Discovery BoxDeuteronomy 5:1--30:20
Context5:1 Then Moses called all the people of Israel together and said to them: 1 “Listen, Israel, to the statutes and ordinances that I am about to deliver to you today; learn them and be careful to keep them! 5:2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 5:3 He 2 did not make this covenant with our ancestors 3 but with us, we who are here today, all of us living now. 5:4 The Lord spoke face to face with you at the mountain, from the middle of the fire. 5:5 (I was standing between the Lord and you at that time to reveal to you the message 4 of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and would not go up the mountain.) He said:
5:6 “I am the Lord your God, he who brought you from the land of Egypt, from the place of slavery. 5:7 You must not have any other gods 5 besides me. 6 5:8 You must not make for yourself an image 7 of anything in heaven above, on earth below, or in the waters beneath. 8 5:9 You must not worship or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I punish 9 the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons for the sin of the fathers who reject 10 me, 11 5:10 but I show covenant faithfulness 12 to the thousands 13 who choose 14 me and keep my commandments. 5:11 You must not make use of the name of the Lord your God for worthless purposes, 15 for the Lord will not exonerate anyone who abuses his name that way. 16 5:12 Be careful to observe 17 the Sabbath day just as the Lord your God has commanded you. 5:13 You are to work and do all your tasks in six days, 5:14 but the seventh day is the Sabbath 18 of the Lord your God. On that day you must not do any work, you, your son, your daughter, your male slave, your female slave, your ox, your donkey, any other animal, or the foreigner who lives with you, 19 so that your male and female slaves, like yourself, may have rest. 5:15 Recall that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there by strength and power. 20 That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to observe 21 the Sabbath day. 5:16 Honor 22 your father and your mother just as the Lord your God has commanded you to do, so that your days may be extended and that it may go well with you in the land that he 23 is about to give you. 5:17 You must not murder. 24 5:18 You must not commit adultery. 5:19 You must not steal. 5:20 You must not offer false testimony against another. 25 5:21 You must not desire 26 another man’s 27 wife, nor should you crave his 28 house, his field, his male and female servants, his ox, his donkey, or anything else he owns.” 29
5:22 The Lord said these things to your entire assembly at the mountain from the middle of the fire, the cloud, and the darkness with a loud voice, and that was all he said. 30 Then he inscribed the words 31 on two stone tablets and gave them to me. 5:23 Then, when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness while the mountain was ablaze, all your tribal leaders and elders approached me. 5:24 You said, “The Lord our God has shown us his great glory 32 and we have heard him speak from the middle of the fire. It is now clear to us 33 that God can speak to human beings and they can keep on living. 5:25 But now, why should we die, because this intense fire will consume us! If we keep hearing the voice of the Lord our God we will die! 5:26 Who is there from the entire human race 34 who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the middle of the fire as we have, and has lived? 5:27 You go near so that you can hear everything the Lord our God is saying and then you can tell us whatever he 35 says to you; then we will pay attention and do it.” 5:28 When the Lord heard you speaking to me, he 36 said to me, “I have heard what these people have said to you – they have spoken well. 5:29 If only it would really be their desire to fear me and obey 37 all my commandments in the future, so that it may go well with them and their descendants forever. 5:30 Go and tell them, ‘Return to your tents!’ 5:31 But as for you, remain here with me so I can declare to you all the commandments, 38 statutes, and ordinances that you are to teach them, so that they can carry them out in the land I am about to give them.” 39 5:32 Be careful, therefore, to do exactly what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn right or left! 5:33 Walk just as he 40 has commanded you so that you may live, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long 41 in the land you are going to possess.
6:1 Now these are the commandments, 42 statutes, and ordinances that the Lord your God instructed me to teach you so that you may carry them out in the land where you are headed 43 6:2 and that you may so revere the Lord your God that you will keep all his statutes and commandments 44 that I am giving 45 you – you, your children, and your grandchildren – all your lives, to prolong your days. 6:3 Pay attention, Israel, and be careful to do this so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in number 46 – as the Lord, God of your ancestors, 47 said to you, you will have a land flowing with milk and honey.
6:4 Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 48 6:5 You must love 49 the Lord your God with your whole mind, 50 your whole being, 51 and all your strength. 52
6:6 These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, 6:7 and you must teach 53 them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, 54 as you lie down, and as you get up. 6:8 You should tie them as a reminder on your forearm 55 and fasten them as symbols 56 on your forehead. 6:9 Inscribe them on the doorframes of your houses and gates. 57
6:10 Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you – a land with large, fine cities you did not build, 6:11 houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill, 6:12 be careful not to forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, that place of slavery. 58 6:13 You must revere the Lord your God, serve him, and take oaths using only his name. 6:14 You must not go after other gods, those 59 of the surrounding peoples, 6:15 for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a jealous God and his anger will erupt against you and remove you from the land. 60
6:16 You must not put the Lord your God to the test as you did at Massah. 61 6:17 Keep his 62 commandments very carefully, 63 as well as the stipulations and statutes he commanded you to observe. 6:18 Do whatever is proper 64 and good before the Lord so that it may go well with you and that you may enter and occupy the good land that he 65 promised your ancestors, 6:19 and that you may drive out all your enemies just as the Lord said.
6:20 When your children 66 ask you later on, “What are the stipulations, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God commanded you?” 6:21 you must say to them, 67 “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt in a powerful way. 68 6:22 And he 69 brought signs and great, devastating wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on his whole family 70 before our very eyes. 6:23 He delivered us from there so that he could give us the land he had promised our ancestors. 6:24 The Lord commanded us to obey all these statutes and to revere him 71 so that it may always go well for us and he may preserve us, as he has to this day. 6:25 We will be innocent if we carefully keep all these commandments 72 before the Lord our God, just as he demands.” 73
7:1 When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you – Hittites, 74 Girgashites, 75 Amorites, 76 Canaanites, 77 Perizzites, 78 Hivites, 79 and Jebusites, 80 seven 81 nations more numerous and powerful than you – 7:2 and he 82 delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate 83 them. Make no treaty 84 with them and show them no mercy! 7:3 You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 7:4 for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will erupt against you and he will quickly destroy you. 7:5 Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, 85 cut down their sacred Asherah poles, 86 and burn up their idols. 7:6 For you are a people holy 87 to the Lord your God. He 88 has chosen you to be his people, prized 89 above all others on the face of the earth.
7:7 It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you – for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples. 7:8 Rather it is because of his 90 love 91 for you and his faithfulness to the promise 92 he solemnly vowed 93 to your ancestors 94 that the Lord brought you out with great power, 95 redeeming 96 you from the place of slavery, from the power 97 of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 7:9 So realize that the Lord your God is the true God, 98 the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully 99 with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, 7:10 but who pays back those who hate 100 him as they deserve and destroys them. He will not ignore 101 those who hate him but will repay them as they deserve! 7:11 So keep the commandments, statutes, and ordinances that I today am commanding you to do.
7:12 If you obey these ordinances and are careful to do them, the Lord your God will faithfully keep covenant with you 102 as he promised 103 your ancestors. 7:13 He will love and bless you, and make you numerous. He will bless you with many children, 104 with the produce of your soil, your grain, your new wine, your oil, the offspring of your oxen, and the young of your flocks in the land which he promised your ancestors to give you. 7:14 You will be blessed beyond all peoples; there will be no barrenness 105 among you or your livestock. 7:15 The Lord will protect you from all sickness, and you will not experience any of the terrible diseases that you knew in Egypt; instead he will inflict them on all those who hate you.
7:16 You must destroy 106 all the people whom the Lord your God is about to deliver over to you; you must not pity them or worship 107 their gods, for that will be a snare to you. 7:17 If you think, “These nations are more numerous than I – how can I dispossess them?” 7:18 you must not fear them. You must carefully recall 108 what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt, 7:19 the great judgments 109 you saw, the signs and wonders, the strength and power 110 by which he 111 brought you out – thus the Lord your God will do to all the people you fear. 7:20 Furthermore, the Lord your God will release hornets 112 among them until the very last ones who hide from you 113 perish. 7:21 You must not tremble in their presence, for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a great and awesome God. 7:22 He, 114 the God who leads you, will expel the nations little by little. You will not be allowed to destroy them all at once lest the wild animals overrun you. 7:23 The Lord your God will give them over to you; he will throw them into a great panic 115 until they are destroyed. 7:24 He will hand over their kings to you and you will erase their very names from memory. 116 Nobody will be able to resist you until you destroy them. 7:25 You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent 117 to the Lord your God. 7:26 You must not bring any abhorrent thing into your house and thereby become an object of divine wrath 118 along with it. 119 You must absolutely detest 120 and abhor it, 121 for it is an object of divine wrath.
8:1 You must keep carefully all these commandments 122 I am giving 123 you today so that you may live, increase in number, 124 and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 125 8:2 Remember the whole way by which he 126 has brought you these forty years through the desert 127 so that he might, by humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not. 8:3 So he humbled you by making you hungry and then feeding you with unfamiliar manna. 128 He did this to teach you 129 that humankind 130 cannot live by bread 131 alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord’s mouth. 132 8:4 Your clothing did not wear out nor did your feet swell all these forty years. 8:5 Be keenly aware that just as a parent disciplines his child, 133 the Lord your God disciplines you. 8:6 So you must keep his 134 commandments, live according to his standards, 135 and revere him. 8:7 For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of brooks, 136 springs, and fountains flowing forth in valleys and hills, 8:8 a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, 8:9 a land where you may eat food 137 in plenty and find no lack of anything, a land whose stones are iron 138 and from whose hills you can mine copper. 8:10 You will eat your fill and then praise the Lord your God because of the good land he has given you.
8:11 Be sure you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today. 8:12 When you eat your fill, when you build and occupy good houses, 8:13 when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything, 8:14 be sure 139 you do not feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, 8:15 and who brought you through the great, fearful desert of venomous serpents 140 and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow 141 from a flint rock and 8:16 fed you in the desert with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you 142 and eventually bring good to you. 8:17 Be careful 143 not to say, “My own ability and skill 144 have gotten me this wealth.” 8:18 You must remember the Lord your God, for he is the one who gives ability to get wealth; if you do this he will confirm his covenant that he made by oath to your ancestors, 145 even as he has to this day. 8:19 Now if you forget the Lord your God at all 146 and follow other gods, worshiping and prostrating yourselves before them, I testify to you today that you will surely be annihilated. 8:20 Just like the nations the Lord is about to destroy from your sight, so he will do to you 147 because you would not obey him. 148
9:1 Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications. 149 9:2 They include the Anakites, 150 a numerous 151 and tall people whom you know about and of whom it is said, “Who is able to resist the Anakites?” 9:3 Understand today that the Lord your God who goes before you is a devouring fire; he will defeat and subdue them before you. You will dispossess and destroy them quickly just as he 152 has told you. 9:4 Do not think to yourself after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, “Because of my own righteousness the Lord has brought me here to possess this land.” It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out ahead of you. 9:5 It is not because of your righteousness, or even your inner uprightness, 153 that you have come here to possess their land. Instead, because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out ahead of you in order to confirm the promise he 154 made on oath to your ancestors, 155 to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 9:6 Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn 156 people!
9:7 Remember – don’t ever forget 157 – how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him. 158 9:8 At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you. 9:9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there 159 forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing. 9:10 The Lord gave me the two stone tablets, written by the very finger 160 of God, and on them was everything 161 he 162 said to you at the mountain from the midst of the fire at the time of that assembly. 9:11 Now at the end of the forty days and nights the Lord presented me with the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. 9:12 And he said to me, “Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image.” 163 9:13 Moreover, he said to me, “I have taken note of these people; they are a stubborn 164 lot! 9:14 Stand aside 165 and I will destroy them, obliterating their very name from memory, 166 and I will make you into a stronger and more numerous nation than they are.”
9:15 So I turned and went down the mountain while it 167 was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. 9:16 When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God and had cast for yourselves a metal calf; 168 you had quickly turned aside from the way he 169 had commanded you! 9:17 I grabbed the two tablets, threw them down, 170 and shattered them before your very eyes. 9:18 Then I again fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights; I ate and drank nothing because of all the sin you had committed, doing such evil before the Lord as to enrage him. 9:19 For I was terrified at the Lord’s intense anger 171 that threatened to destroy you. But he 172 listened to me this time as well. 9:20 The Lord was also angry enough at Aaron to kill him, but at that time I prayed for him 173 too. 9:21 As for your sinful thing 174 that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, 175 ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain. 9:22 Moreover, you continued to provoke the Lord at Taberah, 176 Massah, 177 and Kibroth-Hattaavah. 178 9:23 And when he 179 sent you from Kadesh-Barnea and told you, “Go up and possess the land I have given you,” you rebelled against the Lord your God 180 and would neither believe nor obey him. 9:24 You have been rebelling against him 181 from the very first day I knew you!
9:25 I lay flat on the ground before the Lord for forty days and nights, 182 for he 183 had said he would destroy you. 9:26 I prayed to him: 184 O, Lord God, 185 do not destroy your people, your valued property 186 that you have powerfully redeemed, 187 whom you brought out of Egypt by your strength. 188 9:27 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; ignore the stubbornness, wickedness, and sin of these people. 9:28 Otherwise the people of the land 189 from which you brought us will say, “The Lord was unable to bring them to the land he promised them, and because of his hatred for them he has brought them out to kill them in the desert.” 190 9:29 They are your people, your valued property, 191 whom you brought out with great strength and power. 192
10:1 At that same time the Lord said to me, “Carve out for yourself two stone tablets like the first ones and come up the mountain to me; also make for yourself a wooden ark. 193 10:2 I will write on the tablets the same words 194 that were on the first tablets you broke, and you must put them into the ark.” 10:3 So I made an ark of acacia 195 wood and carved out two stone tablets just like the first ones. Then I went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. 10:4 The Lord 196 then wrote on the tablets the same words, 197 the ten commandments, 198 which he 199 had spoken to you at the mountain from the middle of the fire at the time of that assembly, and he 200 gave them to me. 10:5 Then I turned, went down the mountain, and placed the tablets into the ark I had made – they are still there, just as the Lord commanded me.
10:6 “During those days the Israelites traveled from Beeroth Bene-Yaaqan 201 to Moserah. 202 There Aaron died and was buried, and his son Eleazar became priest in his place. 10:7 From there they traveled to Gudgodah, 203 and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, 204 a place of flowing streams. 10:8 At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi 205 to carry the ark of the Lord’s covenant, to stand before the Lord to serve him, and to formulate blessings 206 in his name, as they do to this very day. 10:9 Therefore Levi has no allotment or inheritance 207 among his brothers; 208 the Lord is his inheritance just as the Lord your God told him. 10:10 As for me, I stayed at the mountain as I did the first time, forty days and nights. The Lord listened to me that time as well and decided not to destroy you. 10:11 Then he 209 said to me, “Get up, set out leading 210 the people so they may go and possess 211 the land I promised to give to their ancestors.” 212
10:12 Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you except to revere him, 213 to obey all his commandments, 214 to love him, to serve him 215 with all your mind and being, 216 10:13 and to keep the Lord’s commandments and statutes that I am giving 217 you today for your own good? 10:14 The heavens – indeed the highest heavens – belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it. 10:15 However, only to your ancestors did he 218 show his loving favor, 219 and he chose you, their descendants, 220 from all peoples – as is apparent today. 10:16 Therefore, cleanse 221 your heart and stop being so stubborn! 222 10:17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who is unbiased and takes no bribe, 10:18 who justly treats 223 the orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing. 10:19 So you must love the resident foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 10:20 Revere the Lord your God, serve him, be loyal to him and take oaths only in his name. 10:21 He is the one you should praise; 224 he is your God, the one who has done these great and awesome things for you that you have seen. 10:22 When your ancestors went down to Egypt, they numbered only seventy, but now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky. 225
11:1 You must love the Lord your God and do what he requires; keep his statutes, ordinances, and commandments 226 at all times. 11:2 Bear in mind today that I am not speaking 227 to your children who have not personally experienced the judgments 228 of the Lord your God, which revealed 229 his greatness, strength, and power. 230 11:3 They did not see 231 the awesome deeds he performed 232 in the midst of Egypt against Pharaoh king of Egypt and his whole land, 11:4 or what he did to the army of Egypt, including their horses and chariots, when he made the waters of the Red Sea 233 overwhelm them while they were pursuing you and he 234 annihilated them. 235 11:5 They did not see 236 what he did to you in the desert before you reached this place, 11:6 or what he did to Dathan and Abiram, 237 sons of Eliab the Reubenite, 238 when the earth opened its mouth in the middle of the Israelite camp 239 and swallowed them, their families, 240 their tents, and all the property they brought with them. 241 11:7 I am speaking to you 242 because you are the ones who saw all the great deeds of the Lord!
11:8 Now pay attention to all the commandments 243 I am giving 244 you today, so that you may be strong enough to enter and possess the land where you are headed, 245 11:9 and that you may enjoy long life in the land the Lord promised to give to your ancestors 246 and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. 11:10 For the land where you are headed 247 is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, a land where you planted seed and which you irrigated by hand 248 like a vegetable garden. 11:11 Instead, the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy 249 is one of hills and valleys, a land that drinks in water from the rains, 250 11:12 a land the Lord your God looks after. 251 He is constantly attentive to it 252 from the beginning to the end of the year. 253 11:13 Now, if you pay close attention 254 to my commandments that I am giving you today and love 255 the Lord your God and serve him with all your mind and being, 256 11:14 then he promises, 257 “I will send rain for your land 258 in its season, the autumn and the spring rains, 259 so that you may gather in your grain, new wine, and olive oil. 11:15 I will provide pasture 260 for your livestock and you will eat your fill.”
