Deuteronomy - Chapter 4

¹ 'And now, Israel, listen to the laws and customs which I am teaching you today, so that, by observing them, you may survive to enter and take possession of the country which Yahweh, God of your ancestors, is giving you.

² You must add nothing to what I command you, and take nothing from it, but keep the commandments of Yahweh your God just as I lay them down for you.

³ You can see for yourselves what Yahweh has done about the Baal of Peor; Yahweh your God has destroyed all those of you who followed the Baal of Peor;

⁴ but those of you who stayed faithful to Yahweh your God are all alive today.

⁵ Look: as Yahweh my God commanded me, I have taught you laws and customs, for you to observe in the country of which you are going to take possession.

⁶ Keep them, put them into practice, and other peoples will admire your wisdom and prudence. Once they know what all these laws are, they will exclaim, "No other people is as wise and prudent as this great nation!"

⁷ And indeed, what great nation has its gods as near as Yahweh our God is to us whenever we call to him?

⁸ And what great nation has laws and customs as upright as the entirety of this Law which I am laying down for you today?

⁹ 'But take care, as you value your lives! Do not forget the things which you yourselves have seen, or let them slip from your heart as long as you live; teach them, rather, to your children and to your children's children.

¹⁰ The day you stood at Horeb in the presence of Yahweh your God, Yahweh said to me, "Summon the people to me; I want them to hear me speaking, so that they will learn to fear me all the days they live on earth, and teach this to their children."

¹¹ So you came and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain flamed to the very sky, a sky darkened by cloud, murky and thunderous.

¹² Yahweh then spoke to you from the heart of the fire; you heard the sound of words but saw no shape; there was only a voice.

¹³ He revealed his covenant to you and commanded you to observe it, the Ten Words which he inscribed on two tablets of stone.

¹⁴ Yahweh then ordered me to teach you the laws and customs that you were to observe in the country into which you are about to cross, to take possession of it.

¹⁵ 'Hence, be very careful what you do. Since you saw no shape that day at Horeb when Yahweh spoke to you from the heart of the fire,

¹⁶ see that you do not corrupt yourselves by making an image in the shape of anything whatever: be it statue of man or of woman,

¹⁷ or of any animal on the earth, or of any bird that flies in the heavens,

¹⁸ or of any reptile that crawls on the ground, or of any fish in the waters under the earth.

¹⁹ When you raise your eyes to heaven, when you see the sun, the moon, the stars -- the entire array of heaven -- do not be tempted to worship them and serve them. Yahweh your God has allotted these to all the other peoples under heaven,

²⁰ but Yahweh has chosen you, bringing you out of the iron-foundry, Egypt, to be his own people, his own people as you still are today.

²¹ 'Yahweh is angry with me because of you; he has sworn that I shall not cross the Jordan or enter the fine country which Yahweh your God is giving you as your heritage.

²² Yes, I am to die in this country; I shall not cross this Jordan; you will go over and take possession of that rich land.

²³ Be careful not to forget the covenant which Yahweh your God has made with you, by sculpting an image or making a statue of anything, since Yahweh your God has forbidden this;

²⁴ for Yahweh your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

²⁵ 'When you have fathered children and grandchildren and have grown old in the country, when you have grown corrupt and made some image, doing what Yahweh regards as wrong and so provoking his anger-

²⁶ today I call heaven and earth to witness against you -- you will quickly vanish from the country which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. Your days will not be prolonged there, for you will be utterly destroyed.

²⁷ Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and only a small number of you will remain among the nations where Yahweh will have driven you.

²⁸ There you will serve gods made by human hand, of wood and of stone, that cannot see or hear, eat or smell.

²⁹ 'If, however, from there you start searching once more for Yahweh your God, and if you search for him honestly and sincerely, you will find him.

³⁰ You will suffer; everything I have said will befall you, but in the final days you will return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice.

³¹ For Yahweh your God is a merciful God and will not desert or destroy you or forget the covenant which he made on oath with your ancestors.

³² 'Put this question, then, to the ages that are past, that have gone before you, from when God created the human race on earth: Was there ever a word so majestic, from one end of heaven to the other? Was anything like it ever heard?

³³ Did ever a people hear the voice of the living God speaking from the heart of the fire, as you have heard it, and remain alive?

³⁴ Has it ever been known before that any god took action himself to bring one nation out of another one, by ordeals, signs, wonders, war with mighty hand and outstretched arm, by fearsome terrors -- all of which things Yahweh your God has done for you before your eyes in Egypt?

³⁵ 'This he showed you, so that you might know that Yahweh is the true God and that there is no other.

³⁶ To instruct you, he made you hear his voice from heaven, and on earth he let you see his great fire, and from the heart of the fire you heard his words.

³⁷ Because he loved your ancestors and, after them, chose their descendants, he has brought you out of Egypt, displaying his presence and mighty power,

³⁸ dispossessing for you nations who were larger and stronger than you, to make way for you and to give you their country as your heritage, as it still is today.

³⁹ 'Hence, grasp this today and meditate on it carefully: Yahweh is the true God, in heaven above as on earth beneath, he and no other.

⁴⁰ Keep his laws and commandments as I give them to you today, so that you and your children after you may prosper and live long in the country that Yahweh your God is giving you for ever.'

⁴¹ Moses then set aside three towns in the east, beyond the Jordan,

⁴² to which any killer might flee who had accidentally, without any previous feud, killed his fellow; by taking refuge in one of these towns he could save his life.

⁴³ These were, for the Reubenites, Bezer in the desert on the tableland; for the Gadites, Ramoth in Gilead; for the Manassehites, Golan in Bashan.

⁴⁴ This is the Law which Moses presented to the Israelites.

⁴⁵ These are the stipulations, the laws and the customs which Moses gave the Israelites after they had left Egypt,

⁴⁶ beyond the Jordan in the valley near Beth-Peor, in the country of Sihon the Amorite king who had lived at Heshbon. Moses and the Israelites had defeated him when they left Egypt,

⁴⁷ and had taken possession of his country, as well as that of Og king of Bashan -- two Amorite kings to the east beyond the Jordan,

⁴⁸ from Aroer on the edge of the Arnon Valley, all the way to Mount Sion (that is, Hermon) -

⁴⁹ and of the whole Arabah east of the Jordan as far as the Sea of the Arabah, at the foot of the slopes of Pisgah.

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