you, nor shall you diminish from it, in order to keep the commandments of the LORD, God of you all, that I am commanding you.

³Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-peor, for every man who went after Baal-peor, the LORD your God destroyed him from your midst.

⁴But you who clung to the LORD, the God of you all, are alive today, every one of you.

⁵See, I have taught you statutes and ordinances just as the Lord my God commanded me, to do so in the land into which you are coming to possess it.

⁶So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and they will say, Surely a wise and discerning nation is this great nation.

⁷For what great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call to him?

⁸And what great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances as righteous as all this Torah that I am placing before you today?

⁹Only be on your guard and watch yourself very diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and to your children's children.

¹⁰The day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when the LORD said to me: Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, which they shall learn, so that they may fear me all the days that they are alive upon the ground, and their sons they shall teach.

¹¹And you drew near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain was burning with fire to the very heart of the heavens -- darkness, cloud, and thick darkness.

¹²And the LORD spoke to you from the midst of the fire; a sound of words you were hearing, but no form were you seeing -- only a voice.

¹³And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to keep -- the Ten Commandments -- and he wrote them on two stone tablets.

¹⁴And me the LORD commanded at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might do them in the land into which you are crossing over to possess it.

¹⁵So guard yourselves very carefully, for you saw no form of any kind on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire,

¹⁶lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image, the likeness of any figure, the form of a male or a female,

¹⁷the form of any animal that is on the earth, the form of any winged bird that flies in the sky,

¹⁸the form of any creeping thing that creeps on the ground, the form of any fish that is in the waters under the earth --

¹⁹and lest you lift up your eyes to the heavens and see the sun and the moon and the stars -- all the host of the heavens -- and be enticed and bow down to them and serve them, which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under all the heavens.

²⁰But you the LORD took and brought out from the iron-smelting furnace, from Egypt, to be for him a people of inheritance, as at this day.

²¹And the Lord was angry with me on account of your words and swore that I would not cross the Jordan and that I would not enter the good land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

²²For I am dying in this land; I am not crossing the Jordan; but you are crossing over, and you shall possess this good land.

²³Guard yourselves lest you forget the covenant of the LORD, the God of you all, which he cut with you, and you make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything that the LORD your God has commanded you.

²⁴For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

²⁵When you have children and grandchildren, and you have grown old in the land, and you act corruptly and make an idol in the likeness of anything, and you do what is bad in the eyes of the LORD your God, provoking him --

²⁶I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will surely perish quickly from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live long upon it, for you will surely be destroyed.

²⁷And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations to which the LORD will drive you there.

²⁸And you will serve there gods, the work of human hands, wood and stone, that do not see, and do not hear, and do not eat, and do not smell.

²⁹And you will seek from there the LORD your God, and you will find him, if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.

³⁰In your distress, when all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice.

³¹For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; he will not abandon you or destroy you, and he will not forget the covenant of your fathers that he swore to them.

³²For ask, please, of the former days that were before you, from the day that God created man upon the earth, and from one end of heaven to the other -- has anything like this great thing happened, or has anything like it been heard?

³³Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you yourself heard, and lived?

³⁴Or has God ever tried to go to take for himself a nation from the midst of a nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors -- according to all that the LORD your God of you all did for you all in Egypt, before your eyes?

³⁵You were shown all this so that you might know that the Lord, he is God; there is none besides him.

³⁶From the heavens he let you hear his voice to discipline you, and upon the earth he let you see his great fire; and his words you heard from the midst of the fire.

³⁷And because he loved your ancestors and chose his offspring after him, he brought you out by his presence, with his great power, from Egypt.

³⁸to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you from before you, to bring you in to give you their land as an inheritance, as it is this day.

³⁹And you shall know today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD, he is God in heaven above and on earth below -- there is no other.

⁴⁰Keep his statutes and his commandments that I am commanding you today, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and so that you may prolong your days upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for all time.

⁴¹Then Moses set apart three cities across the Jordan toward the sunrise.

⁴²so that a manslayer could flee there, one who kills his neighbor unintentionally and was not his enemy before, so that he could flee to one of these cities and live.

⁴³Bezer in the wilderness in the land of the plateau, for the Reubenite; and Ramoth in Gilead, for the Gadite; and Golan in Bashan, for the Manassite.

⁴⁴This is the Torah that Moses set before the children of Israel.

⁴⁵These are the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances that Moses spoke to the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt.

⁴⁶across the Jordan, in the valley opposite Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorite, who lived in Heshbon, whom Moses and the sons of Israel struck when they came out of Egypt.

⁴⁷And they took possession of his land and the land of Og the king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the east.

⁴⁸from Aroer, which is on the bank of the Wadi Arnon, as far as Mount Siyon -- that is, Hermon --

⁴⁹and all the Arabah, across the Jordan to the east, and as far as the Sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of Pisgah.