11:16 Make sure you do not turn away to serve and worship other gods! 261 11:17 Then the anger of the Lord will erupt 262 against you and he will close up the sky 263 so that it does not rain. The land will not yield its produce, and you will soon be removed 264 from the good land that the Lord 265 is about to give you. 11:18 Fix these words of mine into your mind and being, 266 and tie them as a reminder on your hands and let them be symbols 267 on your forehead. 11:19 Teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, 268 as you lie down, and as you get up. 11:20 Inscribe them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates 11:21 so that your days and those of your descendants may be extended in the land which the Lord promised to give to your ancestors, like the days of heaven itself. 269 11:22 For if you carefully observe all of these commandments 270 I am giving you 271 and love the Lord your God, live according to his standards, 272 and remain loyal to him, 11:23 then he 273 will drive out all these nations ahead of you, and you will dispossess nations greater and stronger than you. 11:24 Every place you set your foot 274 will be yours; your border will extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the River (that is, the Euphrates) as far as the Mediterranean Sea. 275 11:25 Nobody will be able to resist you; the Lord your God will spread the fear and terror of you over the whole land on which you walk, just as he promised you.
11:26 Take note – I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 276 11:27 the blessing if you take to heart 277 the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, 11:28 and the curse if you pay no attention 278 to his 279 commandments and turn from the way I am setting before 280 you today to pursue 281 other gods you have not known. 11:29 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are to possess, you must pronounce the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. 282 11:30 Are they not across the Jordan River, 283 toward the west, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah opposite Gilgal 284 near the oak 285 of Moreh? 11:31 For you are about to cross the Jordan to possess the land the Lord your God is giving you, and you will possess and inhabit it. 11:32 Be certain to keep all the statutes and ordinances that I am presenting to you today.
12:1 These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to obey as long as you live in the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, 286 has given you to possess. 287 12:2 You must by all means destroy 288 all the places where the nations you are about to dispossess worship their gods – on the high mountains and hills and under every leafy tree. 289 12:3 You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, 290 burn up their sacred Asherah poles, 291 and cut down the images of their gods; you must eliminate their very memory from that place. 12:4 You must not worship the Lord your God the way they worship. 12:5 But you must seek only the place he 292 chooses from all your tribes to establish his name as his place of residence, 293 and you must go there. 12:6 And there you must take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, 294 your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. 12:7 Both you and your families 295 must feast there before the Lord your God and rejoice in all the output of your labor with which he 296 has blessed you. 12:8 You must not do like we are doing here today, with everyone 297 doing what seems best to him, 12:9 for you have not yet come to the final stop 298 and inheritance the Lord your God is giving you. 12:10 When you do go across the Jordan River 299 and settle in the land he 300 is granting you as an inheritance and you find relief from all the enemies who surround you, you will live in safety. 301 12:11 Then you must come to the place the Lord your God chooses for his name to reside, bringing 302 everything I am commanding you – your burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, 303 and all your choice votive offerings which you devote to him. 304 12:12 You shall rejoice in the presence of the Lord your God, along with your sons, daughters, male and female servants, and the Levites in your villages 305 (since they have no allotment or inheritance with you). 306 12:13 Make sure you do not offer burnt offerings in any place you wish, 12:14 for you may do so 307 only in the place the Lord chooses in one of your tribal areas – there you may do everything I am commanding you. 308
12:15 On the other hand, you may slaughter and eat meat as you please when the Lord your God blesses you 309 in all your villages. 310 Both the ritually pure and impure may eat it, whether it is a gazelle or an ibex. 12:16 However, you must not eat blood – pour it out on the ground like water. 12:17 You will not be allowed to eat in your villages your tithe of grain, new wine, olive oil, the firstborn of your herd and flock, any votive offerings you have vowed, or your freewill and personal offerings. 12:18 Only in the presence of the Lord your God may you eat these, in the place he 311 chooses. This applies to you, your son, your daughter, your male and female servants, and the Levites 312 in your villages. In that place you will rejoice before the Lord your God in all the output of your labor. 313 12:19 Be careful not to overlook the Levites as long as you live in the land.
12:20 When the Lord your God extends your borders as he said he would do and you say, “I want to eat meat just as I please,” 314 you may do so as you wish. 315 12:21 If the place he 316 chooses to locate his name is too far for you, you may slaughter any of your herd and flock he 317 has given you just as I have stipulated; you may eat them in your villages 318 just as you wish. 12:22 Like you eat the gazelle or ibex, so you may eat these; the ritually impure and pure alike may eat them. 12:23 However, by no means eat the blood, for the blood is life itself 319 – you must not eat the life with the meat! 12:24 You must not eat it! You must pour it out on the ground like water. 12:25 You must not eat it so that it may go well with you and your children after you; you will be doing what is right in the Lord’s sight. 320 12:26 Only the holy things and votive offerings that belong to you, you must pick up and take to the place the Lord will choose. 321 12:27 You must offer your burnt offerings, both meat and blood, on the altar of the Lord your God; the blood of your other sacrifices 322 you must pour out on his 323 altar while you eat the meat. 12:28 Pay careful attention to all these things I am commanding you so that it may always go well with you and your children after you when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God.
12:29 When the Lord your God eliminates the nations from the place where you are headed and you dispossess them, you will settle down in their land. 324 12:30 After they have been destroyed from your presence, be careful not to be ensnared like they are; do not pursue their gods and say, “How do these nations serve their gods? I will do the same.” 12:31 You must not worship the Lord your God the way they do! 325 For everything that is abhorrent 326 to him, 327 everything he hates, they have done when worshiping their gods. They even burn up their sons and daughters before their gods!
12:32 (13:1) 328 You 329 must be careful to do everything I am commanding you. Do not add to it or subtract from it! 330 13:1 Suppose a prophet or one who foretells by dreams 331 should appear among you and show you a sign or wonder, 332 13:2 and the sign or wonder should come to pass concerning what he said to you, namely, “Let us follow other gods” – gods whom you have not previously known – “and let us serve them.” 13:3 You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, 333 for the Lord your God will be testing you to see if you love him 334 with all your mind and being. 335 13:4 You must follow the Lord your God and revere only him; and you must observe his commandments, obey him, serve him, and remain loyal to him. 13:5 As for that prophet or dreamer, 336 he must be executed because he encouraged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, redeeming you from that place of slavery, and because he has tried to entice you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to go. In this way you must purge out evil from within. 337
13:6 Suppose your own full brother, 338 your son, your daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend should seduce you secretly and encourage you to go and serve other gods 339 that neither you nor your ancestors 340 have previously known, 341 13:7 the gods of the surrounding people (whether near you or far from you, from one end of the earth 342 to the other). 13:8 You must not give in to him or even listen to him; do not feel sympathy for him or spare him or cover up for him. 13:9 Instead, you must kill him without fail! 343 Your own hand must be the first to strike him, 344 and then the hands of the whole community. 13:10 You must stone him to death 345 because he tried to entice you away from the Lord your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. 13:11 Thus all Israel will hear and be afraid; no longer will they continue to do evil like this among you. 346
13:12 Suppose you should hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live, that 13:13 some evil people 347 have departed from among you to entice the inhabitants of their cities, 348 saying, “Let’s go and serve other gods” (whom you have not known before). 349 13:14 You must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done among you, 350 13:15 you must by all means 351 slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; annihilate 352 with the sword everyone in it, as well as the livestock. 13:16 You must gather all of its plunder into the middle of the plaza 353 and burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin 354 forever – it must never be rebuilt again. 13:17 You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. 355 Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors. 13:18 Thus you must obey the Lord your God, keeping all his commandments that I am giving 356 you today and doing what is right 357 before him. 358
14:1 You are children 359 of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald 360 for the sake of the dead. 14:2 For you are a people holy 361 to the Lord your God. He 362 has chosen you to be his people, prized 363 above all others on the face of the earth. 14:3 You must not eat any forbidden 364 thing. 14:4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 14:5 the ibex, 365 the gazelle, 366 the deer, 367 the wild goat, the antelope, 368 the wild oryx, 369 and the mountain sheep. 370 14:6 You may eat any animal that has hooves divided into two parts and that chews the cud. 371 14:7 However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger. 372 (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you). 14:8 Also the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, 373 it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains. 14:9 These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fins and scales you may eat, 14:10 but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you. 14:11 All ritually clean birds you may eat. 14:12 These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle, 374 the vulture, 375 the black vulture, 376 14:13 the kite, the black kite, the dayyah 377 after its species, 14:14 every raven after its species, 14:15 the ostrich, 378 the owl, 379 the seagull, the falcon 380 after its species, 14:16 the little owl, the long-eared owl, the white owl, 381 14:17 the jackdaw, 382 the carrion vulture, the cormorant, 14:18 the stork, the heron after its species, the hoopoe, the bat, 14:19 and any winged thing on the ground are impure to you – they may not be eaten. 383 14:20 You may eat any clean bird. 14:21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages 384 and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. 385
14:22 You must be certain to tithe 386 all the produce of your seed that comes from the field year after year. 14:23 In the presence of the Lord your God you must eat from the tithe of your grain, your new wine, 387 your olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the place he chooses to locate his name, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always. 14:24 When he 388 blesses you, if the 389 place where he chooses to locate his name is distant, 14:25 you may convert the tithe into money, secure the money, 390 and travel to the place the Lord your God chooses for himself. 14:26 Then you may spend the money however you wish for cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever you desire. You and your household may eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and enjoy it. 14:27 As for the Levites in your villages, you must not ignore them, for they have no allotment or inheritance along with you. 14:28 At the end of every three years you must bring all the tithe of your produce, in that very year, and you must store it up in your villages. 14:29 Then the Levites (because they have no allotment or inheritance with you), the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows of your villages may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work you do.
15:1 At the end of every seven years you must declare a cancellation 391 of debts. 15:2 This is the nature of the cancellation: Every creditor must remit what he has loaned to another person; 392 he must not force payment from his fellow Israelite, 393 for it is to be recognized as “the Lord’s cancellation of debts.” 15:3 You may exact payment from a foreigner, but whatever your fellow Israelite 394 owes you, you must remit. 15:4 However, there should not be any poor among you, for the Lord 395 will surely bless 396 you in the land that he 397 is giving you as an inheritance, 398 15:5 if you carefully obey 399 him 400 by keeping 401 all these commandments that I am giving 402 you today. 15:6 For the Lord your God will bless you just as he has promised; you will lend to many nations but will not borrow from any, and you will rule over many nations but they will not rule over you.
15:7 If a fellow Israelite 403 from one of your villages 404 in the land that the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive 405 to his impoverished condition. 406 15:8 Instead, you must be sure to open your hand to him and generously lend 407 him whatever he needs. 408 15:9 Be careful lest you entertain the wicked thought that the seventh year, the year of cancellation of debts, has almost arrived, and your attitude 409 be wrong toward your impoverished fellow Israelite 410 and you do not lend 411 him anything; he will cry out to the Lord against you and you will be regarded as having sinned. 412 15:10 You must by all means lend 413 to him and not be upset by doing it, 414 for because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you attempt. 15:11 There will never cease to be some poor people in the land; therefore, I am commanding you to make sure you open 415 your hand to your fellow Israelites 416 who are needy and poor in your land.
15:12 If your fellow Hebrew 417 – whether male or female 418 – is sold to you and serves you for six years, then in the seventh year you must let that servant 419 go free. 420 15:13 If you set them free, you must not send them away empty-handed. 15:14 You must supply them generously 421 from your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress – as the Lord your God has blessed you, you must give to them. 15:15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore, I am commanding you to do this thing today. 15:16 However, if the servant 422 says to you, “I do not want to leave 423 you,” because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, 15:17 you shall take an awl and pierce a hole through his ear to the door. 424 Then he will become your servant permanently (this applies to your female servant as well). 15:18 You should not consider it difficult to let him go free, for he will have served you for six years, twice 425 the time of a hired worker; the Lord your God will bless you in everything you do.
15:19 You must set apart 426 for the Lord your God every firstborn male born to your herds and flocks. You must not work the firstborn of your bulls or shear the firstborn of your flocks. 15:20 You and your household must eat them annually before the Lord your God in the place he 427 chooses. 15:21 If they have any kind of blemish – lameness, blindness, or anything else 428 – you may not offer them as a sacrifice to the Lord your God. 15:22 You may eat it in your villages, 429 whether you are ritually impure or clean, 430 just as you would eat a gazelle or an ibex. 15:23 However, you must not eat its blood; you must pour it out on the ground like water.
16:1 Observe the month Abib 431 and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in that month 432 he 433 brought you out of Egypt by night. 16:2 You must sacrifice the Passover animal 434 (from the flock or the herd) to the Lord your God in the place where he 435 chooses to locate his name. 16:3 You must not eat any yeast with it; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast, symbolic of affliction, for you came out of Egypt hurriedly. You must do this so you will remember for the rest of your life the day you came out of the land of Egypt. 16:4 There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land 436 for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning. 437 16:5 You may not sacrifice the Passover in just any of your villages 438 that the Lord your God is giving you, 16:6 but you must sacrifice it 439 in the evening in 440 the place where he 441 chooses to locate his name, at sunset, the time of day you came out of Egypt. 16:7 You must cook 442 and eat it in the place the Lord your God chooses; you may return the next morning to your tents. 16:8 You must eat bread made without yeast for six days. The seventh day you are to hold an assembly for the Lord your God; you must not do any work on that day. 443
16:9 You must count seven weeks; you must begin to count them 444 from the time you begin to harvest the standing grain. 16:10 Then you are to celebrate the Festival of Weeks 445 before the Lord your God with the voluntary offering 446 that you will bring, in proportion to how he 447 has blessed you. 16:11 You shall rejoice before him 448 – you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites in your villages, 449 the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows among you – in the place where the Lord chooses to locate his name. 16:12 Furthermore, remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and so be careful to observe these statutes.
16:13 You must celebrate the Festival of Temporary Shelters 450 for seven days, at the time of the grain and grape harvest. 451 16:14 You are to rejoice in your festival, you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows who are in your villages. 452 16:15 You are to celebrate the festival seven days before the Lord your God in the place he 453 chooses, for he 454 will bless you in all your productivity and in whatever you do; 455 so you will indeed rejoice! 16:16 Three times a year all your males must appear before the Lord your God in the place he chooses for the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Temporary Shelters; and they must not appear before him 456 empty-handed. 16:17 Every one of you must give as you are able, 457 according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.
16:18 You must appoint judges and civil servants 458 for each tribe in all your villages 459 that the Lord your God is giving you, and they must judge the people fairly. 460 16:19 You must not pervert justice or show favor. Do not take a bribe, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort 461 the words of the righteous. 462 16:20 You must pursue justice alone 463 so that you may live and inherit the land the Lord your God is giving you.
16:21 You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole 464 near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself. 16:22 You must not erect a sacred pillar, 465 a thing the Lord your God detests. 17:1 You must not sacrifice to him 466 a bull or sheep that has a blemish or any other defect, because that is considered offensive 467 to the Lord your God. 17:2 Suppose a man or woman is discovered among you – in one of your villages 468 that the Lord your God is giving you – who sins before the Lord your God 469 and breaks his covenant 17:3 by serving other gods and worshiping them – the sun, 470 moon, or any other heavenly bodies which I have not permitted you to worship. 471 17:4 When it is reported to you and you hear about it, you must investigate carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing 472 is being done in Israel, 17:5 you must bring to your city gates 473 that man or woman who has done this wicked thing – that very man or woman – and you must stone that person to death. 474 17:6 At the testimony of two or three witnesses they must be executed. They cannot be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. 17:7 The witnesses 475 must be first to begin the execution, and then all the people 476 are to join in afterward. In this way you will purge evil from among you.
17:8 If a matter is too difficult for you to judge – bloodshed, 477 legal claim, 478 or assault 479 – matters of controversy in your villages 480 – you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses. 481 17:9 You will go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office in those days and seek a solution; they will render a verdict. 17:10 You must then do as they have determined at that place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do just as you are taught. 17:11 You must do what you are instructed, and the verdict they pronounce to you, without fail. Do not deviate right or left from what they tell you. 17:12 The person who pays no attention 482 to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict – that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel. 17:13 Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and not be so presumptuous again.
17:14 When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,” 17:15 you must select without fail 483 a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens 484 you must appoint a king – you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. 485 17:16 Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, 486 for the Lord has said you must never again return that way. 17:17 Furthermore, he must not marry many 487 wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold. 17:18 When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this law 488 on a scroll 489 given to him by the Levitical priests. 17:19 It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this law and these statutes and carry them out. 17:20 Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left, and he and his descendants will enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom 490 in Israel.
18:1 The Levitical priests 491 – indeed, the entire tribe of Levi – will have no allotment or inheritance with Israel; they may eat the burnt offerings of the Lord and of his inheritance. 492 18:2 They 493 will have no inheritance in the midst of their fellow Israelites; 494 the Lord alone is their inheritance, just as he had told them. 18:3 This shall be the priests’ fair allotment 495 from the people who offer sacrifices, whether bull or sheep – they must give to the priest the shoulder, the jowls, and the stomach. 18:4 You must give them the best of your 496 grain, new wine, and olive oil, as well as the best of your wool when you shear your flocks. 18:5 For the Lord your God has chosen them and their sons from all your tribes to stand 497 and serve in his name 498 permanently. 18:6 Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will 499 from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, 500 to the place the Lord chooses 18:7 and serves in the name of the Lord his God like his fellow Levites who stand there before the Lord. 18:8 He must eat the same share they do, despite any profits he may gain from the sale of his family’s inheritance. 501
18:9 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn the abhorrent practices of those nations. 18:10 There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, 502 anyone who practices divination, 503 an omen reader, 504 a soothsayer, 505 a sorcerer, 506 18:11 one who casts spells, 507 one who conjures up spirits, 508 a practitioner of the occult, 509 or a necromancer. 510 18:12 Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord and because of these detestable things 511 the Lord your God is about to drive them out 512 from before you. 18:13 You must be blameless before the Lord your God. 18:14 Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.
18:15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you – from your fellow Israelites; 513 you must listen to him. 18:16 This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the Lord your God: “Please do not make us hear the voice of the Lord our 514 God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die.” 18:17 The Lord then said to me, “What they have said is good. 18:18 I will raise up a prophet like you for them from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I command. 18:19 I will personally hold responsible 515 anyone who then pays no attention to the words that prophet 516 speaks in my name.
