Deuteronomy 6-9

New Catholic Bible

Chapter 6

¹ These are the commands, statutes, and decrees that the Lord, your God, directed me to teach you so that you might observe them in the land to which you are going as your inheritance. ² Thus, you will fear the Lord, your God, and observe the statutes and commandments that I give you—you, and your children, and your children’s children—all the days of your life, so that you might live a long time.

³ Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that you might prosper and multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you.

The Law of Love.^{[a] 4} Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, is Lord alone. ⁵ You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ You shall keep these things that I command you today in your heart. ⁷ Teach them to your children. You shall talk of them when you are sitting in your home, and when you are walking along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. ^8 [b]Bind them as a reminder upon your hand, and wear them as a pendant between your eyes ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and your gates.

^10 [c]When the Lord, your God, will have brought you into the land that he promised to your forefathers, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that he would give to you, a land with large and pleasant cities that you did not build ¹¹ with houses filled with all kinds of good things that you did not provide, wells that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant. When you have eaten your fill of them, ¹² be sure not to forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the land of slavery.

¹³ Fear the Lord, your God, and serve him. Swear oaths with his name. ¹⁴ You shall not seek after other gods, the gods of the peoples around you ¹⁵ for the Lord, your God, who lives among you is a jealous God.^[d] Beware lest the anger of the Lord, your God, be kindled and he wipe you off of the face of the earth.

¹⁶ You shall not tempt the Lord,^[e] your God, as you tempted him at Massah. ¹⁷ You shall take heed to observe the commandments of the Lord, your God, and the decrees and statutes that he has given to you. ¹⁸ Do what the Lord regards as right and good so that things will go well with you and that you might enter in and take possession of the good land that the Lord promised to your fathers, ¹⁹ being able to cast out all of your enemies from before you, just as the Lord has promised.

²⁰ Instructing Children. In the future when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the decrees and statutes and ordinances that the Lord, our God, has commanded of you,” ²¹ you are to tell your son, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²² The Lord performed signs and wonders in our sight, great and terrible things, that he imposed upon Egypt and upon Pharaoh and upon all of his household. ²³ He brought us out from there so that he might bring us into and give to us the land that he promised to our fathers.

²⁴ “The Lord commanded us to observe all of these statutes and to fear the Lord, our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, even as we are today. ²⁵ If we are diligent in observing all of these commandments before the Lord, our God, as he commanded of us, then this will be our righteousness.”

Chapter 7

Destroying the Nations.^{[f] 1} When the Lord, your God, has brought you into the land that you are entering to take possession of and he has driven out many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations in all, each larger and stronger than you are ² and when the Lord, your God, will have delivered them over to you and you will have defeated them, you are to wipe them out. You are not to make a covenant with them or show them any mercy. ^3 [g]Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters for your sons. ⁴ They would turn your sons away from serving me to serve other gods and the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you and destroy you in an instant.

⁵ This is what you are to do to them: you are to destroy their altars, tear down their sacred images, cut down their sacred groves, and burn up their idols in fire. ⁶ You are a people holy to the Lord, your God. The Lord, your God, has chosen you from among all the peoples in the world to be his own, a treasured possession. ⁷ The Lord did not delight in you because you were more numerous than these other peoples, for you are actually the least numerous of all people. ⁸ It was because the Lord loved you and was keeping the promise that he had sworn to your fathers that the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, from the land of your slavery.

⁹ Keep in mind, therefore, that the Lord, your God, is God. He is a faithful God who keeps his covenant of mercy to the thousandth generation toward those who love him and observe his commandments. ¹⁰ But upon those who hate him, he will avenge himself face to face, wiping them out. He will not delay in avenging himself face to face with those who hate him.^{[h] 11} Therefore, be careful to observe the commandments, statutes, and decrees that I give you today.

