²⁰ “When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?’^{(A) 21} then you shall say to your children, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²² The Lord displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. ²³ He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors. ²⁴ Then the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case.^{(B) 25} If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right.’^(C)

⁷ “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.^{(A) 8} It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.^{(B) 9} Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,^{(C) 10} and who repays in their own person those who reject him. He does not delay but repays in their own person those who reject him. ¹¹ Therefore, observe diligently the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that I am commanding you today.

¹¹ “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes that I am commanding you today. ¹² When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them ¹³ and when your herds and flocks have multiplied and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, ¹⁴ then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,^{(A) 15} who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous^[a] snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock.^{(B) 16} He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you and in the end to do you good.^{(C) 17} Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.^{(D) 19} If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.^{(E) 20} Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

⁴ “When the Lord your God thrusts them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to occupy this land’; it is rather because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.^{(A) 5} It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is dispossessing them before you, in order to fulfill the promise that the Lord made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.^(B)

²⁴ “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves.^{(A) 25} Thus the land became defiled, and I punished it for its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.^{(B) 26} But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations, either the native-born or the alien who resides among you ²⁷ (for the inhabitants of the land, who were before you, committed all of these abominations, and the land became defiled); ²⁸ otherwise the land will vomit you out for defiling it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. ²⁹ For whoever commits any of these abominations shall be cut off from their people. ³⁰ So keep my charge not to commit any of these abominations that were done before you and not to defile yourselves by them: I am the Lord your God.”^(C)