18:20 “But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized 517 him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. 18:21 Now if you say to yourselves, 518 ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?’ 519 – 18:22 whenever a prophet speaks in my 520 name and the prediction 521 is not fulfilled, 522 then I have 523 not spoken it; 524 the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”
19:1 When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he 525 is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses, 19:2 you must set apart for yourselves three cities 526 in the middle of your land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession. 19:3 You shall build a roadway and divide into thirds the whole extent 527 of your land that the Lord your God is providing as your inheritance; anyone who kills another person should flee to the closest of these cities. 19:4 Now this is the law pertaining to one who flees there in order to live, 528 if he has accidentally killed another 529 without hating him at the time of the accident. 530 19:5 Suppose he goes with someone else 531 to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax 532 to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose 533 from the handle and strikes 534 his fellow worker 535 so hard that he dies. The person responsible 536 may then flee to one of these cities to save himself. 537 19:6 Otherwise the blood avenger will chase after the killer in the heat of his anger, eventually overtake him, 538 and kill him, 539 though this is not a capital case 540 since he did not hate him at the time of the accident. 19:7 Therefore, I am commanding you to set apart for yourselves three cities. 19:8 If the Lord your God enlarges your borders as he promised your ancestors 541 and gives you all the land he pledged to them, 542 19:9 and then you are careful to observe all these commandments 543 I am giving 544 you today (namely, to love the Lord your God and to always walk in his ways), then you must add three more cities 545 to these three. 19:10 You must not shed innocent blood 546 in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty. 547 19:11 However, suppose a person hates someone else 548 and stalks him, attacks him, kills him, 549 and then flees to one of these cities. 19:12 The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger 550 to die. 19:13 You must not pity him, but purge out the blood of the innocent 551 from Israel, so that it may go well with you.
19:14 You must not encroach on your neighbor’s property, 552 which will have been defined 553 in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 554
19:15 A single witness may not testify 555 against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established 556 only on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 19:16 If a false 557 witness testifies against another person and accuses him of a crime, 558 19:17 then both parties to the controversy must stand before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges 559 who will be in office in those days. 19:18 The judges will thoroughly investigate the matter, and if the witness should prove to be false and to have given false testimony against the accused, 560 19:19 you must do to him what he had intended to do to the accused. In this way you will purge 561 evil from among you. 19:20 The rest of the people will hear and become afraid to keep doing such evil among you. 19:21 You must not show pity; the principle will be a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot. 562
20:1 When you go to war against your enemies and see chariotry 563 and troops 564 who outnumber you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, is with you. 20:2 As you move forward for battle, the priest 565 will approach and say to the soldiers, 566 20:3 “Listen, Israel! Today you are moving forward to do battle with your enemies. Do not be fainthearted. Do not fear and tremble or be terrified because of them, 20:4 for the Lord your God goes with you to fight on your behalf against your enemies to give you victory.” 567 20:5 Moreover, the officers are to say to the troops, 568 “Who among you 569 has built a new house and not dedicated 570 it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else 571 dedicate it. 20:6 Or who among you has planted a vineyard and not benefited from it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else benefit from it. 20:7 Or who among you 572 has become engaged to a woman but has not married her? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else marry her.” 20:8 In addition, the officers are to say to the troops, “Who among you is afraid and fainthearted? He may go home so that he will not make his fellow soldier’s 573 heart as fearful 574 as his own.” 20:9 Then, when the officers have finished speaking, 575 they must appoint unit commanders 576 to lead the troops.
20:10 When you approach a city to wage war against it, offer it terms of peace. 20:11 If it accepts your terms 577 and submits to you, all the people found in it will become your slaves. 578 20:12 If it does not accept terms of peace but makes war with you, then you are to lay siege to it. 20:13 The Lord your God will deliver it over to you 579 and you must kill every single male by the sword. 20:14 However, the women, little children, cattle, and anything else in the city – all its plunder – you may take for yourselves as spoil. You may take from your enemies the plunder that the Lord your God has given you. 20:15 This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.
20:16 As for the cities of these peoples that 580 the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing 581 to survive. 20:17 Instead you must utterly annihilate them 582 – the Hittites, 583 Amorites, 584 Canaanites, 585 Perizzites, 586 Hivites, 587 and Jebusites 588 – just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 20:18 so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship 589 their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God. 20:19 If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, 590 you must not chop down its trees, 591 for you may eat fruit 592 from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it! 593 20:20 However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, 594 and you may use it to build siege works 595 against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.
21:1 If a homicide victim 596 should be found lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you, 597 and no one knows who killed 598 him, 21:2 your elders and judges must go out and measure how far it is to the cities in the vicinity of the corpse. 599 21:3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse 600 must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked – that has never pulled with the yoke – 21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, 601 to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. 602 There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck. 21:5 Then the Levitical priests 603 will approach (for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve him and to pronounce blessings in his name, 604 and to decide 605 every judicial verdict 606 ) 21:6 and all the elders of that city nearest the corpse 607 must wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. 608 21:7 Then they must proclaim, “Our hands have not spilled this blood, nor have we 609 witnessed the crime. 610 21:8 Do not blame 611 your people Israel whom you redeemed, O Lord, and do not hold them accountable for the bloodshed of an innocent person.” 612 Then atonement will be made for the bloodshed. 21:9 In this manner you will purge out the guilt of innocent blood from among you, for you must do what is right before 613 the Lord.
21:10 When you go out to do battle with your enemies and the Lord your God allows you to prevail 614 and you take prisoners, 21:11 if you should see among them 615 an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife, 21:12 you may bring her back to your house. She must shave her head, 616 trim her nails, 21:13 discard the clothing she was wearing when captured, 617 and stay 618 in your house, lamenting for her father and mother for a full month. After that you may have sexual relations 619 with her and become her husband and she your wife. 21:14 If you are not pleased with her, then you must let her go 620 where she pleases. You cannot in any case sell 621 her; 622 you must not take advantage of 623 her, since you have already humiliated 624 her.
21:15 Suppose a man has two wives, one whom he loves more than the other, 625 and they both 626 bear him sons, with the firstborn being the child of the less loved wife. 21:16 In the day he divides his inheritance 627 he must not appoint as firstborn the son of the favorite wife in place of the other 628 wife’s son who is actually the firstborn. 21:17 Rather, he must acknowledge the son of the less loved 629 wife as firstborn and give him the double portion 630 of all he has, for that son is the beginning of his father’s procreative power 631 – to him should go the right of the firstborn.
21:18 If a person has a stubborn, rebellious son who pays no attention to his father or mother, and they discipline him to no avail, 632 21:19 his father and mother must seize him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his city. 21:20 They must declare to the elders 633 of his city, “Our son is stubborn and rebellious and pays no attention to what we say – he is a glutton and drunkard.” 21:21 Then all the men of his city must stone him to death. In this way you will purge out 634 wickedness from among you, and all Israel 635 will hear about it and be afraid.
21:22 If a person commits a sin punishable by death and is executed, and you hang the corpse 636 on a tree, 21:23 his body must not remain all night on the tree; instead you must make certain you bury 637 him that same day, for the one who is left exposed 638 on a tree is cursed by God. 639 You must not defile your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
22:1 When you see 640 your neighbor’s 641 ox or sheep going astray, do not ignore it; 642 you must return it without fail 643 to your neighbor. 22:2 If the owner 644 does not live 645 near you or you do not know who the owner is, 646 then you must corral the animal 647 at your house and let it stay with you until the owner looks for it; then you must return it to him. 22:3 You shall do the same to his donkey, his clothes, or anything else your neighbor 648 has lost and you have found; you must not refuse to get involved. 649 22:4 When you see 650 your neighbor’s donkey or ox fallen along the road, do not ignore it; 651 instead, you must be sure 652 to help him get the animal on its feet again. 653
22:5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, 654 nor should a man dress up in women’s clothing, for anyone who does this is offensive 655 to the Lord your God.
22:6 If you happen to notice a bird’s nest along the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and there are chicks or eggs with the mother bird sitting on them, 656 you must not take the mother from the young. 657 22:7 You must be sure 658 to let the mother go, but you may take the young for yourself. Do this so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.
22:8 If you build a new house, you must construct a guard rail 659 around your roof to avoid being culpable 660 in the event someone should fall from it.
22:9 You must not plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed; otherwise the entire yield, both of the seed you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will be defiled. 661 22:10 You must not plow with an ox and a donkey harnessed together. 22:11 You must not wear clothing made with wool and linen meshed together. 662 22:12 You shall make yourselves tassels 663 for the four corners of the clothing you wear.
22:13 Suppose a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her, 664 and then rejects 665 her, 22:14 accusing her of impropriety 666 and defaming her reputation 667 by saying, “I married this woman but when I had sexual relations 668 with her I discovered she was not a virgin!” 22:15 Then the father and mother of the young woman must produce the evidence of virginity 669 for the elders of the city at the gate. 22:16 The young woman’s father must say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man and he has rejected 670 her. 22:17 Moreover, he has raised accusations of impropriety by saying, ‘I discovered your daughter was not a virgin,’ but this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” The cloth must then be spread out 671 before the city’s elders. 22:18 The elders of that city must then seize the man and punish 672 him. 22:19 They will fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, for the man who made the accusation 673 ruined the reputation 674 of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.
22:20 But if the accusation is true and the young woman was not a virgin, 22:21 the men of her city must bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house and stone her to death, for she has done a disgraceful thing 675 in Israel by behaving like a prostitute while living in her father’s house. In this way you will purge 676 evil from among you.
22:22 If a man is caught having sexual relations with 677 a married woman 678 both the man who had relations with the woman and the woman herself must die; in this way you will purge 679 evil from Israel.
22:23 If a virgin is engaged to a man and another man meets 680 her in the city and has sexual relations with 681 her, 22:24 you must bring the two of them to the gate of that city and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry out though in the city and the man because he violated 682 his neighbor’s fiancée; 683 in this way you will purge 684 evil from among you. 22:25 But if the man came across 685 the engaged woman in the field and overpowered her and raped 686 her, then only the rapist 687 must die. 22:26 You must not do anything to the young woman – she has done nothing deserving of death. This case is the same as when someone attacks another person 688 and murders him, 22:27 for the man 689 met her in the field and the engaged woman cried out, but there was no one to rescue her.
22:28 Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes 690 her and they are discovered. 22:29 The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives.
22:30 (23:1) 691 A man may not marry 692 his father’s former 693 wife and in this way dishonor his father. 694
23:1 A man with crushed 695 or severed genitals 696 may not enter the assembly of the Lord. 697 23:2 A person of illegitimate birth 698 may not enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation no one related to him may do so. 699
23:3 An Ammonite or Moabite 700 may not enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation none of their descendants shall ever 701 do so, 702 23:4 for they did not meet you with food and water on the way as you came from Egypt, and furthermore, they hired 703 Balaam son of Beor of Pethor in Aram Naharaim to curse you. 23:5 But the Lord your God refused to listen to Balaam and changed 704 the curse to a blessing, for the Lord your God loves 705 you. 23:6 You must not seek peace and prosperity for them through all the ages to come. 23:7 You must not hate an Edomite, for he is your relative; 706 you must not hate an Egyptian, for you lived as a foreigner 707 in his land. 23:8 Children of the third generation born to them 708 may enter the assembly of the Lord.
23:9 When you go out as an army against your enemies, guard yourselves against anything impure. 709 23:10 If there is someone among you who is impure because of some nocturnal emission, 710 he must leave the camp; he may not reenter it immediately. 23:11 When evening arrives he must wash himself with water and then at sunset he may reenter the camp.
23:12 You are to have a place outside the camp to serve as a latrine. 711 23:13 You must have a spade among your other equipment and when you relieve yourself 712 outside you must dig a hole with the spade 713 and then turn and cover your excrement. 714 23:14 For the Lord your God walks about in the middle of your camp to deliver you and defeat 715 your enemies for you. Therefore your camp should be holy, so that he does not see anything indecent 716 among you and turn away from you.
23:15 You must not return an escaped slave to his master when he has run away to you. 717 23:16 Indeed, he may live among you in any place he chooses, in whichever of your villages 718 he prefers; you must not oppress him.
23:17 There must never be a sacred prostitute 719 among the young women 720 of Israel nor a sacred male prostitute 721 among the young men 722 of Israel. 23:18 You must never bring the pay of a female prostitute 723 or the wage of a male prostitute 724 into the temple of the Lord your God in fulfillment of any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the Lord your God.
23:19 You must not charge interest on a loan to your fellow Israelite, 725 whether on money, food, or anything else that has been loaned with interest. 23:20 You may lend with interest to a foreigner, but not to your fellow Israelite; if you keep this command the Lord your God will bless you in all you undertake in the land you are about to enter to possess. 23:21 When you make a vow to the Lord your God you must not delay in fulfilling it, for otherwise he 726 will surely 727 hold you accountable as a sinner. 728 23:22 If you refrain from making a vow, it will not be sinful. 23:23 Whatever you vow, you must be careful to do what you have promised, such as what you have vowed to the Lord your God as a freewill offering. 23:24 When you enter the vineyard of your neighbor you may eat as many grapes as you please, 729 but you must not take away any in a container. 730 23:25 When you go into the ripe grain fields of your neighbor you may pluck off the kernels with your hand, 731 but you must not use a sickle on your neighbor’s ripe grain.
24:1 If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive 732 in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house. 24:2 When she has left him 733 she may go and become someone else’s wife. 24:3 If the second husband rejects 734 her and then divorces her, 735 gives her the papers, and evicts her from his house, or if the second husband who married her dies, 24:4 her first husband who divorced her is not permitted to remarry 736 her after she has become ritually impure, for that is offensive to the Lord. 737 You must not bring guilt on the land 738 which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
24:5 When a man is newly married, he need not go into 739 the army nor be obligated in any way; he must be free to stay at home for a full year and bring joy to 740 the wife he has married.
24:6 One must not take either lower or upper millstones as security on a loan, for that is like taking a life itself as security. 741
24:7 If a man is found kidnapping a person from among his fellow Israelites, 742 and regards him as mere property 743 and sells him, that kidnapper 744 must die. In this way you will purge 745 evil from among you.
24:8 Be careful during an outbreak of leprosy to follow precisely 746 all that the Levitical priests instruct you; as I have commanded them, so you should do. 24:9 Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam 747 along the way after you left Egypt.
24:10 When you make any kind of loan to your neighbor, you may not go into his house to claim what he is offering as security. 748 24:11 You must stand outside and the person to whom you are making the loan will bring out to you what he is offering as security. 749 24:12 If the person is poor you may not use what he gives you as security for a covering. 750 24:13 You must by all means 751 return to him at sunset the item he gave you as security so that he may sleep in his outer garment and bless you for it; it will be considered a just 752 deed by the Lord your God.
24:14 You must not oppress a lowly and poor servant, whether one from among your fellow Israelites 753 or from the resident foreigners who are living in your land and villages. 754 24:15 You must pay his wage that very day before the sun sets, for he is poor and his life depends on it. Otherwise he will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
24:16 Fathers must not be put to death for what their children 755 do, nor children for what their fathers do; each must be put to death for his own sin.
24:17 You must not pervert justice due a resident foreigner or an orphan, or take a widow’s garment as security for a loan. 24:18 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do all this. 24:19 Whenever you reap your harvest in your field and leave some unraked grain there, 756 you must not return to get it; it should go to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow so that the Lord your God may bless all the work you do. 757 24:20 When you beat your olive tree you must not repeat the procedure; 758 the remaining olives belong to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow. 24:21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard you must not do so a second time; 759 they should go to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow. 24:22 Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt; therefore, I am commanding you to do all this.
25:1 If controversy arises between people, 760 they should go to court for judgment. When the judges 761 hear the case, they shall exonerate 762 the innocent but condemn 763 the guilty. 25:2 Then, 764 if the guilty person is sentenced to a beating, 765 the judge shall force him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of blows his wicked behavior deserves. 766 25:3 The judge 767 may sentence him to forty blows, 768 but no more. If he is struck with more than these, you might view your fellow Israelite 769 with contempt.
25:4 You must not muzzle your 770 ox when it is treading grain.
25:5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her, 771 and perform the duty of a brother-in-law. 772 25:6 Then 773 the first son 774 she bears will continue the name of the dead brother, thus preventing his name from being blotted out of Israel. 25:7 But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she 775 must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!” 25:8 Then the elders of his city must summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I don’t want to marry her,” 25:9 then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. 776 She will then respond, “Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother’s family line!” 777 25:10 His family name will be referred to 778 in Israel as “the family 779 of the one whose sandal was removed.” 780
25:11 If two men 781 get into a hand-to-hand fight, and the wife of one of them gets involved to help her husband against his attacker, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, 782 25:12 then you must cut off her hand – do not pity her.
25:13 You must not have in your bag different stone weights, 783 a heavy and a light one. 784 25:14 You must not have in your house different measuring containers, 785 a large and a small one. 25:15 You must have an accurate and correct 786 stone weight and an accurate and correct measuring container, so that your life may be extended in the land the Lord your God is about to give you. 25:16 For anyone who acts dishonestly in these ways is abhorrent 787 to the Lord your God.
25:17 Remember what the Amalekites 788 did to you on your way from Egypt, 25:18 how they met you along the way and cut off all your stragglers in the rear of the march when you were exhausted and tired; they were unafraid of God. 789 25:19 So when the Lord your God gives you relief from all the enemies who surround you in the land he 790 is giving you as an inheritance, 791 you must wipe out the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven 792 – do not forget! 793
26:1 When 794 you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you occupy it and live in it, 26:2 you must take the first of all the ground’s produce you harvest from the land the Lord your God is giving you, place it in a basket, and go to the place where he 795 chooses to locate his name. 796 26:3 You must go to the priest in office at that time and say to him, “I declare today to the Lord your 797 God that I have come into the land that the Lord 798 promised 799 to our ancestors 800 to give us.” 26:4 The priest will then take the basket from you 801 and set it before the altar of the Lord your God. 26:5 Then you must affirm before the Lord your God, “A wandering 802 Aramean 803 was my ancestor, 804 and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number, 805 but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people. 26:6 But the Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, forcing us to do burdensome labor. 26:7 So we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he 806 heard us and saw our humiliation, toil, and oppression. 26:8 Therefore the Lord brought us out of Egypt with tremendous strength and power, 807 as well as with great awe-inspiring signs and wonders. 26:9 Then he brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 26:10 So now, look! I have brought the first of the ground’s produce that you, Lord, have given me.” Then you must set it down before the Lord your God and worship before him. 808 26:11 You will celebrate all the good things that the Lord your God has given you and your family, 809 along with the Levites and the resident foreigners among you.
