“But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children—

so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long.

Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the meat.

You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it—the bread of affliction—because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt.

It shall remain with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes,

“But if someone at enmity with another lies in wait and attacks and takes the life of that person and flees into one of these cities,

Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

“No one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.

Your life shall hang in doubt before you; night and day you shall be in dread, with no assurance of your life.

Exhortation to Choose Life

“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away.

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live,

loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him, for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

This is no trifling matter for you but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.”