Deuteronomy 4

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 God, the God of your fathers, is giving to you.

Do not add onto the word that I command you, and do not take from them, keeping the commandments of God your God that I am commanding you. \*

Your eyes have seen what God did in Baal Peor; for all the men who walked after the Baal of Peor, God your God has destroyed them from your midst.

And you who clung to God your God {are} alive, all of you, today. \*

Look, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as God my God had commanded me, to do so in the midst of the land which you are going into to possess it.

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.’ \*

For which great nation {is there} that has a god near to it, as God our God {is} whenever we call on him?

And, which great nation {is there} that has statutes and ordinances {as} righteous as all this law that I am giving to your faces today? \*

Only guard yourself and guard your soul 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.

{The} day that you stood to the face of God your God at Horeb, when God 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.’ \*

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.

And God spoke to you from the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words, and you saw no form, only a voice. \*

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.

And God 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. \*

And strongly guard your souls, for you did not see any form on {the} day God spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire,

lest you act corruptly, and make for yourselves an idol of the form of any image, a likeness of male or female,

a likeness of any animal that {is} on the earth, a likeness of any winged bird that flies in the heavens,

a likeness of any creeping thing on the ground, a likeness of any fish that {is} in the water under the earth. \*

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 God your God has allotted for all the peoples under all the heavens.

And God has taken you and brought you out of the furnace of iron, from Egypt, to be a people of his inheritance, as this day. \*

And God 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 God your God is giving to you {as} an inheritance.

But I will die in this land. I will not cross the Jordan, but you will cross over and possess that good land. \*

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

For God your God {is} a devouring fire, he {is} a jealous God. \*

If 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 God your God, to cause him to be angry,

I will make the heavens and the earth witness against you today, that perishing, you will 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 being destroyed, you will be destroyed. \*

And God will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left men of {small} number in the nations, where God will drive you there.

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. \*

And from there you will search for God your God, and you will find {him} when you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. \*

When {there is} trouble for you, and you find all these things in the later days, then you will return to God your God and listen to his voice.

For God 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. \*

But ask, please, about previous days, which were to 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.

Did a people hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you, you have heard, and live? \*

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 God your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? \*

You, you have been shown, to know that God, he is God; there is no other besides him.

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. \*

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

to drive out from your faces nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give to you their land {as} an inheritance, as this day. \*

And you shall know today, and you shall return {it} to your heart, that God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. There is none else.

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 God your God is giving to you all of the days.” \*

Then Moses selected three cities on the side of the Jordan toward the rising of {the} sun,

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:

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. \*

And this {is} the law that Moses placed to the faces of the sons of Israel.

These {are} the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments that Moses spoke to the sons of Israel when they came out from Egypt,

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. \*

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—

from Aroer, that {is} on the lip of the wadi of Arnon, and as far as Mount Sion (that {is} Hermon),

and all the Arabah eastward across the Jordan, to the Sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of the Pisgah. \*