26:12 When you finish tithing all 810 your income in the third year (the year of tithing), you must give it to the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows 811 so that they may eat to their satisfaction in your villages. 812 26:13 Then you shall say before the Lord your God, “I have removed the sacred offering 813 from my house and given it to the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows just as you have commanded me. 814 I have not violated or forgotten your commandments. 26:14 I have not eaten anything when I was in mourning, or removed any of it while ceremonially unclean, or offered any of it to the dead; 815 I have obeyed you 816 and have done everything you have commanded me. 26:15 Look down from your holy dwelling place in heaven and bless your people Israel and the land you have given us, just as you promised our ancestors – a land flowing with milk and honey.”
26:16 Today the Lord your God is commanding you to keep these statutes and ordinances, something you must do with all your heart and soul. 817 26:17 Today you have declared the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in his ways, keep his statutes, commandments, and ordinances, and obey him. 26:18 And today the Lord has declared you to be his special people (as he already promised you) so you may keep all his commandments. 26:19 Then 818 he will elevate you above all the nations he has made and you will receive praise, fame, and honor. 819 You will 820 be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he has said.
27:1 Then Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people: “Pay attention to all the commandments 821 I am giving 822 you today. 27:2 When you cross the Jordan River 823 to the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must erect great stones and cover 824 them with plaster. 27:3 Then you must inscribe on them all the words of this law when you cross over, so that you may enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, 825 said to you. 27:4 So when you cross the Jordan you must erect on Mount Ebal 826 these stones about which I am commanding you today, and you must cover them with plaster. 27:5 Then you must build an altar there to the Lord your God, an altar of stones – do not use an iron tool on them. 27:6 You must build the altar of the Lord your God with whole stones and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God. 27:7 Also you must offer fellowship offerings and eat them there, rejoicing before the Lord your God. 27:8 You must inscribe on the stones all the words of this law, making them clear.”
27:9 Then Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to all Israel: “Be quiet and pay attention, Israel. Today you have become the people of the Lord your God. 27:10 You must obey him 827 and keep his commandments and statutes that I am giving you today.” 27:11 Moreover, Moses commanded the people that day: 27:12 “The following tribes 828 must stand to bless the people on Mount Gerizim when you cross the Jordan: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. 27:13 And these other tribes must stand for the curse on Mount Ebal: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
27:14 “The Levites will call out to every Israelite 829 with a loud voice: 27:15 ‘Cursed is the one 830 who makes a carved or metal image – something abhorrent 831 to the Lord, the work of the craftsman 832 – and sets it up in a secret place.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 833 27:16 ‘Cursed 834 is the one who disrespects 835 his father and mother.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:17 ‘Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor’s boundary marker.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:18 ‘Cursed is the one who misleads a blind person on the road.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:19 ‘Cursed is the one who perverts justice for the resident foreigner, the orphan, and the widow.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:20 ‘Cursed is the one who has sexual relations with 836 his father’s former wife, 837 for he dishonors his father.’ 838 Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:21 ‘Cursed is the one who commits bestiality.’ 839 Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:22 ‘Cursed is the one who has sexual relations with his sister, the daughter of either his father or mother.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:23 ‘Cursed is the one who has sexual relations with his mother-in-law.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:24 ‘Cursed is the one who kills 840 his neighbor in private.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:25 ‘Cursed is the one who takes a bribe to kill an innocent person.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’ 27:26 ‘Cursed is the one who refuses to keep the words of this law.’ Then all the people will say, ‘Amen!’
28:1 “If you indeed 841 obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments I am giving 842 you today, the Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations of the earth. 28:2 All these blessings will come to you in abundance 843 if you obey the Lord your God: 28:3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the field. 844 28:4 Your children 845 will be blessed, as well as the produce of your soil, the offspring of your livestock, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 28:5 Your basket and your mixing bowl will be blessed. 28:6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. 846 28:7 The Lord will cause your enemies who attack 847 you to be struck down before you; they will attack you from one direction 848 but flee from you in seven different directions. 28:8 The Lord will decree blessing for you with respect to your barns and in everything you do – yes, he will bless you in the land he 849 is giving you. 28:9 The Lord will designate you as his holy people just as he promised you, if you keep his commandments 850 and obey him. 851 28:10 Then all the peoples of the earth will see that you belong to the Lord, 852 and they will respect you. 28:11 The Lord will greatly multiply your children, 853 the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your soil in the land which he 854 promised your ancestors 855 he would give you. 28:12 The Lord will open for you his good treasure house, the heavens, to give you rain for the land in its season and to bless all you do; 856 you will lend to many nations but you will not borrow from any. 28:13 The Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always end up at the top and not at the bottom, if you obey his 857 commandments which I am urging 858 you today to be careful to do. 28:14 But you must not turn away from all the commandments I am giving 859 you today, to either the right or left, nor pursue other gods and worship 860 them.
28:15 “But if you ignore 861 the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force: 862 28:16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field. 28:17 Your basket and your mixing bowl will be cursed. 28:18 Your children 863 will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 28:19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. 864
28:20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you 865 in everything you undertake 866 until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. 867 28:21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases 868 until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 28:22 He 869 will afflict you with weakness, 870 fever, inflammation, infection, 871 sword, 872 blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 28:23 The 873 sky 874 above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron. 28:24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.
28:25 “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror 875 to all the kingdoms of the earth. 28:26 Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off. 28:27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, eczema, and scabies, all of which cannot be healed. 28:28 The Lord will also subject you to madness, blindness, and confusion of mind. 876 28:29 You will feel your way along at noon like the blind person does in darkness and you will not succeed in anything you do; 877 you will be constantly oppressed and continually robbed, with no one to save you. 28:30 You will be engaged to a woman and another man will rape 878 her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it. 28:31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you. 28:32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it. 879 28:33 As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives. 28:34 You will go insane from seeing all this. 28:35 The Lord will afflict you in your knees and on your legs with painful, incurable boils – from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. 28:36 The Lord will force you and your king 880 whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there. 28:37 You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you.
28:38 “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. 28:39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. 28:40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe. 881 28:41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 28:42 Whirring locusts 882 will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil. 28:43 The foreigners 883 who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower. 28:44 They will lend to you but you will not lend to them; they will become the head and you will become the tail!
28:45 All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given 884 you. 28:46 These curses 885 will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants. 886
28:47 “Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 28:48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty 887 you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They 888 will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 28:49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth 889 as the eagle flies, 890 a nation whose language you will not understand, 28:50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. 28:51 They 891 will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, 892 or lambs of your flocks 893 until they have destroyed you. 28:52 They will besiege all of your villages 894 until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. 28:53 You will then eat your own offspring, 895 the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege 896 by which your enemies will constrict you. 28:54 The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. 28:55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict 897 you in your villages. 28:56 Likewise, the most 898 tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, 899 will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth 900 and her newborn children 901 (since she has nothing else), 902 because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.
28:58 “If you refuse to obey 903 all the words of this law, the things written in this scroll, and refuse to fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, 28:59 then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants – great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses. 28:60 He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt 904 that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you. 905 28:61 Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, 906 until you have perished. 28:62 There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, 907 because you will have disobeyed 908 the Lord your God. 28:63 This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he 909 will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess. 28:64 The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. 28:65 Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. 28:66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next. 910 28:67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see. 28:68 Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
29:1 (28:69) 911 These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb. 912
29:2 Moses proclaimed to all Israel as follows: “You have seen all that the Lord did 913 in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, all his servants, and his land. 29:3 Your eyes have seen the great judgments, 914 those signs and mighty wonders. 29:4 But to this very day the Lord has not given you an understanding mind, perceptive eyes, or discerning ears! 915 29:5 I have led you through the desert for forty years. Your clothing has not worn out 916 nor have your sandals 917 deteriorated. 29:6 You have eaten no bread and drunk no wine or beer – all so that you might know that I 918 am the Lord your God! 29:7 When you came to this place King Sihon of Heshbon and King Og of Bashan came out to make war and we defeated them. 29:8 Then we took their land and gave it as an inheritance to Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh.
29:9 “Therefore, keep the terms 919 of this covenant and obey them so that you may be successful in everything you do. 29:10 You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God – the heads of your tribes, 920 your elders, your officials, every Israelite man, 29:11 your infants, your wives, and the 921 foreigners living in your encampment, those who chop wood and those who carry water – 29:12 so that you may enter by oath into the covenant the Lord your God is making with you today. 922 29:13 Today he will affirm that you are his people and that he is your God, 923 just as he promised you and as he swore by oath to your ancestors 924 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 29:14 It is not with you alone that I am making this covenant by oath, 29:15 but with whoever stands with us here today before the Lord our God as well as those not with us here today. 925
29:16 “(For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we crossed through the nations as we traveled. 29:17 You have seen their detestable things 926 and idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold.) 927 29:18 Beware that the heart of no man, woman, clan, or tribe among you turns away from the Lord our God today to pursue and serve the gods of those nations; beware that there is among you no root producing poisonous and bitter fruit. 928 29:19 When such a person 929 hears the words of this oath he secretly 930 blesses himself 931 and says, “I will have peace though I continue to walk with a stubborn spirit.” 932 This will destroy 933 the watered ground with the parched. 934 29:20 The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger 935 will rage 936 against that man; all the curses 937 written in this scroll will fall upon him 938 and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. 939 29:21 The Lord will single him out 940 for judgment 941 from all the tribes of Israel according to all the curses of the covenant written in this scroll of the law. 29:22 The generation to come – your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places – will see 942 the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it. 29:23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. 943 29:24 Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger 944 all about?” 29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 29:26 They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they did not know and that he did not permit them to worship. 945 29:27 That is why the Lord’s anger erupted against this land, bringing on it all the curses 946 written in this scroll. 29:28 So the Lord has uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great rage and has deported them to another land, as is clear today.” 29:29 Secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those that are revealed belong to us and our descendants 947 forever, so that we might obey all the words of this law.
30:1 “When you have experienced all these things, both the blessings and the curses 948 I have set before you, you will reflect upon them 949 in all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you. 30:2 Then if you and your descendants 950 turn to the Lord your God and obey him with your whole mind and being 951 just as 952 I am commanding you today, 30:3 the Lord your God will reverse your captivity and have pity on you. He will turn and gather you from all the peoples among whom he 953 has scattered you. 30:4 Even if your exiles are in the most distant land, 954 from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. 30:5 Then he 955 will bring you to the land your ancestors 956 possessed and you also will possess it; he will do better for you and multiply you more than he did your ancestors. 30:6 The Lord your God will also cleanse 957 your heart and the hearts of your descendants 958 so that you may love him 959 with all your mind and being and so that you may live. 30:7 Then the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and persecute you. 30:8 You will return and obey the Lord, keeping all his commandments I am giving 960 you today. 30:9 The Lord your God will make the labor of your hands 961 abundantly successful and multiply your children, 962 the offspring of your cattle, and the produce of your soil. For the Lord your God will once more 963 rejoice over you to make you prosperous 964 just as he rejoiced over your ancestors, 30:10 if you obey the Lord your God and keep his commandments and statutes that are written in this scroll of the law. But you must turn to him 965 with your whole mind and being.
30:11 “This commandment I am giving 966 you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it too remote. 30:12 It is not in heaven, as though one must say, “Who will go up to heaven to get it for us and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 30:13 And it is not across the sea, as though one must say, “Who will cross over to the other side of the sea and get it for us and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 30:14 For the thing is very near you – it is in your mouth and in your mind 967 so that you can do it.
30:15 “Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other. 30:16 What 968 I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess. 969 30:17 However, if you 970 turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, 30:18 I declare to you this very day that you will certainly 971 perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess. 972 30:19 Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live! 30:20 I also call on you 973 to love the Lord your God, to obey him and be loyal to him, for he gives you life and enables you to live continually 974 in the land the Lord promised to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
[5:1] 1 tn Heb “and Moses called to all Israel and he said to them”; NAB, NASB, NIV “Moses summoned (convened NRSV) all Israel.”
[5:3] 2 tn Heb “the
[5:5] 4 tn Or “word” (so KJV, NASB, NIV); NRSV “words.”
[5:7] 5 tn Heb “there must not be for you other gods.” The expression “for you” indicates possession.
[5:7] 6 tn Heb “upon my face,” or “before me” (עַל־פָּנָיַ, ’al-panaya). Some understand this in a locative sense: “in my sight.” The translation assumes that the phrase indicates exclusion. The idea is that of placing any other god before the
[5:8] 7 tn Heb “an image, any likeness.”
[5:8] 8 tn Heb “under the earth” (so ASV, NASB, NRSV); NCV “below the land.”
[5:9] 9 tn In the Hebrew text the form is a participle, which is subordinated to what precedes. For the sake of English style, the translation divides this lengthy verse into two sentences.
[5:9] 10 tn Heb “who hate” (so NAB, NIV, NLT). Just as “to love” (אָהַב, ’ahav) means in a covenant context “to choose, obey,” so “to hate” (שָׂנֵא, sane’) means “to reject, disobey” (cf. the note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37; see also 5:10).
[5:9] 11 tn Heb “visiting the sin of fathers upon sons and upon a third (generation) and upon a fourth (generation) of those who hate me.” God sometimes punishes children for the sins of a father (cf. Num 16:27, 32; Josh 7:24-25; 2 Sam 21:1-9). On the principle of corporate solidarity and responsibility in OT thought see J. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup). In the idiom of the text, the father is the first generation and the “sons” the second generation, making grandsons the third and great-grandsons the fourth. The reference to a third and fourth generation is a way of emphasizing that the sinner’s punishment would last throughout his lifetime. In this culture, where men married and fathered children at a relatively young age, it would not be unusual for one to see his great-grandsons. In an Aramaic tomb inscription from Nerab dating to the seventh century b.c., Agbar observes that he was surrounded by “children of the fourth generation” as he lay on his death bed (see ANET 661). The language of the text differs from Exod 34:7, the sons are the first generation, the grandsons (literally, “sons of the sons”) the second, great-grandsons the third, and great-great-grandsons the fourth. One could argue that formulation in Deut 5:9 (see also Exod 20:50) is elliptical/abbreviated or that it suffers from textual corruption (the repetition of the words “sons” would invite accidental omission).
[5:10] 12 tn This theologically rich term (חֶסֶד, khesed) describes God’s loyalty to those who keep covenant with him. Sometimes it is used synonymously with בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”; Deut 7:9), and sometimes interchangeably with it (Deut 7:12). See H.-J. Zobel, TDOT 5:44-64.
[5:10] 13 tc By a slight emendation (לַאֲלּוּפִים [la’allufim] for לַאֲלָפִים [la’alafim]) “clans” could be read in place of the MT reading “thousands.” However, no
[5:10] 14 tn Heb “love.” See note on the word “reject” in v. 9.
[5:11] 15 tn Heb “take up the name of the Lord your God to emptiness”; KJV “take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The idea here is not cursing or profanity in the modern sense of these terms but rather the use of the divine Name for unholy, mundane purposes, that is, for meaningless (the Hebrew term is שָׁוְא) and empty ends. In ancient Israel this would include using the Lord’s name as a witness in vows one did not intend to keep.
[5:11] 16 tn Heb “who takes up his name to emptiness.”
[5:12] 17 tn Heb “to make holy,” that is, to put to special use, in this case, to sacred purposes (cf. vv. 13-15).
[5:14] 18 tn There is some degree of paronomasia (wordplay) here: “the seventh (הַשְּׁבִיעִי, hashÿvi’i) day is the Sabbath (שַׁבָּת, shabbat).” Otherwise, the words have nothing in common, since “Sabbath” is derived from the verb שָׁבַת (shavat, “to cease”).
[5:14] 19 tn Heb “in your gates”; NRSV, CEV “in your towns”; TEV “in your country.”
[5:15] 20 tn Heb “by a strong hand and an outstretched arm,” the hand and arm symbolizing divine activity and strength. Cf. NLT “with amazing power and mighty deeds.”
[5:15] 21 tn Or “keep” (so KJV, NRSV).
[5:16] 22 tn The imperative here means, literally, “regard as heavy” (כַּבֵּד, kabbed). The meaning is that great importance must be ascribed to parents by their children.
[5:16] 23 tn Heb “the
[5:17] 24 tn Traditionally “kill” (so KJV, ASV, RSV, NAB). The verb here (רָצַח, ratsakh) is generic for homicide but in the OT both killing in war and capital punishment were permitted and even commanded (Deut 13:5, 9; 20:13, 16-17), so the technical meaning here is “murder.”
[5:20] 25 tn Heb “your neighbor.” Clearly this is intended generically, however, and not to be limited only to those persons who live nearby (frequently the way “neighbor” is understood in contemporary contexts). So also in v. 20.
[5:21] 26 tn The Hebrew verb used here (חָמַד, khamad) is different from the one translated “crave” (אָוַה, ’avah) in the next line. The former has sexual overtones (“lust” or the like; cf. Song of Sol 2:3) whereas the latter has more the idea of a desire or craving for material things.
[5:21] 27 tn Heb “your neighbor’s.” See note on the term “fellow man” in v. 19.
[5:21] 28 tn Heb “your neighbor’s.” The pronoun is used in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[5:21] 29 tn Heb “or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
[5:22] 30 tn Heb “and he added no more” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV); NLT “This was all he said at that time.”
[5:22] 31 tn Heb “them”; the referent (the words spoken by the
[5:24] 32 tn Heb “his glory and his greatness.”
[5:24] 33 tn Heb “this day we have seen.”
[5:26] 34 tn Heb “who is there of all flesh.”
[5:27] 35 tn Heb “the
[5:28] 36 tn Heb “the
[5:29] 37 tn Heb “keep” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV).
[5:31] 38 tn Heb “commandment.” The MT actually has the singular (הַמִּצְוָה, hammitsvah), suggesting perhaps that the following terms (חֻקִּים [khuqqim] and מִשְׁפָּטִים [mishpatim]) are in epexegetical apposition to “commandment.” That is, the phrase could be translated “the entire command, namely, the statutes and ordinances.” This would essentially make מִצְוָה (mitsvah) synonymous with תּוֹרָה (torah), the usual term for the whole collection of law.
