Deuteronomy 4:21-49 ▼

21 Furthermore Yahweh was angry with me for your sakes, and swore that I should not go over the Jordan, and that I should not go in to that good land which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance;

22 but I must die in this land. I must not go over the Jordan, but you shall go over and possess that good land.

23 Be careful, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you, and make yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which Yahweh your God has forbidden you.

24 For Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.

25 When you father children and children’s children, and you have been long in the land, and then corrupt yourselves, and make a carved image in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in Yahweh your God’s sight to provoke him to anger,

26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land which you go over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days on it, but will utterly be destroyed.

27 Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where Yahweh will lead you away.

28 There you will serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

29 But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God, and you will find him when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.

30 When you are in oppression, and all these things have come on you, in the latter days you shall return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice.

31 For Yahweh your God is a merciful God. He will not fail you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which he swore to them.

32 For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and from the one end of the sky to the other, whether there has been anything as great as this thing is, or has been heard like it?

33 Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the middle of the fire, as you have heard, and live?

34 Or has God tried to go and take a nation for himself from among another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

35 It was shown to you so that you might know that Yahweh is God. There is no one else besides him.

36 Out of heaven he made you to hear his voice, that he might instruct you. On earth he made you to see his great fire; and you heard his words out of the middle of the fire.

37 Because he loved your fathers, therefore he chose their offspring after them, and brought you out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt;

38 to drive out nations from before you greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today.

39 Know therefore today, and take it to heart, that Yahweh himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no one else.

40 You shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which Yahweh your God gives you for all time.

41 Then Moses set apart three cities beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise,

42 that the man slayer might flee there, who kills his neighbor unintentionally and didn’t hate him in time past, and that fleeing to one of these cities he might live:

43 Bezer in the wilderness, in the plain country, for the Reubenites; and Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.

44 This is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel.

45 These are the testimonies, and the statutes, and the ordinances which Moses spoke to the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt,

46 beyond the Jordan, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon, whom Moses and the children of Israel struck when they came out of Egypt.

47 They took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise;

48 from Aroer, which is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, even to Mount Zion (also called Hermon),

49 and all the Arabah beyond the Jordan eastward, even to the sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of Pisgah.