Deuteronomy 10:12-11:25

Common English Bible

What the Lord requires

¹² Now in light of all that, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God by walking in all his ways, by loving him, by serving the Lord your God with all your heart and being, ¹³ and by keeping the Lord’s commandments and his regulations that I’m commanding you right now. It’s for your own good!

¹⁴ Clearly, the Lord owns the sky, the highest heavens, the earth, and everything in it. ¹⁵ But the Lord adored your ancestors, loving them and choosing the descendants that followed them—you!—from all other people. That’s how things still stand now. ¹⁶ So circumcise your hearts^[a] and stop being so stubborn, ¹⁷ because the Lord your God is the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t take bribes. ¹⁸ He enacts justice for orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing. ¹⁹ That means you must also love immigrants because you were immigrants in Egypt. ²⁰ Revere the Lord your God, serve him, cling to him, swear by his name alone! ²¹ He is your praise, and he is your God—the one who performed these great and awesome acts that you witnessed with your very own eyes. ²² Your ancestors went down to Egypt with a total of seventy people, but now look! The Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the nighttime sky!

11 So love the Lord your God and follow his instruction, his regulations, his case laws, and his commandments always. ² And know right now what your children haven’t known or yet witnessed:^[b]

⁷ Your own eyes witnessed each of these powerful acts the Lord performed. ⁸ So keep every part of the commandment that I am giving you today so that you stay strong to enter and take possession of the land that you are crossing over to possess, ⁹ and so that you might prolong your life on the fertile land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants—a land full of milk and honey.

¹⁰ The land you are about to enter and possess is definitely not like the land of Egypt, where you came from, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it by hand^[d] like a vegetable garden. ¹¹ No, the land you are entering to possess is a land of hills and valleys, where your drinking water will be rain from heaven. ¹² It’s a land that the Lord cares for: the Lord’s eyes are on it constantly from the first of the year until the very end of the year.

¹³ Now, if you completely obey God’s^[e] commandments that I am giving you right now, by loving the Lord your God and by serving him with all your heart and all your being, ¹⁴ then he^[f] will provide rain for your land at the right time—early rain and late rain—so you can stock up your grain, wine, and oil. ¹⁵ He^[g] will also make your fields lush for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied. ¹⁶ But watch yourselves! Otherwise, your heart might be led astray so you stray away, serving other gods and worshipping them. ¹⁷ Then the Lord’s anger would burn against you. He will close the sky up tight. There won’t be any rain, and the ground won’t yield any of its crops. You will quickly disappear off the wonderful land the Lord is giving to you.

¹⁸ Place these words I’m speaking on your heart and in your very being. Tie them on your hand as a sign. They should be on your forehead as a symbol.^{[h] 19} Teach them to your children, by talking about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up. ²⁰ Write them on your house’s doorframes and on your city’s gates. ²¹ Do all that so your days and your children’s days on the fertile land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors are many—indeed, as many as the number of days that the sky’s been over the earth!

²² It’s true: if you carefully keep all this commandment that I’m giving you, by doing it, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in all his ways, and by clinging to him, ²³ then the Lord will clear out all these nations before you. You will inherit what belonged to nations that are larger and stronger than you are. ²⁴ Every place you set foot on will be yours: your territory will run from the wilderness all the way to the Lebanon range, and from the Euphrates River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. ²⁵ No one will be able to stand up to you. Just as he promised, the Lord your God will make the entire land deathly afraid of you wherever you advance in it.