[5:31] 39 tn Heb “to possess it” (so KJV, ASV); NLT “as their inheritance.”
[5:33] 40 tn Heb “the
[5:33] 41 tn Heb “may prolong your days”; NAB “may have long life”; TEV “will continue to live.”
[6:1] 42 tn Heb “commandment.” The word מִצְוָה (mitsvah) again is in the singular, serving as a comprehensive term for the whole stipulation section of the book. See note on the word “commandments” in 5:31.
[6:1] 43 tn Heb “where you are going over to possess it” (so NASB); NRSV “that you are about to cross into and occupy.”
[6:2] 44 tn Here the terms are not the usual חֻקִּים (khuqqim) and מִשְׁפָּטִים (mishpatim; as in v. 1) but חֻקֹּת (khuqqot, “statutes”) and מִצְוֹת (mitsot, “commandments”). It is clear that these terms are used interchangeably and that their technical precision ought not be overly stressed.
[6:2] 45 tn Heb “commanding.” For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation.
[6:3] 46 tn Heb “may multiply greatly” (so NASB, NRSV); the words “in number” have been supplied in the translation for clarity.
[6:3] 47 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 10, 18, 23).
[6:4] 48 tn Heb “the
[6:5] 49 tn The verb אָהַב (’ahav, “to love”) in this setting communicates not so much an emotional idea as one of covenant commitment. To love the
[6:5] 50 tn Heb “heart.” In OT physiology the heart (לֵב, לֵבָב; levav, lev) was considered the seat of the mind or intellect, so that one could think with one’s heart. See A. Luc, NIDOTTE 2:749-54.
[6:5] 51 tn Heb “soul”; “being.” Contrary to Hellenistic ideas of a soul that is discrete and separate from the body and spirit, OT anthropology equated the “soul” (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) with the person himself. It is therefore best in most cases to translate נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) as “being” or the like. See H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 10-25; D. Fredericks, NIDOTTE 3:133-34.
[6:5] 52 sn For NT variations on the Shema see Matt 22:37-39; Mark 12:29-30; Luke 10:27.
[6:7] 53 tn Heb “repeat” (so NLT). If from the root I שָׁנַן (shanan), the verb means essentially to “engrave,” that is, “to teach incisively” (Piel); note NAB “Drill them into your children.” Cf. BDB 1041-42 s.v.
[6:7] 54 tn Or “as you are away on a journey” (cf. NRSV, TEV, NLT); NAB “at home and abroad.”
[6:8] 55 sn Tie them as a sign on your forearm. Later Jewish tradition referred to the little leather containers tied to the forearms and foreheads as tefillin. They were to contain the following passages from the Torah: Exod 13:1-10, 11-16; Deut 6:5-9; 11:13-21. The purpose was to serve as a “sign” of covenant relationship and obedience.
[6:8] 56 sn Fasten them as symbols on your forehead. These were also known later as tefillin (see previous note) or phylacteries (from the Greek term). These box-like containers, like those on the forearms, held the same scraps of the Torah. It was the hypocritical practice of wearing these without heartfelt sincerity that caused Jesus to speak scathingly about them (cf. Matt 23:5).
[6:9] 57 sn The Hebrew term מְזוּזֹת (mÿzuzot) refers both to the door frames and to small cases attached on them containing scripture texts (always Deut 6:4-9 and 11:13-21; and sometimes the decalogue; Exod 13:1-10, 11-16; and Num 10:35-36). See J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPSTC), 443-44.
[6:12] 58 tn Heb “out of the house of slavery” (so NASB, NRSV).
[6:14] 59 tn Heb “from the gods.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.
[6:15] 60 tn Heb “lest the anger of the
[6:16] 61 sn The place name Massah (מַסָּה, massah) derives from a root (נָסָה, nasah) meaning “to test; to try.” The reference here is to the experience in the Sinai desert when Moses struck the rock to obtain water (Exod 17:1-2). The complaining Israelites had, thus, “tested” the
[6:17] 62 tn Heb “the commandments of the
[6:17] 63 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute before the finite verb to emphasize the statement. The imperfect verbal form is used here with an obligatory nuance that can be captured in English through the imperative. Cf. NASB, NRSV “diligently keep (obey NLT).”
[6:18] 65 tn Heb “the
[6:21] 67 tn Heb “to your son.”
[6:21] 68 tn Heb “by a strong hand.” The image is that of a warrior who, with weapon in hand, overcomes his enemies. The
[6:22] 69 tn Heb “the
[6:22] 70 tn Heb “house,” referring to the entire household.
[6:24] 71 tn Heb “the
[6:25] 72 tn The term “commandment” (מִצְוָה, mitsvah), here in the singular, refers to the entire body of covenant stipulations.
[6:25] 73 tn Heb “as he has commanded us” (so NIV, NRSV).
[7:1] 74 sn Hittites. The center of Hittite power was in Anatolia (central modern Turkey). In the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200
[7:1] 75 sn Girgashites. These cannot be ethnically identified and are unknown outside the OT. They usually appear in such lists only when the intention is to have seven groups in all (see also the note on the word “seven” later in this verse).
[7:1] 76 sn Amorites. Originally from the upper Euphrates region (Amurru), the Amorites appear to have migrated into Canaan beginning in 2200
[7:1] 77 sn Canaanites. These were the indigenous peoples of the land, going back to the beginning of recorded history (ca. 3000
[7:1] 78 sn Perizzites. This is probably a subgroup of Canaanites (Gen 13:7; 34:30).
[7:1] 79 sn Hivites. These are usually thought to be the same as the Hurrians, a people well-known in ancient Near Eastern texts. They are likely identical to the Horites (see note on the term “Horites” in Deut 2:12).
[7:1] 80 sn Jebusites. These inhabited the hill country, particularly in and about Jerusalem (cf. Num 13:29; Josh 15:8; 2 Sam 5:6; 24:16).
[7:1] 81 sn Seven. This is an ideal number in the OT, one symbolizing fullness or completeness. Therefore, the intent of the text here is not to be precise and list all of Israel’s enemies but simply to state that Israel will have a full complement of foes to deal with. For other lists of Canaanites, some with fewer than seven peoples, see Exod 3:8; 13:5; 23:23, 28; 33:2; 34:11; Deut 20:17; Josh 3:10; 9:1; 24:11. Moreover, the “Table of Nations” (Gen 10:15-19) suggests that all of these (possibly excepting the Perizzites) were offspring of Canaan and therefore Canaanites.
[7:2] 82 tn Heb “the
[7:2] 83 tn In the Hebrew text the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizes the statement. The imperfect has an obligatory nuance here. Cf. ASV “shalt (must NRSV) utterly destroy them”; CEV “must destroy them without mercy.”
[7:2] 84 tn Heb “covenant” (so NASB, NRSV); TEV “alliance.”
[7:5] 85 sn Sacred pillars. The Hebrew word (מַצֵּבֹת, matsevot) denotes a standing pillar, usually made of stone. Its purpose was to mark the presence of a shrine or altar thought to have been visited by deity. Though sometimes associated with pure worship of the
[7:5] 86 sn Sacred Asherah poles. A leading deity of the Canaanite pantheon was Asherah, wife/sister of El and goddess of fertility. She was commonly worshiped at shrines in or near groves of evergreen trees, or, failing that, at places marked by wooden poles (Hebrew אֲשֵׁרִים [’asherim], as here). They were to be burned or cut down (Deut 12:3; 16:21; Judg 6:25, 28, 30; 2 Kgs 18:4).
[7:6] 87 tn That is, “set apart.”
[7:6] 88 tn Heb “the
[7:6] 89 tn Or “treasured” (so NIV, NRSV); NLT “his own special treasure.” The Hebrew term סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah) describes Israel as God’s choice people, those whom he elected and who are most precious to him (cf. Exod 19:4-6; Deut 14:2; 26:18; 1 Chr 29:3; Ps 135:4; Eccl 2:8 Mal 3:17). See E. Carpenter, NIDOTTE 3:224.
[7:8] 90 tn Heb “the
[7:8] 91 tn For the verb אָהַב (’ahav, “to love”) as a term of choice or election, see note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.
[7:8] 92 tn Heb “oath.” This is a reference to the promises of the so-called “Abrahamic Covenant” (cf. Gen 15:13-16).
[7:8] 93 tn Heb “swore on oath.”
[7:8] 94 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 12, 13).
[7:8] 95 tn Heb “by a strong hand” (NAB similar); NLT “with such amazing power.”
[7:8] 96 sn Redeeming you from the place of slavery. The Hebrew verb translated “redeeming” (from the root פָּדָה, padah) has the idea of redemption by the payment of a ransom. The initial symbol of this was the Passover lamb, offered by Israel to the
[7:8] 97 tn Heb “hand” (so KJV, NRSV), a metaphor for power or domination.
[7:9] 98 tn Heb “the God.” The article here expresses uniqueness; cf. TEV “is the only God”; NLT “is indeed God.”
[7:9] 99 tn Heb “who keeps covenant and loyalty.” The syndetic construction of בְּרִית (bÿrit) and חֶסֶד (khesed) should be understood not as “covenant” plus “loyalty” but as an adverbial construction in which חֶסֶד (“loyalty”) modifies the verb שָׁמַר (shamar, “keeps”).
[7:10] 100 tn For the term “hate” as synonymous with rejection or disobedience see note on the word “reject” in Deut 5:9 (cf. NRSV “reject”).
[7:10] 101 tn Heb “he will not hesitate concerning.”
[7:12] 102 tn Heb “will keep with you the covenant and loyalty.” On the construction used here, see v. 9.
[7:12] 103 tn Heb “which he swore on oath.” The relative pronoun modifies “covenant,” so one could translate “will keep faithfully the covenant (or promise) he made on oath to your ancestors.”
[7:13] 104 tn Heb “will bless the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
[7:14] 105 sn One of the ironies about the promises to the patriarchs concerning offspring was the characteristic barrenness of the wives of the men to whom these pledges were made (cf. Gen 11:30; 25:21; 29:31). Their affliction is in each case described by the very Hebrew word used here (עֲקָרָה, ’aqarah), an affliction that will no longer prevail in Canaan.
[7:16] 106 tn Heb “devour” (so NRSV); KJV, NAB, NASB “consume.” The verbal form (a perfect with vav consecutive) is understood here as having an imperatival or obligatory nuance (cf. the instructions and commands that follow). Another option is to take the statement as a continuation of the preceding conditional promises and translate “and you will destroy.”
[7:16] 107 tn Or “serve” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV).
[7:18] 108 tn Heb “recalling, you must recall.” The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute before the finite verb for emphasis. Cf. KJV, ASV “shalt well remember.”
[7:19] 109 tn Heb “testings” (so NAB), a reference to the plagues. See note at 4:34.
[7:19] 110 tn Heb “the strong hand and outstretched arm.” See 4:34.
[7:19] 111 tn Heb “the
[7:20] 112 tn The meaning of the term translated “hornets” (צִרְעָה, tsir’ah) is debated. Various suggestions are “discouragement” (HALOT 1056-57 s.v.; cf. NEB, TEV, CEV “panic”; NCV “terror”) and “leprosy” (J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy [JPSTC], 360, n. 33; cf. NRSV “the pestilence”), as well as “hornet” (BDB 864 s.v.; cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NLT). The latter seems most suitable to the verb שָׁלַח (shalakh, “send”; cf. Exod 23:28; Josh 24:12).
[7:20] 113 tn Heb “the remnant and those who hide themselves.”
[7:22] 114 tn Heb “the
[7:23] 115 tn Heb “he will confuse them (with) great confusion.” The verb used here means “shake, stir up” (see Ruth 1:19; 1 Sam 4:5; 1 Kgs 1:45; Ps 55:2); the accompanying cognate noun refers to confusion, unrest, havoc, or panic (1 Sam 5:9, 11; 14:20; 2 Chr 15:5; Prov 15:16; Isa 22:5; Ezek 7:7; 22:5; Amos 3:9; Zech 14:13).
[7:24] 116 tn Heb “you will destroy their name from under heaven” (cf. KJV); NRSV “blot out their name from under heaven.”
[7:25] 117 tn The Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “abhorrent; detestable”) describes anything detestable to the
[7:26] 118 tn Heb “come under the ban” (so NASB); NRSV “be set apart for destruction.” The same phrase occurs again at the end of this verse.
[7:26] 119 tn Or “like it is.”
[7:26] 120 tn This Hebrew verb (שָׁקַץ, shaqats) is essentially synonymous with the next verb (תָעַב, ta’av; cf. תּוֹעֵבָה, to’evah; see note on the word “abhorrent” in v. 25), though its field of meaning is more limited to cultic abomination (cf. Lev 11:11, 13; Ps 22:25).
[7:26] 121 tn Heb “detesting you must detest and abhorring you must abhor.” Both verbs are preceded by a cognate infinitive absolute indicating emphasis.
[8:1] 122 tn The singular term (מִצְוָה, mitsvah) includes the whole corpus of covenant stipulations, certainly the book of Deuteronomy at least (cf. Deut 5:28; 6:1, 25; 7:11; 11:8, 22; 15:5; 17:20; 19:9; 27:1; 30:11; 31:5). The plural (מִצְוֹת, mitsot) refers to individual stipulations (as in vv. 2, 6).
[8:1] 123 tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation (likewise in v. 11).
[8:1] 124 tn Heb “multiply” (so KJV, NASB, NLT); NIV, NRSV “increase.”
[8:1] 125 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 16, 18).
[8:2] 126 tn Heb “the
[8:2] 127 tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NRSV, NLT); likewise in v. 15.
[8:3] 128 tn Heb “manna which you and your ancestors did not know.” By popular etymology the word “manna” comes from the Hebrew phrase מָן הוּא (man hu’), i.e., “What is it?” (Exod 16:15). The question remains unanswered to this very day. Elsewhere the material is said to be “white like coriander seed” with “a taste like honey cakes” (Exod 16:31; cf. Num 11:7). Modern attempts to associate it with various desert plants are unsuccessful for the text says it was a new thing and, furthermore, one that appeared and disappeared miraculously (Exod 16:21-27).
[8:3] 129 tn Heb “in order to make known to you.” In the Hebrew text this statement is subordinated to what precedes, resulting in a very long sentence in English. The translation makes this statement a separate sentence for stylistic reasons.
[8:3] 130 tn Heb “the man,” but in a generic sense, referring to the whole human race (“mankind” or “humankind”).
[8:3] 131 tn The Hebrew term may refer to “food” in a more general sense (cf. CEV).
[8:3] 132 sn Jesus quoted this text to the devil in the midst of his forty-day fast to make the point that spiritual nourishment is incomparably more important than mere physical bread (Matt 4:4; cf. Luke 4:4).
[8:5] 133 tn Heb “just as a man disciplines his son.” The Hebrew text reflects the patriarchal idiom of the culture.
[8:6] 134 tn Heb “the commandments of the
[8:6] 135 tn Heb “by walking in his ways.” The “ways” of the Lord refer here to his moral standards as reflected in his commandments. The verb “walk” is used frequently in the Bible (both OT and NT) for one’s moral and ethical behavior.
[8:9] 137 tn The Hebrew term may refer to “food” in a more general sense (cf. NASB, NCV, NLT) or “bread” in particular (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV).
[8:9] 138 sn A land whose stones are iron. Since iron deposits are few and far between in Palestine, the reference here is probably to iron ore found in mines as opposed to the meteorite iron more commonly known in that area.
[8:14] 139 tn The words “be sure” are not in the Hebrew text; vv. 12-14 are part of the previous sentence. For stylistic reasons a new sentence was started at the beginning of v. 12 in the translation and the words “be sure” repeated from v. 11 to indicate the connection.
[8:15] 140 tn Heb “flaming serpents”; KJV, NASB “fiery serpents”; NAB “saraph serpents.” This figure of speech (metonymy) probably describes the venomous and painful results of snakebite. The feeling from such an experience would be like a burning fire (שָׂרָף, saraf).
[8:15] 141 tn Heb “the one who brought out for you water.” In the Hebrew text this continues the preceding sentence, but the translation begins a new sentence here for stylistic reasons.
[8:16] 142 tn Heb “in order to humble you and in order to test you.” See 8:2.
[8:17] 143 tn For stylistic reasons a new sentence was started at the beginning of v. 17 in the translation and the words “be careful” supplied to indicate the connection.
[8:17] 144 tn Heb “my strength and the might of my hand.”
[8:18] 145 tc Smr and Lucian add “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” the standard way of rendering this almost stereotypical formula (cf. Deut 1:8; 6:10; 9:5, 27; 29:13; 30:20; 34:4). The MT’s harder reading presumptively argues for its originality, however.
[8:19] 146 tn Heb “if forgetting, you forget.” The infinitive absolute is used for emphasis; the translation indicates this with the words “at all” (cf. KJV).
[8:20] 147 tn Heb “so you will perish.”
[8:20] 148 tn Heb “listen to the voice of the
[9:1] 149 tn Heb “fortified to the heavens” (so NRSV); NLT “cities with walls that reach to the sky.” This is hyperbole.
[9:2] 150 sn Anakites. See note on this term in Deut 1:28.
[9:2] 151 tn Heb “great and tall.” Many English versions understand this to refer to physical size or strength rather than numbers (cf. “strong,” NIV, NCV, NRSV, NLT).
[9:3] 152 tn Heb “the
[9:5] 153 tn Heb “uprightness of your heart” (so NASB, NRSV). The Hebrew word צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah, “righteousness”), though essentially synonymous here with יֹשֶׁר (yosher, “uprightness”), carries the idea of conformity to an objective standard. The term יֹשֶׁר has more to do with an inner, moral quality (cf. NAB, NIV “integrity”). Neither, however, was grounds for the
[9:5] 154 tn Heb “the
[9:6] 156 tn Heb “stiff-necked” (so KJV, NAB, NIV).
