Deuteronomy 6-9

New American Standard Bible

Obey God and Prosper

6 “Now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may do them in the land where you are going over to take possession of it, ² so that you, your son, and your grandson will ^(A)fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, ^(B)all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. ³ Now Israel, you shall listen and be careful to do them, so that ^(C)it may go well for you and that you may increase greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has ^[a]promised you, in ^(D)a land flowing with milk and honey.

⁴ “^(E)Hear, Israel! The Lord is our God, the ^(F)Lord is one! ⁵ And ^(G)you shall love the Lord your God ^(H)with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ^6 (I)These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. ⁷ And ^(J)you shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. ^8 (K)You shall also tie them as a ^[b]sign to your ^[c]hand, and they shall be as ^[d]frontlets ^[e]on your forehead. ^9 (L)You shall also write them on the ^[f]doorposts of your house and on your gates.

¹⁰ “Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land that He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you, ^(M)great and splendid cities which you did not build, ¹¹ and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and carved cisterns which you did not carve out, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and ^(N)you eat and are satisfied, ¹² be ^[g]careful that ^(O)you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of ^[h]slavery. ^13 (P)You shall ^[i]fear only the Lord your God; and you shall ^[j]worship Him and ^(Q)swear by His name. ^14 (R)You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, ¹⁵ for the Lord your God who is in the midst of you is a ^(S)jealous God; so follow Him, or else the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and He will ^[k]wipe you off the face of the earth.

¹⁶ “^(T)You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, ^(U)as you tested Him at Massah. ^17 (V)You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and His provisions and His statutes which He has commanded you. ¹⁸ You shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that ^(W)it may go well for you and that you may go in and take possession of the good land which the Lord swore to give your fathers, ¹⁹ by driving out all your enemies from you, as the Lord has spoken.

²⁰ “^(X)When your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What do the provisions and the statutes and the judgments mean which the Lord our God commanded you?’ ²¹ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²² Moreover, the Lord provided great and terrible signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh, and all his household; ²³ He brought us out of there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.’ ²⁴ So the Lord commanded us to ^[l]follow all these statutes, ^(Y)to fear the Lord our God for our own good always and ^(Z)for our survival, as it is today. ²⁵ And ^(AA)it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to ^[m]follow all this commandment before the Lord our God, just as He commanded us.

Warnings

7 “^(AB)When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to take possession of it, and He drives away many nations from before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, ^(AC)seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God turns them over to you and you ^[n]defeat them, ^(AD)you shall ^[o]utterly destroy them. ^(AE)You shall not make a covenant with them ^(AF)nor be gracious to them. ³ Furthermore, ^(AG)you shall not intermarry with them: you shall not give your ^[p]daughters to ^[q]their sons, nor shall you take ^[r]their daughters for your ^[s]sons. ⁴ For ^[t]they will turn your ^[u]sons away from ^[v]following Me, and they will serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and ^(AH)He will quickly destroy you. ⁵ But this is what you shall do to them: ^(AI)you shall tear down their altars, smash their memorial stones, cut their ^[w]Asherim to pieces, and burn their carved images in the fire. ⁶ For you are ^(AJ)a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be ^(AK)a people for His personal possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the ^[x]earth.

⁷ “^(AL)The Lord did not ^[y]make you His beloved nor choose you because you were greater in number than any of the peoples, since you were the fewest of all peoples, ⁸ but because the Lord loved you and kept the ^(AM)oath which He swore to your forefathers, ^(AN)the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of ^[z]slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹ Know therefore that the Lord your God, ^(AO)He is God, ^(AP)the faithful God, ^(AQ)who keeps ^[aa]His covenant and ^[ab]His faithfulness to a thousand generations for those who ^(AR)love Him and keep His commandments; ¹⁰ but He ^(AS)repays those who hate Him to ^[ac]their faces, to eliminate ^[ad]them; He will not hesitate toward him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore, you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them.

Promises of God

¹² “^(AT)Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep ^[ae]His covenant with you and ^[af]His faithfulness which He swore to your forefathers. ¹³ And He will ^(AU)love you, bless you, and ^(AV)make you numerous; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain, your new wine, and your oil, the newborn of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, ^[ag]in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you. ¹⁴ You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no sterile male or ^(AW)infertile female among you or among your cattle. ¹⁵ And ^(AX)the Lord will remove from you all sickness; and He will not inflict upon you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will give them to all who hate you. ¹⁶ You shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will turn over to you; ^(AY)your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be ^(AZ)a snare to you.

¹⁷ “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I ^(BA)dispossess them?’ ¹⁸ you are not to be afraid of them; you shall ^(BB)remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: ^19 (BC)the great trials which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders, and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ Indeed, the Lord your God will send ^(BD)the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish. ²¹ You are not to be terrified of them, because ^(BE)the Lord your God is in your midst, ^(BF)a great and awesome God. ^22 (BG)And the Lord your God will drive away these nations from you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, otherwise the ^[ah]wild animals would become too numerous for you. ^23 (BH)But the Lord your God will turn them over to you, and will ^[ai]throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. ^24 (BI)And He will hand over their kings to you, so that you will eliminate their name from under heaven; ^(BJ)no one will be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ The carved images of their gods you are to ^(BK)burn with fire; you shall ^(BL)not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be ^(BM)trapped by it; for it is an ^(BN)abomination to the Lord your God. ²⁶ And you shall not bring an abomination into your house and become ^(BO)designated for destruction, like it; you are to utterly detest it, and you are to utterly loathe it, for it is something designated for destruction.