¹² Blessings of the Covenant. If you obey these decrees and carefully observe them, then the Lord, your God, will preserve his covenant of mercy with you, as he promised to your forefathers. ¹³ He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will bless the fruit of your womb and the crops on your land, your grain, your wine and your oil, as well as the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks, in the land that he promised to your forefathers to give to you. ¹⁴ You will be more greatly blessed^[i] than any other people. None of your men or women will be childless, none of your cattle will be without young. ¹⁵ The Lord will protect you from all illnesses. He will not inflict upon you any of the terrible diseases that you encountered in Egypt, but rather he will send them upon everyone who hates you. ¹⁶ You must annihilate all of the people whom the Lord, your God, delivers over to you. Do not look with pity upon them; do not serve their gods, for this would be a snare for you. ^17 [j]You should say to yourselves, “These nations were stronger than we were. How did we ever drive them out?” ¹⁸ Do not be afraid of them. Remember what the Lord, your God, did to Pharaoh and to the whole of Egypt. ¹⁹ You saw with your own eyes the tremendous trials, signs, and wonders, how with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm the Lord, your God, brought you out. The Lord, your God, will do the same things to all of those people of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ The Lord, your God, will destroy them by sending hornets into the midst of those who survived and are hiding. ²¹ Do not be afraid of them, for the Lord, your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. ²² Little by little the Lord, your God, will drive out those nations before you. You will not be able to eliminate them immediately, lest the wild animals around you multiply too much. ²³ The Lord, your God, will hand them over to you, throwing them into a great confusion until they are totally wiped out. ²⁴ He will deliver kings into your hands, and you will wipe out their names from under the heavens. No one will be able to stand up to you. You will destroy them.

²⁵ You are to burn the idols of their gods in the fire. Do not seek after the gold or the silver that covers them, nor take it for yourselves, lest it become a snare for you. It is an abomination to the Lord, your God. ²⁶ Nor should you bring an abomination into your house, or you, like it, will be set aside for destruction. Loathe and detest it, for it is something that is cursed.

Chapter 8

The Lord’s Kindness.^1 [k]Be diligent in observing all of the commandments that I am giving you today, so that you might live and multiply, and so that you might enter and take possession of the land that the Lord promised to your fathers. ² Remember how the Lord, your God, guided your path through the wilderness for these forty years, abasing you and testing you so that he might know what was in your heart, whether or not you would observe his commandments. ³ He brought you low, allowing you to suffer from hunger. He then fed you with manna, something with which your fathers were not familiar, so that you might come to know that man does not live by bread alone,^[l] but man lives by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.

⁴ Throughout these forty years your clothing did not wear out nor did your feet swell. ⁵ Thus you could understand that the Lord, your God, was disciplining you, just like a father disciplines his son. ⁶ Therefore, observe the commandments of the Lord, your God. Walk in his ways and fear him. ⁷ The Lord, your God, is bringing you into a good land, a land filled with brooks, fountains, and springs that rush forth from the valleys and the hills. ⁸ It is a land of wheat and barley, of vines, fig trees and pomegranates, a land with olive oil and honey. ⁹ It is a land in which you will not lack bread to eat; you will not lack anything at all. It is a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

¹⁰ Warning about Prosperity. When you have eaten your fill and are satisfied, then praise the Lord, your God, for the good land that he has given you. ¹¹ Take heed not to forget the Lord, your God, by not observing his commandments, decrees, and statutes that I have given you today. ¹² Otherwise, when you have eaten your fill and you have built fine houses and are living in them ¹³ and your herds and your flocks have grown large, and your silver and your gold have multiplied, in fact all that you own has multiplied, ¹⁴ then your heart might become proud and you will forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the land of your slavery. ¹⁵ He led you through a vast and terrible wilderness where there were snakes and fiery scorpions and thirst, where when there was no water he brought water forth from the hard rock for you. ¹⁶ He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something with which your fathers were not familiar, to abase you and to test you, so that later on it might go well with you.