[9:7] 157 tn By juxtaposing the positive זְכֹר (zekhor, “remember”) with the negative אַל־תִּשְׁכַּח (’al-tishÿkakh, “do not forget”), Moses makes a most emphatic plea.
[9:7] 158 tn Heb “the
[9:9] 159 tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[9:10] 160 sn The very finger of God. This is a double figure of speech (1) in which God is ascribed human features (anthropomorphism) and (2) in which a part stands for the whole (synecdoche). That is, God, as Spirit, has no literal finger nor, if he had, would he write with his finger. Rather, the sense is that God himself – not Moses in any way – was responsible for the composition of the Ten Commandments (cf. Exod 31:18; 32:16; 34:1).
[9:10] 161 tn Heb “according to all the words.”
[9:10] 162 tn Heb “the
[9:12] 163 tc Heb “a casting.” The MT reads מַסֵּכָה (massekhah, “a cast thing”) but some
[9:13] 164 tn Heb “stiff-necked.” See note on the word “stubborn” in 9:6.
[9:14] 165 tn Heb “leave me alone.”
[9:14] 166 tn Heb “from under heaven.”
[9:15] 167 tn Heb “the mountain.” The translation uses a pronoun for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.
[9:16] 168 tn On the phrase “metal calf,” see note on the term “metal image” in v. 12.
[9:16] 169 tn Heb “the
[9:17] 170 tn The Hebrew text includes “from upon my two hands,” but as this seems somewhat obvious and redundant, it has been left untranslated for stylistic reasons.
[9:19] 171 tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” Although many English versions translate as two terms, this construction is a hendiadys which serves to intensify the emotion (cf. NAB, TEV “fierce anger”).
[9:19] 172 tn Heb “the
[9:20] 173 tn Heb “Aaron.” The pronoun is used in the translation to avoid redundancy.
[9:21] 174 tn Heb “your sin.” This is a metonymy in which the effect (sin) stands for the cause (the metal calf).
[9:21] 175 tn Heb “burned it with fire.”
[9:22] 176 sn Taberah. By popular etymology this derives from the Hebrew verb בָעַר (ba’ar, “to burn”), thus, here, “burning.” The reference is to the
[9:22] 177 sn Massah. See note on this term in Deut 6:16.
[9:22] 178 sn Kibroth-Hattaavah. This place name means in Hebrew “burial places of appetite,” that is, graves that resulted from overindulgence. The reference is to the Israelites stuffing themselves with the quail God had provided and doing so with thanklessness (Num 11:31-35).
[9:23] 179 tn Heb “the
[9:23] 180 tn Heb “the mouth of the Lord your God,” that is, against the commandment that he had spoken.
[9:24] 181 tn Heb “the
[9:25] 182 tn The Hebrew text includes “when I prostrated myself.” Since this is redundant, it has been left untranslated.
[9:25] 183 tn Heb “the
[9:26] 184 tn Heb “the
[9:26] 185 tn Heb “Lord
[9:26] 186 tn Heb “your inheritance”; NLT “your special (very own NRSV) possession.” Israel is compared to landed property that one would inherit from his ancestors and pass on to his descendants.
[9:26] 187 tn Heb “you have redeemed in your greatness.”
[9:26] 188 tn Heb “by your strong hand.”
[9:28] 189 tc The MT reads only “the land.” Smr supplies עַם (’am, “people”) and LXX and its dependents supply “the inhabitants of the land.” The truncated form found in the MT is adequate to communicate the intended meaning; the words “the people of” are supplied in the translation for clarity.
[9:28] 190 tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV, NLT).
[9:29] 191 tn Heb “your inheritance.” See note at v. 26.
[9:29] 192 tn Heb “an outstretched arm.”
[10:1] 193 tn Or “chest” (so NIV, CEV); NLT “sacred chest”; TEV “wooden box.” This chest was made of acacia wood; it is later known as the ark of the covenant.
[10:2] 194 sn The same words. The care with which the replacement copy must be made underscores the importance of verbal precision in relaying the
[10:3] 195 sn Acacia wood (Heb “shittim wood”). This is wood from the acacia, the most common timber tree of the Sinai region. Most likely it is the species Acacia raddiana because this has the largest trunk. See F. N. Hepper, Illustrated Encyclopedia of Bible Plants, 63.
[10:4] 196 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the
[10:4] 197 tn Heb “according to the former writing.” See note on the phrase “the same words” in v. 2.
[10:4] 198 tn Heb “ten words.” The “Ten Commandments” are known in Hebrew as the “Ten Words,” which in Greek became the “Decalogue.”
[10:4] 199 tn Heb “the
[10:4] 200 tn Heb “the
[10:6] 201 sn Beeroth Bene-Yaaqan. This Hebrew name could be translated “the wells of Bene-Yaaqan” or “the wells of the sons of Yaaqan,” a site whose location cannot be determined (cf. Num 33:31-32; 1 Chr 1:42).
[10:6] 202 sn Moserah. Since Aaron in other texts (Num 20:28; 33:38) is said to have died on Mount Hor, this must be the Arabah region in which Hor was located.
[10:7] 203 sn Gudgodah. This is probably the same as Haggidgad, which is also associated with Jotbathah (Num 33:33).
[10:7] 204 sn Jotbathah. This place, whose Hebrew name can be translated “place of wadis,” is possibly modern Ain Tabah, just north of Eilat, or Tabah, 6.5 mi (11 km) south of Eilat on the west shore of the Gulf of Aqaba.
[10:8] 205 sn The
[10:8] 206 sn To formulate blessings. The most famous example of this is the priestly “blessing formula” of Num 6:24-26.
[10:9] 207 sn Levi has no allotment or inheritance. As the priestly tribe, Levi would have no land allotment except for forty-eight towns set apart for their use (Num 35:1-8; Josh 21:1-42). But theirs was a far greater inheritance, for the
[10:9] 208 tn That is, among the other Israelite tribes.
[10:11] 209 tn Heb “the
[10:11] 210 tn Heb “before” (so KJV, ASV); NAB, NRSV “at the head of.”
[10:11] 211 tn After the imperative these subordinated jussive forms (with prefixed vav) indicate purpose or result.
[10:11] 212 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 15, 22).
[10:12] 213 tn Heb “the
[10:12] 214 tn Heb “to walk in all his ways” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “follow his ways exactly”; NLT “to live according to his will.”
[10:12] 215 tn Heb “the
[10:12] 216 tn Heb “heart and soul” or “heart and being”; NCV “with your whole being.” See note on the word “being” in Deut 6:5.
[10:13] 217 tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation.
[10:15] 218 tn Heb “the
[10:15] 219 tn Heb “take delight to love.” Here again the verb אָהַב (’ahav, “love”), juxtaposed with בָחַר (bakhar, “choose”), is a term in covenant contexts that describes the
[10:15] 220 tn The Hebrew text includes “after them,” but it is redundant in English style and has not been included in the translation.
[10:16] 221 tn Heb “circumcise the foreskin of” (cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV). Reference to the Abrahamic covenant prompts Moses to recall the sign of that covenant, namely, physical circumcision (Gen 17:9-14). Just as that act signified total covenant obedience, so spiritual circumcision (cleansing of the heart) signifies more internally a commitment to be pliable and obedient to the will of God (cf. Deut 30:6; Jer 4:4; 9:26).
[10:16] 222 tn Heb “your neck do not harden again.” See note on the word “stubborn” in Deut 9:6.
[10:18] 223 tn Or “who executes justice for” (so NAB, NRSV); NLT “gives justice to.”
[10:21] 224 tn Heb “your praise.” The pronoun is subjective and the noun “praise” is used here metonymically for the object of their praise (the Lord).
[10:22] 225 tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
[11:1] 226 tn This collocation of technical terms for elements of the covenant text lends support to its importance and also signals a new section of paraenesis in which Moses will exhort Israel to covenant obedience. The Hebrew term מִשְׁמָרוֹת (mishmarot, “obligations”) sums up the three terms that follow – חֻקֹּת (khuqot), מִשְׁפָּטִים (mishppatim), and מִצְוֹת (mitsot).
[11:2] 227 tn Heb “that not.” The words “I am speaking” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[11:2] 228 tn Heb “who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord.” The collocation of the verbs “know” and “see” indicates that personal experience (knowing by seeing) is in view. The term translated “discipline” (KJV, ASV “chastisement”) may also be rendered “instruction,” but vv. 2b-6 indicate that the referent of the term is the various acts of divine judgment the Israelites had witnessed.
[11:2] 229 tn The words “which revealed” have been supplied in the translation to show the logical relationship between the terms that follow and the divine judgments. In the Hebrew text the former are in apposition to the latter.
[11:2] 230 tn Heb “his strong hand and his stretched-out arm.”
[11:3] 231 tn In the Hebrew text vv. 2-7 are one long sentence. For stylistic reasons the English translation divides the passage into three sentences. To facilitate this stylistic decision the words “They did not see” are supplied at the beginning of both v. 3 and v. 5, and “I am speaking” at the beginning of v. 7.
[11:3] 232 tn Heb “his signs and his deeds which he did” (NRSV similar). The collocation of “signs” and “deeds” indicates that these acts were intended to make an impression on observers and reveal something about God’s power (cf. v. 2b). The word “awesome” has been employed to bring out the force of the word “signs” in this context.
[11:4] 233 tn Heb “Reed Sea.” “Reed Sea” (or “Sea of Reeds”) is a more accurate rendering of the Hebrew expression יָם סוּף (yam suf), traditionally translated “Red Sea.” See note on the term “Red Sea” in Exod 13:18.
[11:4] 234 tn Heb “the
[11:4] 235 tn Heb “and the Lord destroyed them to this day” (cf. NRSV); NLT “he has kept them devastated to this very day.” The translation uses the verb “annihilated” to indicate the permanency of the action.
[11:5] 236 tn See note on these same words in v. 3.
[11:6] 237 sn Dathan and Abiram. These two (along with others) had challenged Moses’ leadership in the desert with the result that the earth beneath them opened up and they and their families disappeared (Num 16:1-3, 31-35).
[11:6] 238 tn Or “the descendant of Reuben”; Heb “son of Reuben.”
[11:6] 239 tn Heb “in the midst of all Israel” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV); NASB “among all Israel.” In the Hebrew text these words appear at the end of the verse, but they are logically connected with the verbs. To make this clear the translation places the phrase after the first verb.
[11:6] 240 tn Heb “their houses,” referring to all who lived in their household. Cf. KJV, ASV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “households.”
[11:6] 241 tn Heb “and all the substance which was at their feet.”
[11:7] 242 tn On the addition of these words in the translation see note on “They did not see” in v. 3.
[11:8] 243 tn Heb “the commandment.” The singular מִצְוָה (mitsvah, “commandment”) speaks here as elsewhere of the whole corpus of covenant stipulations in Deuteronomy (cf. 6:1, 25; 7:11; 8:1).
[11:8] 244 tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation (likewise in vv. 13, 27).
[11:8] 245 tn Heb “which you are crossing over there to possess it.”
[11:9] 246 tn Heb “fathers” (also in v. 21).
[11:10] 247 tn Heb “you are going there to possess it”; NASB “into which you are about to cross to possess it”; NRSV “that you are crossing over to occupy.”
[11:10] 248 tn Heb “with your foot” (so NASB, NLT). There is a two-fold significance to this phrase. First, Egypt had no rain so water supply depended on human efforts at irrigation. Second, the Nile was the source of irrigation waters but those waters sometimes had to be pumped into fields and gardens by foot-power, perhaps the kind of machinery (Arabic shaduf) still used by Egyptian farmers (see C. Aldred, The Egyptians, 181). Nevertheless, the translation uses “by hand,” since that expression is the more common English idiom for an activity performed by manual labor.
[11:11] 249 tn Heb “which you are crossing over there to possess it.”
[11:11] 250 tn Heb “rain of heaven.”
[11:12] 251 tn Heb “seeks.” The statement reflects the ancient belief that God (Baal in Canaanite thinking) directly controlled storms and rainfall.
[11:12] 252 tn Heb “the eyes of the
[11:12] 253 sn From the beginning to the end of the year. This refers to the agricultural year that was marked by the onset of the heavy rains, thus the autumn. See note on the phrase “the former and the latter rains” in v. 14.
[11:13] 254 tn Heb “if hearing, you will hear.” The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute to emphasize the verbal idea. The translation renders this emphasis with the word “close.”
[11:13] 255 tn Again, the Hebrew term אָהַב (’ahav) draws attention to the reciprocation of divine love as a condition or sign of covenant loyalty (cf. Deut 6:5).
[11:13] 256 tn Heb “heart and soul” or “heart and being.” See note on the word “being” in Deut 6:5.
[11:14] 257 tn The words “he promises” do not appear in the Hebrew text but are needed in the translation to facilitate the transition from the condition (v. 13) to the promise and make it clear that the Lord is speaking the words of vv. 14-15.
[11:14] 258 tn Heb “the rain of your land.” In this case the genitive (modifying term) indicates the recipient of the rain.
[11:14] 259 sn The autumn and the spring rains. The “former” (יוֹרֶה, yoreh) and “latter” (מַלְקוֹשׁ, malqosh) rains come in abundance respectively in September/October and March/April. Planting of most crops takes place before the former rains fall and the harvests follow the latter rains.
[11:15] 260 tn Heb “grass in your field.”
[11:16] 261 tn Heb “Watch yourselves lest your heart turns and you turn aside and serve other gods and bow down to them.”
[11:17] 262 tn Heb “will become hot”; KJV, NASB, NRSV “will be kindled”; NAB “will flare up”; NIV, NLT “will burn.”
[11:17] 263 tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
[11:17] 264 tn Or “be destroyed”; NAB, NIV “will soon perish.”
[11:17] 265 tn Heb “the
[11:18] 266 tn Heb “heart and soul” or “heart and being.” See note on the word “being” in Deut 6:5.
[11:18] 267 tn On the Hebrew term טוֹטָפֹת (totafot, “reminders”), cf. Deut 6:4-9.
[11:19] 268 tn Or “as you are away on a journey” (cf. NRSV, TEV, NLT); NAB “at home and abroad.”
[11:21] 269 tn Heb “like the days of the heavens upon the earth,” that is, forever.
[11:22] 270 tn Heb “this commandment.” See note at Deut 5:30.
[11:22] 271 tn Heb “commanding you to do it.” For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation and “to do it” has been left untranslated.
[11:22] 272 tn Heb “walk in all his ways” (so KJV, NIV); TEV “do everything he commands.”
[11:23] 273 tn Heb “the
[11:24] 274 tn Heb “the sole of your foot walks.” The placing of the foot symbolizes conquest and dominion, especially on land or on the necks of enemies (cf. Deut 1:36; Ps 7:13; Isa 63:3 Hab 3:19; Zech 9:13). See E. H. Merrill, NIDOTTE 1:992.
[11:24] 275 tn Heb “the after sea,” that is, the sea behind one when one is facing east, which is the normal OT orientation. Cf. ASV “the hinder sea.”
[11:26] 276 sn A blessing and a curse. Every extant treaty text of the late Bronze Age attests to a section known as the “blessings and curses,” the former for covenant loyalty and the latter for covenant breach. Blessings were promised rewards for obedience; curses were threatened judgments for disobedience. In the Book of Deuteronomy these are fully developed in 27:1–28:68. Here Moses adumbrates the whole by way of anticipation.
[11:27] 277 tn Heb “listen to,” that is, obey.
[11:28] 278 tn Heb “do not listen to,” that is, do not obey.
[11:28] 279 tn Heb “the commandments of the
[11:28] 280 tn Heb “am commanding” (so NASB, NRSV).
[11:28] 281 tn Heb “walk after”; NIV “by following”; NLT “by worshiping.” This is a violation of the first commandment, the most serious of the covenant violations (Deut 5:6-7).
[11:29] 282 sn Mount Gerizim…Mount Ebal. These two mountains are near the ancient site of Shechem and the modern city of Nablus. The valley between them is like a great amphitheater with the mountain slopes as seating sections. The place was sacred because it was there that Abraham pitched his camp and built his first altar after coming to Canaan (Gen 12:6). Jacob also settled at Shechem for a time and dug a well from which Jesus once requested a drink of water (Gen 33:18-20; John 4:5-7). When Joshua and the Israelites finally brought Canaan under control they assembled at Shechem as Moses commanded and undertook a ritual of covenant reaffirmation (Josh 8:30-35; 24:1, 25). Half the tribes stood on Mt. Gerizim and half on Mt. Ebal and in antiphonal chorus pledged their loyalty to the
[11:30] 283 tn The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
[11:30] 284 sn Gilgal. From a Hebrew verb root גָלַל (galal, “to roll”) this place name means “circle” or “rolling,” a name given because God had “rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you” (Josh 5:9). It is perhaps to be identified with Khirbet el-Metjir, 1.2 mi (2 km) northeast of OT Jericho.
[11:30] 285 tc The MT plural “oaks” (אֵלוֹנֵי, ’eloney) should probably be altered (with many Greek texts) to the singular “oak” (אֵלוֹן, ’elon; cf. NRSV) in line with the only other occurrence of the phrase (Gen 12:6). The Syriac, Tg. Ps.-J. read mmrá, confusing this place with the “oaks of Mamre” near Hebron (Gen 13:18). Smr also appears to confuse “Moreh” with “Mamre” (reading mwr’, a combined form), adding the clarification mwl shkm (“near Shechem”) apparently to distinguish it from Mamre near Hebron.
[12:1] 287 tn Heb “you must be careful to obey in the land the
[12:2] 288 tn Heb “destroying you must destroy”; KJV “Ye shall utterly (surely ASV) destroy”; NRSV “must demolish completely.” The Hebrew infinitive absolute precedes the verb for emphasis, which is reflected in the translation by the words “by all means.”
[12:2] 289 sn Every leafy tree. This expression refers to evergreens which, because they keep their foliage throughout the year, provided apt symbolism for nature cults such as those practiced in Canaan. The deity particularly in view is Asherah, wife of the great god El, who was considered the goddess of fertility and whose worship frequently took place at shrines near or among clusters (groves) of such trees (see also Deut 7:5). See J. Hadley, NIDOTTE 1:569-70; J. DeMoor, TDOT 1:438-44.
