Chronological

Chapter 11

God’s Mighty Deeds. ¹ You shall love the Lord, your God, and observe his ordinances, his statutes, his decrees, and his commandments always. ² Remember this day, for I am now not speaking with your children, who did not experience the discipline of the Lord, your God, his majesty, his mighty hand and outstretched arm, ³ and the signs and deeds he did in Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to the whole land, ⁴ what he did to the army of Egypt, to its horses and chariots, how he caused the waters of the Red Sea to flow over them as they pursued you, for the Lord brought a lasting destruction upon them, ⁵ and what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived here, ⁶ and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab the Reubenite, how he opened a hole in the ground right in the midst of the Israelites that swallowed them up, them and their households and their tents and all of their possessions. ⁷ You have seen with your own eyes all of these great deeds that the Lord has done.

⁸ Therefore, keep all of the commandments that I give you today so that you may be strong and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess ⁹ and so that the Lord may prolong your life in the land that the Lord promised to give to your forefathers and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.

¹⁰ The land that you are entering to take possession of is not like the land of Egypt out of which you have come. There you planted your seeds and watered the plants by hand,^[a] like you would in a vegetable garden. ¹¹ The land that you are entering to take possession of is a land of hills and valleys that obtains its water from the rain of the skies. ¹² It is a land that the Lord, your God, cares for, the Lord, your God, continuously keeps his eyes on it, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.

^13 [b]If you carefully observe the commandments that I give you today, to love the Lord, your God, and to serve him with all your heart and soul, ¹⁴ then he will provide the rain upon the land in its proper season, the fall rains and the spring rains, so that you can harvest your grain, your wine, and your oil. ¹⁵ I will provide grass in your field for your cattle, so that you may eat until you are full.

¹⁶ Only be careful not to let yourself be enticed, turning away and serving other gods, worshiping them. ¹⁷ Then the Lord’s anger would lash out against you. He would shut up the heavens so that there would be no rain, no produce from the land. Beware lest you soon perish in the good land that the Lord is giving you.

¹⁸ Rewards of Faithfulness. Fix these words in your heart and your soul, bind them as a reminder upon your hand, and wear them as a pendant between your eyes. ¹⁹ You are to 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. ²⁰ You are to write them on the doorframes of your houses and your gates ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children will be multiplied in the land that the Lord promised to give them, lasting as long as the heavens cover the earth.

²² If you are careful in observing all of these commandments that I give you, loving the Lord, your God, and walking in all of his ways and holding fast to him, ²³ then the Lord will drive out all of these nations from before you. You will dispossess nations that are larger and stronger than you are. ²⁴ Everywhere that your feet touch the ground shall be yours, from the desert and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, up to the western sea, this will all be your land.^{[c] 25} No one will be able to stand up to you. The Lord, your God, as he promised you, he has put fear and dread of you upon everyone in the land, wherever you go.

²⁶ Blessing and Curse. Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse. ²⁷ There will be a blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, that I give you today. ²⁸ There will be a curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, and you turn from the way that I command you today and you seek after other gods whom you have previously not known. ²⁹ When the Lord, your God, has brought you into the land that you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim a blessing on Mount Gerizim and a curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰ (Are they not on the other side of the Jordan, toward the setting of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah near Gilgal, beside the terebinth of Moreh?)^{[d] 31} You are to cross over the Jordan and enter in it and take possession of the land that the Lord, your God, has given you. When you have taken possession of it and are living in it, ³² then you are to observe all of the statutes and decrees that I have placed before you today.

The Deuteronomic Code^[e]

Chapter 12

One Place of Worship.^{[f] 1} These are the statutes and the decrees that you must be careful to observe in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you as an inheritance for the whole time that you live upon the earth. ² You must totally destroy all the places where the nations that you shall dispossess served their gods, whether they be on the high mountains or upon the hills or under every green tree. ³ You are to overturn their altars and break their sacred pillars. You must burn their wooden idols in fires, you must cut down their carved idols and obliterate their names from that place. ⁴ This is not the way that you are to worship the Lord, your God.

⁵ You are to seek out the place that the Lord, your God, has chosen from among all the tribes to be where you shall place his name and establish his dwelling. This is where you are to go ⁶ to bring your burnt offering, your sacrifices, your tithes, your wave offerings, what you have vowed to give as a freewill offering, and the firstborn from your herds and flocks. ⁷ There you and your families will eat before the Lord, your God, and you shall rejoice at everything you have put your hand to, for the Lord, your God, will have blessed you. ⁸ You are not to do things the way we do them today, that each person does as he sees fit, ⁹ for you have not yet come to your resting place, the inheritance that the Lord, your God, is giving you. ¹⁰ But when you cross the Jordan and live in the land that the Lord, your God, is giving to you as an inheritance, a place where he will give you peace from all the enemies who surround you so that you can live in safety, ¹¹ then you shall bring everything that I command you to the place that the Lord, your God, will have chosen for the dwelling place of his name: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, your wave offerings, and all of your choice vow offerings that you have vowed onto the Lord. ¹² You and your sons and daughters, your menservants and your maidservants, and the Levite who lives in your town (for he has no claim to your inheritance) will rejoice before the Lord, your God.