God’s Gracious Dealings

8 “All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, so that you ^(BP)may live and increase, and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. ^2 (BQ)And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has ^(BR)led you in the wilderness these forty years, in order to humble you, ^(BS)putting you to the test, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. ³ And He humbled you and let you go hungry, and fed you with the manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, in order to make you ^[aj]understand that ^(BT)man shall not live on bread alone, but man shall live on everything that comes out of the mouth of the Lord. ^4 (BU)Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. ^5 (BV)So you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. ⁶ Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to ^[ak]fear Him. ⁷ For ^(BW)the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of streams of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in valleys and hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, of vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat food without shortage, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. ¹⁰ When ^(BX)you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

¹¹ “Be careful that you do not ^(BY)forget the Lord your God by failing to keep His commandments, His ordinances, and His statutes which I am commanding you today; ¹² otherwise, ^(BZ)when you eat and are satisfied, and you build good houses and live in them, ¹³ and when your herds and your flocks increase, and your silver and gold increase, and everything that you have increases, ¹⁴ then your heart will ^[al]become proud and you will ^(CA)forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of ^[am]slavery; ¹⁵ He who led you through ^(CB)the great and terrible wilderness, with its ^(CC)fiery serpents and scorpions, and its thirsty ground where there was no water; He who ^(CD)brought water for you out of the rock of flint. ¹⁶ In the wilderness it was He who fed you manna ^(CE)which your fathers did not know, in order to humble you and in order to ^(CF)put you to the test, to do good for you ^[an]in the end. ¹⁷ Otherwise, ^(CG)you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ But you are to remember the Lord your God, for ^(CH)it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, in order to confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. ¹⁹ And it shall come about, if you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and serve and worship them, ^(CI)I testify against you today that you will certainly perish. ²⁰ Like the nations that the Lord eliminates from you, so ^(CJ)you shall perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

Israel Provoked God

9 “Hear, Israel! You are crossing the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess ^(CK)nations greater and mightier than you, cities that are great and ^(CL)fortified to heaven, ² a people who are great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ‘^(CM)Who can stand against the sons of Anak?’ ³ So be aware today that ^(CN)it is the Lord your God who is crossing over ahead of you as ^(CO)a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that ^(CP)you may drive them out and eliminate them quickly, just as the Lord has spoken to you.

⁴ “^(CQ)Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them away from ^[ao]you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to take possession of this land.’ Rather, it is ^(CR)because of the ^[ap]wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. ⁵ It is ^(CS)not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to take possession of their land, ^[aq]but it is because of the ^[ar]wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and in order to confirm ^(CT)the ^[as]oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁶ “Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are ^(CU)a ^[at]stubborn people. ⁷ Remember, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to anger in the wilderness; ^(CV)from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. ⁸ Even ^(CW)at Horeb you provoked the Lord to anger, and the Lord was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you. ⁹ When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I remained on the mountain for forty days and nights; ^(CX)I neither ate bread nor drank water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone ^(CY)written by the finger of God; and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ It came about ^(CZ)at the end of forty days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. ^12 (DA)Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go down from here quickly, because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have behaved corruptly. They have ^(DB)quickly turned aside from the way that I commanded them; they have made a cast metal image for themselves.’ ¹³ The ^(DC)Lord also said to ^[au]me, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed, it is a ^[av](DD)stubborn people. ^14 (DE)Leave Me alone, that I may destroy them and ^(DF)wipe out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

¹⁵ “^(DG)So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶ And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a cast metal image of a calf; you had quickly turned aside from the way that the Lord had commanded you. ¹⁷ So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my two hands, and smashed them to pieces before your eyes! ^18 (DH)Then I fell down before the Lord ^(DI)like the first time, for forty days and nights; ^(DJ)I neither ate bread nor drank water, ^(DK)because of all your sin which you had committed by doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. ¹⁹ For ^(DL)I was afraid of the anger and the rage with which the Lord was angry with you so as to destroy you; ^(DM)but the Lord listened to me that time as well. ²⁰ The Lord was also angry enough with Aaron to destroy him; so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. ^21 (DN)And I took your ^[aw]sinful thing which you had made, the calf, and burned it in the fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the stream that came down from the mountain.

²² “Then at ^(DO)Taberah, at ^(DP)Massah, and at ^(DQ)Kibroth-hattaavah you kept provoking the Lord to anger. ²³ And when the Lord sent you from ^(DR)Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘^(DS)Go up and take possession of the land which I have given you,’ you rebelled against the ^[ax]command of the Lord your God; ^(DT)you neither trusted Him nor listened to His voice. ^24 (DU)You have been rebellious toward the Lord since the day I knew you.

²⁵ “^(DV)So I fell down before the Lord for the forty days and nights, which I ^[ay]did because the Lord said He would destroy you. ^26 (DW)And I prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Lord God, do not destroy Your people, Your inheritance, whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand! ²⁷ Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not turn Your attention to the stubbornness of this people, or to their wickedness, or their sin. ²⁸ Otherwise, the people of the land from which You brought us will say, “^(DX)Since the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He had ^[az]promised them, and since He hated them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness!” ²⁹ Yet they are Your people, and ^(DY)Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your ^(DZ)great power and Your outstretched arm.’