[12:3] 290 sn Sacred pillars. These are the stelae (stone pillars; the Hebrew term is מַצֵּבֹת, matsevot) associated with Baal worship, perhaps to mark a spot hallowed by an alleged visitation of the gods. See also Deut 7:5.
[12:3] 291 sn Sacred Asherah poles. The Hebrew term (plural) is אֲשֵׁרִים (’asherim). See note on the word “(leafy) tree” in v. 2, and also Deut 7:5.
[12:5] 292 tn Heb “the
[12:5] 293 tc Some scholars, on the basis of v. 11, emend the MT reading שִׁכְנוֹ (shikhno, “his residence”) to the infinitive construct לְשָׁכֵן (lÿshakhen, “to make [his name] to dwell”), perhaps with the 3rd person masculine singular sf לְשַׁכְּנוֹ (lÿshakÿno, “to cause it to dwell”). Though the presupposed nounשֵׁכֶן (shekhen) is nowhere else attested, the parallel here with שַׁמָּה (shammah, “there”) favors retaining the MT as it stands.
[12:6] 294 tn Heb “heave offerings of your hand.”
[12:7] 295 tn Heb “and your houses,” referring to entire households. The pronouns “you” and “your” are plural in the Hebrew text.
[12:7] 296 tn Heb “the
[12:10] 299 tn The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
[12:10] 300 tn Heb “the
[12:10] 301 tn In the Hebrew text vv. 10-11 are one long, complex sentence. For stylistic reasons the translation divides this into two sentences.
[12:11] 302 tn Heb “and it will be (to) the place where the Lord your God chooses to cause his name to dwell you will bring.”
[12:11] 303 tn Heb “heave offerings of your hand.”
[12:11] 304 tn Heb “the
[12:12] 305 tn Heb “within your gates” (so KJV, NASB); NAB “who belongs to your community.”
[12:12] 306 sn They have no allotment or inheritance with you. See note on the word “inheritance” in Deut 10:9.
[12:14] 307 tn Heb “offer burnt offerings.” The expression “do so” has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.
[12:14] 308 sn This injunction to worship in a single and central sanctuary – one limited and appropriate to the thrice-annual festival celebrations (see Exod 23:14-17; 34:22-24; Lev 23:4-36; Deut 16:16-17) – marks a departure from previous times when worship was carried out at local shrines (cf. Gen 8:20; 12:7; 13:18; 22:9; 26:25; 35:1, 3, 7; Exod 17:15). Apart from the corporate worship of the whole theocratic community, however, worship at local altars would still be permitted as in the past (Deut 16:21; Judg 6:24-27; 13:19-20; 1 Sam 7:17; 10:5, 13; 2 Sam 24:18-25; 1 Kgs 18:30).
[12:15] 309 tn Heb “only in all the desire of your soul you may sacrifice and eat flesh according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given to you.”
[12:15] 310 tn Heb “gates” (so KJV, NASB; likewise in vv. 17, 18).
[12:18] 311 tn Heb “the
[12:18] 312 tn See note at Deut 12:12.
[12:18] 313 tn Heb “in all the sending forth of your hands.”
[12:20] 314 tn Heb “for my soul desires to eat meat.”
[12:20] 315 tn Heb “according to all the desire of your soul you may eat meat.”
[12:21] 316 tn Heb “the
[12:21] 317 tn Heb “the
[12:21] 318 tn Heb “gates” (so KJV, NASB); NAB “in your own community.”
[12:23] 319 sn The blood is life itself. This is a figure of speech (metonymy) in which the cause or means (the blood) stands for the result or effect (life). That is, life depends upon the existence and circulation of blood, a truth known empirically but not scientifically tested and proved until the 17th century
[12:25] 320 tc Heb “in the eyes of the
[12:26] 321 tc Again, to complete a commonly attested wording the LXX adds after “choose” the phrase “to place his name there.” This shows insensitivity to deliberate departures from literary stereotypes. The MT reading is to be preferred.
[12:27] 322 sn These other sacrifices would be so-called peace or fellowship offerings whose ritual required a different use of the blood from that of burnt (sin and trespass) offerings (cf. Lev 3; 7:11-14, 19-21).
[12:27] 323 tn Heb “on the altar of the
[12:29] 324 tn Heb “dwell in their land” (so NASB). In the Hebrew text vv. 29-30 are one long sentence. For stylistic reasons the translation divides it into two.
[12:31] 325 tn Heb “you must not do thus to/for the
[12:31] 326 tn See note on this term at Deut 7:25.
[12:31] 327 tn Heb “every abomination of the
[12:32] 328 sn Beginning with 12:32, the verse numbers through 13:18 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 12:32 ET = 13:1 HT, 13:1 ET = 13:2 HT, 13:2 ET = 13:3 HT, etc., through 13:18 ET = 13:19 HT. With 14:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.
[12:32] 329 tn This verse highlights a phenomenon found throughout Deuteronomy, but most especially in chap. 12, namely, the alternation of grammatical singular and plural forms of the pronoun (known as Numeruswechsel in German scholarship). Critical scholarship in general resolves the “problem” by suggesting varying literary traditions – one favorable to the singular pronoun and the other to the plural – which appear in the (obviously rough) redacted text at hand. Even the ancient versions were troubled by the lack of harmony of grammatical number and in this verse, for example, offered a number of alternate readings. The MT reads “Everything I am commanding you (plural) you (plural) must be careful to do; you (singular) must not add to it nor should you (singular) subtract form it.” Smr, LXX, Syriac, and Vulgate suggest singular for the first two pronouns but a few Smr
[12:32] 330 sn Do not add to it or subtract from it. This prohibition makes at least two profound theological points: (1) This work by Moses is of divine origination (i.e., it is inspired) and therefore can tolerate no human alteration; and (2) the work is complete as it stands (i.e., it is canonical).
[13:1] 331 tn Heb “or a dreamer of dreams” (so KJV, ASV, NASB). The difference between a prophet (נָבִיא, navi’) and one who foretells by dreams (חֹלֵם אוֹ, ’o kholem) was not so much one of office – for both received revelation by dreams (cf. Num 12:6) – as it was of function or emphasis. The prophet was more a proclaimer and interpreter of revelation whereas the one who foretold by dreams was a receiver of revelation. In later times the role of the one who foretold by dreams was abused and thus denigrated as compared to that of the prophet (cf. Jer 23:28).
[13:1] 332 tn The expression אוֹת אוֹ מוֹפֵת (’ot ’o mofet) became a formulaic way of speaking of ways of authenticating prophetic messages or other works of God (cf. Deut 28:46; Isa 20:3). The NT equivalent is the Greek term σημεῖον (shmeion), a sign performed (used frequently in the Gospel of John, cf. 2:11, 18; 20:30-31). They could, however, be counterfeited or (as here) permitted to false prophets by the
[13:3] 333 tn Heb “or dreamer of dreams.” See note on this expression in v. 1.
[13:3] 334 tn Heb “the
[13:3] 335 tn Heb “all your heart and soul” (so NRSV, CEV, NLT); or “heart and being” (NCV “your whole being”). See note on the word “being” in Deut 6:5.
[13:5] 336 tn Heb “or dreamer of dreams.” See note on this expression in v. 1.
[13:5] 337 tn Heb “your midst” (so NAB, NRSV). The severity of the judgment here (i.e., capital punishment) is because of the severity of the sin, namely, high treason against the Great King. Idolatry is a violation of the first two commandments (Deut 5:6-10) as well as the spirit and intent of the Shema (Deut 6:4-5).
[13:6] 338 tn Heb “your brother, the son of your mother.” In a polygamous society it was not rare to have half brothers and sisters by way of a common father and different mothers.
[13:6] 339 tn In the Hebrew text these words are in the form of a brief quotation: “entice you secretly saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods.’”
[13:6] 340 tn Heb “fathers” (also in v. 17).
[13:6] 341 tn Heb “which you have not known, you or your fathers.” (cf. KJV, ASV; on “fathers” cf. v. 18).
[13:7] 342 tn Or “land” (so NIV, NCV); the same Hebrew word can be translated “land” or “earth.”
[13:9] 343 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with the words “without fail” (cf. NIV “you must certainly put him to death”).
[13:9] 344 tn Heb “to put him to death,” but this is misleading in English for such an action would leave nothing for the others to do.
[13:10] 345 sn Execution by means of pelting the offender with stones afforded a mechanism whereby the whole community could share in it. In a very real sense it could be done not only in the name of the community and on its behalf but by its members (cf. Lev 24:14; Num 15:35; Deut 21:21; Josh 7:25).
[13:11] 346 sn Some see in this statement an argument for the deterrent effect of capital punishment (Deut 17:13; 19:20; 21:21).
[13:13] 347 tn Heb “men, sons of Belial.” The Hebrew term בְּלִיַּעַל (bÿliyya’al) has the idea of worthlessness, without morals or scruples (HALOT 133-34 s.v.). Cf. NAB, NRSV “scoundrels”; TEV, CEV “worthless people”; NLT “worthless rabble.”
[13:13] 348 tc The LXX and Tg read “your” for the MT’s “their.”
[13:13] 349 tn The translation understands the relative clause as a statement by Moses, not as part of the quotation from the evildoers. See also v. 2.
[13:14] 350 tc Theodotian adds “in Israel,” perhaps to broaden the matter beyond the local village.
[13:15] 351 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, indicated in the translation by the words “by all means.” Cf. KJV, NASB “surely”; NIV “certainly.”
[13:15] 352 tn Or “put under divine judgment. The Hebrew word (חֵרֶם, kherem) refers to placing persons or things under God’s judgment, usually to the extent of their complete destruction.Though primarily applied against the heathen, this severe judgment could also fall upon unrepentant Israelites (cf. the story of Achan in Josh 7). See also the note on the phrase “divine judgment” in Deut 2:34.
[13:16] 354 tn Heb “mound”; NAB “a heap of ruins.” The Hebrew word תֵּל (tel) refers to this day to a ruin represented especially by a built-up mound of dirt or debris (cf. Tel Aviv, “mound of grain”).
[13:17] 355 tn Or “anything that has been put under the divine curse”; Heb “anything of the ban” (cf. NASB). See note on the phrase “divine judgment” in Deut 2:34.
[13:18] 356 tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB, NRSV).
[13:18] 357 tc The LXX and Smr add “and good” to bring the phrase in line with a familiar cliché (cf. Deut 6:18; Josh 9:25; 2 Kgs 10:3; 2 Chr 14:1; etc.). This is an unnecessary and improper attempt to force a text into a preconceived mold.
[13:18] 358 tn Heb “in the eyes of the
[14:1] 359 tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); TEV, NLT “people.”
[14:1] 360 sn Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald. These were pagan practices associated with mourning the dead; they were not be imitated by God’s people (though they frequently were; cf. 1 Kgs 18:28; Jer 16:6; 41:5; 47:5; Hos 7:14 [LXX]; Mic 5:1). For other warnings against such practices see Lev 21:5; Jer 16:5.
[14:2] 362 tn Heb “The
[14:2] 363 tn Or “treasured.” The Hebrew term סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah) describes Israel as God’s choice people, those whom he elected and who are most precious to him (cf. Exod 19:4-6; Deut 14:2; 26:18; 1 Chr 29:3; Ps 135:4; Eccl 2:8 Mal 3:17). See E. Carpenter, NIDOTTE 3:224.
[14:3] 364 tn The Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “forbidden; abhorrent”) describes anything detestable to the
[14:5] 365 tn The Hebrew term אַיָּל (’ayyal) may refer to a type of deer (cf. Arabic ’ayyal). Cf. NAB “the red deer.”
[14:5] 366 tn The Hebrew term צְבִי (tsÿvi) is sometimes rendered “roebuck” (so KJV).
[14:5] 367 tn The Hebrew term יַחְמוּר (yakhmur) may refer to a “fallow deer”; cf. Arabic yahmur (“deer”). Cf. NAB, NIV, NCV “roe deer”; NEB, NRSV, NLT “roebuck.”
[14:5] 368 tn The Hebrew term דִּישֹׁן (dishon) is a hapax legomenon. Its referent is uncertain but the animal is likely a variety of antelope (cf. NEB “white-rumped deer”; NIV, NRSV, NLT “ibex”).
[14:5] 369 tn The Hebrew term תְּאוֹ (tÿ’o; a variant is תּוֹא, to’) could also refer to another species of antelope. Cf. NEB “long-horned antelope”; NIV, NRSV “antelope.”
[14:5] 370 tn The Hebrew term זֶמֶר (zemer) is another hapax legomenon with the possible meaning “wild sheep.” Cf. KJV, ASV “chamois”; NEB “rock-goat”; NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “mountain sheep.”
[14:6] 371 tn The Hebrew text includes “among the animals.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[14:7] 372 tn The Hebrew term שָׁפָן (shafan) may refer to the “coney” (cf. KJV, NIV) or hyrax (“rock badger,” cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).
[14:8] 373 tc The MT lacks (probably by haplography) the phrase וְשֹׁסַע שֶׁסַע פַּרְסָה (vÿshosa’ shesa’ parsah, “and is clovenfooted,” i.e., “has parted hooves”), a phrase found in the otherwise exact parallel in Lev 11:7. The LXX and Smr attest the longer reading here. The meaning is, however, clear without it.
[14:12] 374 tn NEB “the griffon-vulture.”
[14:12] 375 tn The Hebrew term פֶּרֶס (peres) describes a large vulture otherwise known as the ossifrage (cf. KJV). This largest of the vultures takes its name from its habit of dropping skeletal remains from a great height so as to break the bones apart.
[14:12] 376 tn The Hebrew term עָזְנִיָּה (’ozniyyah) may describe the black vulture (so NIV) or it may refer to the osprey (so NAB, NRSV, NLT), an eagle-like bird subsisting mainly on fish.
[14:13] 377 tn The Hebrew term is דַּיָּה (dayyah). This, with the previous two terms (רָאָה [ra’ah] and אַיָּה [’ayyah]), is probably a kite of some species but otherwise impossible to specify.
[14:15] 378 tn Or “owl.” The Hebrew term בַּת הַיַּעֲנָה (bat hayya’anah) is sometimes taken as “ostrich” (so ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT), but may refer instead to some species of owl (cf. KJV “owl”; NEB “desert-owl”; NIV “horned owl”).
[14:15] 379 tn The Hebrew term תַּחְמָס (takhmas) is either a type of owl (cf. NEB “short-eared owl”; NIV “screech owl”) or possibly the nighthawk (so NRSV, NLT).
[14:15] 380 tn The Hebrew term נֵץ (nets) may refer to the falcon or perhaps the hawk (so NEB, NIV).
[14:16] 381 tn The Hebrew term תִּנְשֶׁמֶת (tinshemet) may refer to a species of owl (cf. ASV “horned owl”; NASB, NIV, NLT “white owl”) or perhaps even to the swan (so KJV); cf. NRSV “water hen.”
[14:17] 382 tn The Hebrew term קָאַת (qa’at) may also refer to a type of owl (NAB, NIV, NRSV “desert owl”) or perhaps the pelican (so KJV, NASB, NLT).
[14:19] 383 tc The MT reads the Niphal (passive) for expected Qal (“you [plural] must not eat”); cf. Smr, LXX. However, the harder reading should stand.
[14:21] 384 tn Heb “gates” (also in vv. 27, 28, 29).
[14:21] 385 sn Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. This strange prohibition – one whose rationale is unclear but probably related to pagan ritual – may seem out of place here but actually is not for the following reasons: (1) the passage as a whole opens with a prohibition against heathen mourning rites (i.e., death, vv. 1-2) and closes with what appear to be birth and infancy rites. (2) In the other two places where the stipulation occurs (Exod 23:19 and Exod 34:26) it similarly concludes major sections. (3) Whatever the practice signified it clearly was abhorrent to the
[14:22] 386 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, indicated in the translation by the words “be certain.”
[14:23] 387 tn This refers to wine in the early stages of fermentation. In its later stages it becomes wine (יַיִן, yayin) in its mature sense.
[14:24] 388 tn Heb “the
[14:24] 389 tn The Hebrew text includes “way is so far from you that you are unable to carry it because the.” These words have not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons, because they are redundant.
[14:25] 390 tn Heb “bind the silver in your hand.”
[15:1] 391 tn The Hebrew term שְׁמִטָּת (shÿmittat), a derivative of the verb שָׁמַט (shamat, “to release; to relinquish”), refers to the cancellation of the debt and even pledges for the debt of a borrower by his creditor. This could be a full and final remission or, more likely, one for the seventh year only. See R. Wakely, NIDOTTE 4:155-60. Here the words “of debts” are not in the Hebrew text, but are implied. Cf. NAB “a relaxation of debts”; NASB, NRSV “a remission of debts.”
[15:2] 392 tn Heb “his neighbor,” used idiomatically to refer to another person.
[15:2] 393 tn Heb “his neighbor and his brother.” The words “his brother” may be a scribal gloss identifying “his neighbor” (on this idiom, see the preceding note) as a fellow Israelite (cf. v. 3). In this case the conjunction before “his brother” does not introduce a second category, but rather has the force of “that is.”
[15:3] 394 tn Heb “your brother.”
[15:4] 395 tc After the phrase “the
[15:4] 396 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “surely.” Note however, that the use is rhetorical, for the next verse attaches a condition.
[15:4] 397 tn Heb “the
[15:4] 398 tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess.”
[15:5] 399 tn Heb “if listening you listen to the voice of.” The infinitive absolute is used for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “carefully.” The idiom “listen to the voice” means “obey.”
[15:5] 400 tn Heb “the
[15:5] 401 tn Heb “by being careful to do.”
[15:5] 402 tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB); NAB “which I enjoin you today.”
[15:7] 403 tn Heb “one of your brothers” (so NASB); NAB “one of your kinsmen”; NRSV “a member of your community.” See the note at v. 2.
[15:7] 405 tn Heb “withdraw your hand.” Cf. NIV “hardhearted or tightfisted” (NRSV and NLT similar).
[15:7] 406 tn Heb “from your needy brother.”
[15:8] 407 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute before both verbs. The translation indicates the emphasis with the words “be sure to” and “generously,” respectively.
[15:8] 408 tn Heb “whatever his need that he needs for himself.” This redundant expression has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[15:9] 410 tn Heb “your needy brother.”