¹³ Make sure that you do not offer burnt offerings any place you might happen to see, ¹⁴ but you are to offer burnt offerings in the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes. There you are to fulfill all that I command you to do.

¹⁵ Permissible Slaughter. Nevertheless, you can slaughter animals and eat meat within your town gates with the blessing that the Lord, your God, gives you, as much as you desire. The clean and the unclean may eat of it, the gazelle and the roebuck alike. ¹⁶ Only you are not to consume its blood; you are to pour it on the ground as if it were water.^[g]

¹⁷ You are not to eat the following things within your town gates: the tithe of the grain, wine, and oil, the firstborn of the herds or flocks, any of the vow offerings you have offered with a vow, any freewill offering and any wave offering. ¹⁸ You are to eat these before the Lord, your God, in the place that the Lord, your God, will have chosen, you and your son and your daughter, your manservant and your maidservant, and the Levite who lives in your town. You are to rejoice before the Lord, your God, in all of your undertakings.

¹⁹ Take heed not to forsake the Levite for as long as you live in the land. ²⁰ When the Lord, your God, enlarges your boundaries, as he has promised that he will do, and you say to yourself, “I am going to eat some meat,”^[h] because you feel like eating some meat, you can eat as much meat as you desire.

²¹ If the place that the Lord, your God, will have chosen to put his name is too far from where you are living, you can kill any animal from the herd or the flock that the Lord has given you, just as I have instructed you. You can eat as much as you want of it within your town gates. ²² You can eat them like you would eat the gazelle or the roebuck. Both the unclean and the clean can eat of it. ²³ Only be careful that you do not consume the blood, for the blood is its life. You are not to eat the life with the meat. ²⁴ You are not to consume the blood; you are to pour it on the ground as if it were water. ²⁵ You are not to eat it, so that things may turn out well for you and your children after you, for you will be doing the right thing from the Lord’s point of view.

²⁶ Take your consecrated things and whatever you have vowed to give, and go to the place that the Lord has chosen. ²⁷ Present your burnt offerings, both the meat and the blood, on the altar of the Lord, your God. You are to pour the blood out on the altar of the Lord, your God, but you can eat the meat. ²⁸ Take heed to observe all of the things that I have commanded you, that things may go well with you and your children forever, when you do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, your God. ²⁹ The Lord, your God, will cut down the nations of the place where you are going before you so that you can dispossess them. When you take their place and settle in their land ³⁰ and they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by asking questions about their gods such as, “How did these nations serve their gods? We should do the same thing as they did.” ³¹ You shall not do these things to the Lord, your God. They have worshiped their gods with every kind of abomination that the Lord hates. They have even offered their sons and daughters as burnt sacrifices to their gods.

Chapter 13

Punishing False Prophets. ¹ Do whatever I command you to do. Do not add anything to it, nor ignore anything from it.

² If a prophet or one who foretells the future through dreams arises among you and performs some miraculous sign or wonder ³ and that miraculous sign or wonder occurs, and he says to you, “Let us seek after other gods which we have not previously known and serve them,” ⁴ you are not to listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer of dreams.^[i] The Lord, your God, is testing you to see whether you love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and your soul. ⁵ It is the Lord, your God, whom you are to follow. You must fear him and observe his commandments and obey what he tells you and serve him and hold fast to him. ⁶ But that prophet or the one who told the future through dreams is to be put to death for he counseled you to turn away from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. He was driving you away from the way that the Lord, your God, had ordered must be your path. You must purge this evil from your midst.

^7 [j]Even if your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife, or your closest friend secretly tempts you saying, “Let us go and serve other gods whom neither you nor your forefathers have known,” ⁸ the gods of the people living around us, whether they be near or far, wherever they are upon the whole face of the earth, ⁹ you are not to agree to do this with him or even listen to him. You must show him no pity, you should not spare or conceal him. ¹⁰ You must put him to death. You must be the first to lay hands on him to put him to death, and then all of the people after you. ¹¹ Stone him to death! He sought to turn you away from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹² Then all of Israel will hear of this and be filled with fear, and no one will ever do such an evil thing again in your midst.

¹³ If you hear it said that in one of the cities that the Lord, your God, has given you to live in ¹⁴ there are evil men who have come out from among you and who have misled the inhabitants of the city saying, “Let us go and serve other gods whom we have not previously known,” ¹⁵ then you will inquire, and probe, and investigate it thoroughly. If it is clearly proven that this detestable thing has been done among you, ¹⁶ you are to put the inhabitants of that city to the sword and you are to demolish it. Destroy everything in it, even killing the cattle with the edge of the sword. ¹⁷ Gather all of the plunder from it in the middle of its streets, and burn the city and all the spoil in it to the ground. It is to be like a burnt offering to the Lord, your God. It is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt. ¹⁸ You are not to hold on to any of those cursed things, so that the Lord may turn from his fierce anger and show you mercy. He will have compassion on you, and make you numerous, as he promised your fathers, ¹⁹ for you will have heeded the voice of the Lord, your God, and observed all of the commandments that I gave you today and done what the Lord, your God, considered to be right.