^17 [m]You might think to yourself, “It is through my strength and the might of my own hand that I have acquired this wealth.” ¹⁸ But remember the Lord, your God, for it is he who has given you the ability to acquire this wealth so that he might confirm the covenant that he made with your fathers, which is still in force today. ¹⁹ But if you forget the Lord, your God, and follow after other gods, serving and worshiping them, then I swear to you today that you will surely perish. ²⁰ You will perish just like the nations that the Lord crushed in your sight, for you would not have been attentive to the voice of the Lord, your God.

Chapter 9

Israel’s Good Fortune. ¹ Hear, O Israel, today you are going to pass over the Jordan to dispossess nations more powerful than you are which have large cities whose walls reach up into the heavens. ² The people are strong and tall, descendants of the Anakim. You know all about them, for you have heard it said, “Who can stand up against the Anakim?”

³ Understand, therefore, that the Lord, your God, is crossing over ahead of you like a devouring fire today. He will destroy them and bring them low before you. Therefore, you will be able to drive them out and annihilate them quickly, just as the Lord has promised you. ⁴ After the Lord, your God, has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “It was because of my righteousness that the Lord brought me in to take possession of this land.” It is because of the wickedness of the nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. ⁵ It is not because of your righteousness or the sincerity of your heart that you are going to take possession of their land. Rather, it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord, your God, will drive them out before you, fulfilling the promise that he made to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ⁶ Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord, your God, is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked^[n] people.

The Golden Calf. ⁷ Remember, and never forget, how you angered the Lord, your God, in the wilderness from the day that you left the land of Egypt until the day that you arrived here. You have always been rebellious. ⁸ At Horeb you made the Lord so angry that the Lord was angry enough to destroy you. ⁹ When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord had made with you, I stayed up upon the mountain for forty days and forty nights, neither eating food nor drinking water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me two stone tablets on which the finger of God had written all of the things that the Lord had said to you on the mountain from the midst of the flames on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ At the end of forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, “Arise, hurry down, for your people whom you brought forth out of Egypt has become perverse. They have quickly turned aside from the path that I had directed them to follow and they have made a molten image for themselves.”

¹³ Furthermore, the Lord also said to me, “I have observed this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people. ¹⁴ Leave me alone, so I can destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens. I will make you a greater and more numerous nation than they are.”

¹⁵ So I turned and climbed down the mountain that was blazing with fire, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in my two hands. ¹⁶ I looked out, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord, your God. You had made a molten calf for yourselves. How quickly you had turned away from the path in which the Lord had directed you. ¹⁷ I took the two tablets and with my two hands cast them down and broke them before your eyes. ¹⁸ Then I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and for forty nights.^[o] I did not eat food nor did I drink water on account of all the sins you had committed, doing what was so evil in the sight of the Lord that you provoked him to anger. ¹⁹ I feared the anger and the wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough at you to destroy you. Yet, the Lord once again listened to me.

²⁰ The Lord was angry enough at Aaron to kill him, but I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. ²¹ I took that sinful thing, the calf that you had made, and I burned it in the fire. I crushed it and ground it so fine that it was like a powder, and I threw that powder into the stream that came down from the mountain. ²² You also angered the Lord at Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah. ²³ Then when the Lord sent you forth from Kadesh-barnea, saying to you, “Go up and take possession of the land that I have given to you,” you despised the command of the Lord, your God. You did not trust him nor listen to his voice. ²⁴ You have despised the Lord from the first day that I knew you.

²⁵ I fell down and lay prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights because the Lord said that he was going to destroy you. ²⁶ I prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, God, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance, whom you redeemed by your great power, and whom you brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not consider the stubbornness of this people nor the wickedness of their sin. ²⁸ Otherwise, the people of the land from which you brought them will say, ‘The Lord brought them out and put them to death in the desert because he was not able to bring them into the land that he had promised them and also because he hated them.’ ²⁹ Yet, they are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out with your great power and your outstretched arm.”