The events at Mount Horeb

4 Now, Israel, in light of all that, listen to the regulations and the case laws that I am teaching you to follow, so that you may live, enter, and possess the land that the Lord, your ancestors’ God, is giving to you. ² Don’t add anything to the word that I am commanding you, and don’t take anything away from it. Instead, keep the commands of the Lord your God that I am commanding all of you.

³ You saw with your own eyes what the Lord did concerning the Baal of Peor. The Lord your God destroyed everyone who followed the Baal of Peor, ⁴ but all of you who stayed true to the Lord your God are alive today. ⁵ So pay attention! I am teaching all of you the regulations and the case laws exactly as the Lord my God commanded me. You must do these in the land you are entering to possess. ⁶ Keep them faithfully because that will show your wisdom and insight to the nations who will hear about all these regulations. They will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and insightful people!” ⁷ After all, is there any great nation that has gods^[a] as close to it as the Lord our God is close to us whenever we call to him? ⁸ Or does any great nation have regulations and case laws as righteous as all this Instruction that I am setting before you today?

⁹ But be on guard and watch yourselves closely so that you don’t forget the things your eyes saw and so they never leave your mind as long as you live. Teach them to your children and your grandchildren. ¹⁰ Remember that^[b] day when you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me: “Gather the people to me. I will declare my words to them so that they will learn to fear me every day of their lives on the fertile land, and teach their children to do the same.” ¹¹ Then you all came close and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was blazing with fire up to the sky, with darkness, cloud, and thick smoke! ¹² The Lord spoke to you out of the very fire itself. You heard the sound of words, but you didn’t see any form. There was only a voice. ¹³ The Lord declared his covenant to you, which he commanded you to do—the Ten Commandments^[c]—and wrote them on two stone tablets. ¹⁴ At that time, the Lord commanded me to teach you all the regulations and the case laws that you must keep in the land that you are entering to possess.

¹² Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that none of you have an evil, unfaithful heart that abandons the living God. ¹³ Instead, encourage each other every day, as long as it’s called “today,” so that none of you become insensitive to God because of sin’s deception.