[15:9] 411 tn Heb “give” (likewise in v. 10).
[15:9] 412 tn Heb “it will be a sin to you.”
[15:10] 413 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “by all means.”
[15:10] 414 tc Heb “your heart must not be grieved in giving to him.” The LXX and Orig add, “you shall surely lend to him sufficient for his need,” a suggestion based on the same basic idea in v. 8. Such slavish adherence to stock phrases is without warrant in most cases, and certainly here.
[15:11] 415 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “make sure.”
[15:11] 416 tn Heb “your brother.”
[15:12] 417 sn Elsewhere in the OT, the Israelites are called “Hebrews” (עִבְרִי, ’ivriy) by outsiders, rarely by themselves (cf. Gen 14:13; 39:14, 17; 41:12; Exod 1:15, 16, 19; 2:6, 7, 11, 13; 1 Sam 4:6; Jonah 1:9). Thus, here and in the parallel passage in Exod 21:2-6 the term עִבְרִי may designate non-Israelites, specifically a people well-known throughout the ancient Near East as ’apiru or habiru. They lived a rather vagabond lifestyle, frequently hiring themselves out as laborers or mercenary soldiers. While accounting nicely for the surprising use of the term here in an Israelite law code, the suggestion has against it the unlikelihood that a set of laws would address such a marginal people so specifically (as opposed to simply calling them aliens or the like). More likely עִבְרִי is chosen as a term to remind Israel that when they were “Hebrews,” that is, when they were in Egypt, they were slaves. Now that they are free they must not keep their fellow Israelites in economic bondage. See v. 15.
[15:12] 418 tn Heb “your brother, a Hebrew (male) or Hebrew (female).”
[15:12] 419 tn Heb “him.” The singular pronoun occurs throughout the passage.
[15:12] 420 tn The Hebrew text includes “from you.”
[15:14] 421 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “generously.”
[15:16] 422 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the indentured servant introduced in v. 12) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[15:16] 423 tn Heb “go out from.” The imperfect verbal form indicates the desire of the subject here.
[15:17] 424 sn When the bondslave’s ear was drilled through to the door, the door in question was that of the master’s house. In effect, the bondslave is declaring his undying and lifelong loyalty to his creditor. The scar (or even hole) in the earlobe would testify to the community that the slave had surrendered independence and personal rights. This may be what Paul had in mind when he said “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17).
[15:18] 425 tn The Hebrew term מִשְׁנֶה (mishneh, “twice”) could mean “equivalent to” (cf. NRSV) or, more likely, “double” (cf. NAB, NIV, NLT). The idea is that a hired worker would put in only so many hours per day whereas a bondslave was available around the clock.
[15:19] 426 tn Heb “sanctify” (תַּקְדִּישׁ, taqdish), that is, put to use on behalf of the
[15:20] 427 tn Heb “the Lord.” The translation uses a pronoun for stylistic reasons. See note on “he” in 15:4.
[15:21] 428 tn Heb “any evil blemish”; NASB “any (+ other NAB, TEV) serious defect.”
[15:22] 429 tn Heb “in your gates.”
[15:22] 430 tc The LXX adds ἐν σοί (en soi, “among you”) to make clear that the antecedent is the people and not the animals. That is, the people, whether ritually purified or not, may eat such defective animals.
[16:1] 431 sn The month Abib, later called Nisan (Neh 2:1; Esth 3:7), corresponds to March-April in the modern calendar.
[16:1] 432 tn Heb “in the month Abib.” The demonstrative “that” has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[16:1] 433 tn Heb “the
[16:2] 434 tn Heb “sacrifice the Passover” (so NASB). The word “animal” has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
[16:2] 435 tn Heb “the
[16:4] 436 tn Heb “leaven must not be seen among you in all your border.”
[16:4] 437 tn Heb “remain all night until the morning” (so KJV, ASV). This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[16:6] 439 tn Heb “the Passover.” The translation uses a pronoun to avoid redundancy in English.
[16:6] 440 tc The MT reading אֶל (’el, “unto”) before “the place” should, following Smr, Syriac, Targums, and Vulgate, be omitted in favor of ב (bet; בַּמָּקוֹם, bammaqom), “in the place.”
[16:6] 441 tn Heb “the
[16:7] 442 tn The rules that governed the Passover meal are found in Exod 12:1-51, and Deut 16:1-8. The word translated “cook” (בָּשַׁל, bashal) here is translated “boil” in other places (e.g. Exod 23:19, 1 Sam 2:13-15). This would seem to contradict Exod 12:9 where the Israelites are told not to eat the Passover sacrifice raw or boiled. However, 2 Chr 35:13 recounts the celebration of a Passover feast during the reign of Josiah, and explains that the people “cooked (בָּשַׁל, bashal) the Passover sacrifices over the open fire.” The use of בָּשַׁל (bashal) with “fire” (אֵשׁ, ’esh) suggests that the word could be used to speak of boiling or roasting.
[16:8] 443 tn The words “on that day” are not in the Hebrew text; they are supplied in the translation for clarification (cf. TEV, NLT).
[16:9] 444 tn Heb “the seven weeks.” The translation uses a pronoun to avoid redundancy in English.
[16:10] 445 tn The Hebrew phrase חַג שָׁבֻעוֹת (khag shavu’ot) is otherwise known in the OT (Exod 23:16) as קָצִיר (qatsir, “harvest”) and in the NT as πεντηχοστή (penthcosth, “Pentecost”).
[16:10] 446 tn Heb “the sufficiency of the offering of your hand.”
[16:10] 447 tn Heb “the
[16:11] 448 tn Heb “the
[16:13] 450 tn The Hebrew phrase חַג הַסֻּכֹּת (khag hassukot, “festival of huts” or “festival of shelters”) is traditionally known as the Feast of Tabernacles. The rendering “booths” (cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV) is now preferable to the traditional “tabernacles” (KJV, ASV, NIV) in light of the meaning of the term סֻכָּה (sukkah, “hut; booth”), but “booths” are frequently associated with trade shows and craft fairs in contemporary American English. Clearer is the English term “shelters” (so NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT), but this does not reflect the temporary nature of the living arrangement. This feast was a commemoration of the wanderings of the Israelites after they left Egypt, suggesting that a translation like “temporary shelters” is more appropriate.
[16:13] 451 tn Heb “when you gather in your threshing-floor and winepress.”
[16:14] 452 tn Heb “in your gates.”
[16:15] 453 tn Heb “the
[16:15] 454 tn Heb “the
[16:15] 455 tn Heb “in all the work of your hands” (so NASB, NIV); NAB, NRSV “in all your undertakings.”
[16:16] 456 tn Heb “the
[16:17] 457 tn Heb “a man must give according to the gift of his hand.” This has been translated as second person for stylistic reasons, in keeping with the second half of the verse, which is second person rather than third.
[16:18] 458 tn The Hebrew term וְשֹׁטְרִים (vÿshoterim), usually translated “officers” (KJV, NCV) or “officials” (NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), derives from the verb שֹׁטֵר (shoter, “to write”). The noun became generic for all types of public officials. Here, however, it may be appositionally epexegetical to “judges,” thus resulting in the phrase, “judges, that is, civil officers,” etc. Whoever the שֹׁטְרִים are, their task here consists of rendering judgments and administering justice.
[16:18] 460 tn Heb “with judgment of righteousness”; ASV, NASB “with righteous judgment.”
[16:19] 461 tn Heb “twist, overturn”; NRSV “subverts the cause.”
[16:19] 462 tn Or “innocent”; NRSV “those who are in the right”; NLT “the godly.”
[16:20] 463 tn Heb “justice, justice.” The repetition is emphatic; one might translate as “pure justice” or “unadulterated justice” (cf. NLT “true justice”).
[16:21] 464 tn Heb “an Asherah, any tree.”
[16:22] 465 sn Sacred pillar. This refers to the stelae (stone pillars; the Hebrew term is מַצֵּבֹת, matsevot) associated with Baal worship, perhaps to mark a spot hallowed by an alleged visitation of the gods. See also Deut 7:5.
[17:1] 466 tn Heb “to the
[17:1] 467 tn The Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “an abomination”; cf. NAB) describes persons, things, or practices offensive to ritual or moral order. See M. Grisanti, NIDOTTE 4:314-18; see also the note on the word “abhorrent” in Deut 7:25.
[17:2] 469 tn Heb “does the evil in the eyes of the
[17:3] 470 tc The MT reads “and to the sun,” thus including the sun, the moon, and other heavenly spheres among the gods. However, Theodotion and Lucian read “or to the sun,” suggesting perhaps that the sun and the other heavenly bodies are not in the category of actual deities.
[17:3] 471 tn Heb “which I have not commanded you.” The words “to worship” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
[17:4] 472 tn Heb “an abomination” (תּוֹעֵבָה); see note on the word “offensive” in v. 1.
[17:5] 474 tn Heb “stone them with stones so that they die” (KJV similar); NCV “throw stones at that person until he dies.”
[17:7] 475 tn Heb “the hand of the witnesses.” This means the two or three witnesses are to throw the first stones (cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
[17:7] 476 tn Heb “the hand of all the people.”
[17:8] 477 tn Heb “between blood and blood.”
[17:8] 478 tn Heb “between claim and claim.”
[17:8] 479 tn Heb “between blow and blow.”
[17:8] 481 tc Several Greek recensions add “to place his name there,” thus completing the usual formula to describe the central sanctuary (cf. Deut 12:5, 11, 14, 18; 16:6). However, the context suggests that the local Levitical towns, and not the central sanctuary, are in mind.
[17:12] 482 tn Heb “who acts presumptuously not to listen” (cf. NASB).
[17:15] 483 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, indicated in the translation by the words “without fail.”
[17:15] 484 tn Heb “your brothers,” but not referring to siblings (cf. NIV “your brother Israelites”; NLT “a fellow Israelite”). The same phrase also occurs in v. 20.
[17:15] 485 tn Heb “your brothers.” See the preceding note on “fellow citizens.”
[17:16] 486 tn Heb “in order to multiply horses.” The translation uses “do so” in place of “multiply horses” to avoid redundancy (cf. NAB, NIV).
[17:17] 487 tn Heb “must not multiply” (cf. KJV, NASB); NLT “must not take many.”
[17:18] 488 tn Or “instruction.” The LXX reads here τὸ δευτερονόμιον τοῦτο (to deuteronomion touto, “this second law”). From this Greek phrase the present name of the book, “Deuteronomy” or “second law” (i.e., the second giving of the law), is derived. However, the MT’s expression מִשְׁנֶה הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת (mishneh hattorah hazzo’t) is better rendered “copy of this law.” Here the term תּוֹרָה (torah) probably refers only to the book of Deuteronomy and not to the whole Pentateuch.
[17:18] 489 tn The Hebrew term סֵפֶר (sefer) means a “writing” or “document” and could be translated “book” (so KJV, ASV, TEV). However, since “book” carries the connotation of a modern bound book with pages (an obvious anachronism) it is preferable to render the Hebrew term “scroll” here and elsewhere.
[17:20] 490 tc Heb “upon his kingship.” Smr supplies כִּסֵא (kise’, “throne”) so as to read “upon the throne of his kingship.” This overliteralizes what is a clearly understood figure of speech.
[18:1] 491 tn The MT places the terms “priests” and “Levites” in apposition, thus creating an epexegetical construction in which the second term qualifies the first, i.e., “Levitical priests.” This is a way of asserting their legitimacy as true priests. The Syriac renders “to the priest and to the Levite,” making a distinction between the two, but one that is out of place here.
[18:1] 492 sn Of his inheritance. This is a figurative way of speaking of the produce of the land the
[18:2] 493 tn Heb “he” (and throughout the verse).
[18:2] 494 tn Heb “brothers,” but not referring to actual siblings. Cf. NASB “their countrymen”; NRSV “the other members of the community.”
[18:3] 495 tn Heb “judgment”; KJV, NASB, NRSV “the priest’s due.”
[18:4] 496 tn Heb “the firstfruits of your…” (so NIV).
[18:5] 497 tc Smr and some Greek texts add “before the
[18:5] 498 tn Heb “the name of the
[18:6] 499 tn Heb “according to all the desire of his soul.”
[18:6] 500 tn Or “sojourning.” The verb used here refers to living temporarily in a place, not settling down.
[18:8] 501 tn Presumably this would not refer to a land inheritance, since that was forbidden to the descendants of Levi (v. 1). More likely it referred to some family possessions (cf. NIV, NCV, NRSV, CEV) or other private property (cf. NLT “a private source of income”), or even support sent by relatives (cf. TEV “whatever his family sends him”).
[18:10] 502 tn Heb “who passes his son or his daughter through the fire.” The expression “pass…through the fire” is probably a euphemism for human sacrifice (cf. NAB, NIV, TEV, NLT). See also Deut 12:31.
[18:10] 503 tn Heb “a diviner of divination” (קֹסֵם קְסָמִים, qosem qÿsamim). This was a means employed to determine the future or the outcome of events by observation of various omens and signs (cf. Num 22:7; 23:23; Josh 13:22; 1 Sam 6:2; 15:23; 28:8; etc.). See M. Horsnell, NIDOTTE 3:945-51.
[18:10] 504 tn Heb “one who causes to appear” (מְעוֹנֵן, mÿ’onen). Such a practitioner was thought to be able to conjure up spirits or apparitions (cf. Lev 19:26; Judg 9:37; 2 Kgs 21:6; Isa 2:6; 57:3; Jer 27:9; Mic 5:11).
[18:10] 505 tn Heb “a seeker of omens” (מְנַחֵשׁ, mÿnakhesh). This is a subset of divination, one illustrated by the use of a “divining cup” in the story of Joseph (Gen 44:5).
[18:10] 506 tn Heb “a doer of sorcery” (מְכַשֵּׁף, mikhashef). This has to do with magic or the casting of spells in order to manipulate the gods or the powers of nature (cf. Lev 19:26-31; 2 Kgs 17:15b-17; 21:1-7; Isa 57:3, 5; etc.). See M. Horsnell, NIDOTTE 2:735-38.
[18:11] 507 tn Heb “a binder of binding” (חֹבֵר חָבֶר, khover khaver). The connotation is that of immobilizing (“binding”) someone or something by the use of magical words (cf. Ps 58:6; Isa 47:9, 12).
[18:11] 508 tn Heb “asker of a [dead] spirit” (שֹׁאֵל אוֹב, sho’el ’ov). This is a form of necromancy (cf. Lev 19:31; 20:6; 1 Sam 28:8, 9; Isa 8:19; 19:3; 29:4).
[18:11] 509 tn Heb “a knowing [or “familiar”] [spirit]” (יִדְּעֹנִי, yiddÿ’oniy), i.e., one who is expert in mantic arts (cf. Lev 19:31; 20:6, 27; 1 Sam 28:3, 9; 2 Kgs 21:6; Isa 8:19; 19:3).
[18:11] 510 tn Heb “a seeker of the dead.” This is much the same as “one who conjures up spirits” (cf. 1 Sam 28:6-7).
[18:12] 511 tn Heb “these abhorrent things.” The repetition is emphatic. For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, the same term used earlier in the verse has been translated “detestable” here.
[18:12] 512 tn The translation understands the Hebrew participial form as having an imminent future sense here.
[18:15] 513 tc The MT expands here on the usual formula by adding “from among you” (cf. Deut 17:15; 18:18; Smr; a number of Greek texts). The expansion seems to be for the purpose of emphasis, i.e., the prophet to come must be not just from Israel but an Israelite by blood.
[18:16] 514 tn The Hebrew text uses the collective singular in this verse: “my God…lest I die.”
[18:19] 515 tn Heb “will seek from him”; NAB “I myself will make him answer for it”; NRSV “will hold accountable.”
[18:19] 516 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the prophet mentioned in v. 18) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[18:20] 517 tn Or “commanded” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV).
[18:21] 518 tn Heb “in your heart.”
[18:21] 519 tn Heb “know the word which the Lord has not spoken.” The issue here is not understanding the meaning of the message, but distinguishing a genuine prophetic word from a false one.
[18:22] 520 tn Heb “the
[18:22] 521 tn Heb “the word,” but a predictive word is in view here. Cf. NAB “his oracle.”
[18:22] 522 tn Heb “does not happen or come to pass.”
[18:22] 523 tn Heb “the
[18:22] 524 tn Heb “that is the word which the Lord has not spoken.”
[19:1] 525 tn Heb “the
[19:2] 526 sn These three cities, later designated by Joshua, were Kedesh of Galilee, Shechem, and Hebron (Josh 20:7-9).
[19:4] 528 tn Heb “and this is the word pertaining to the one who kills who flees there and lives.”
[19:4] 529 tn Heb “who strikes his neighbor without knowledge.”
[19:4] 530 tn Heb “yesterday and a third (day)” (likewise in v. 6). The point is that there was no animosity between the two parties at the time of the accident and therefore no motive for the killing. Cf. NAB “had previously borne no malice”; NRSV “had not been at enmity before.”
[19:5] 531 tn Heb “his neighbor” (so NAB, NIV); NASB “his friend.”
[19:5] 532 tn Heb “and he raises his hand with the iron.”
[19:5] 533 tn Heb “the iron slips off.”
[19:5] 535 tn Heb “his neighbor.”
[19:5] 536 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the person responsible for his friend’s death) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[19:6] 538 tn Heb “and overtake him, for the road is long.”
[19:6] 539 tn Heb “smite with respect to life,” that is, fatally.
[19:6] 540 tn Heb “no judgment of death.”
[19:8] 542 tn Heb “he said to give to your ancestors.” The pronoun has been used in the translation instead for stylistic reasons.
[19:9] 543 tn Heb “all this commandment.” This refers here to the entire covenant agreement of the Book of Deuteronomy as encapsulated in the Shema (Deut 6:4-5).
[19:9] 544 tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today.”
[19:9] 545 sn You will add three more cities. Since these are alluded to nowhere else and thus were probably never added, this must be a provision for other cities of refuge should they be needed (cf. v. 8). See P. C. Craigie, Deuteronomy (NICOT), 267.
[19:10] 546 tn Heb “innocent blood must not be shed.” The Hebrew phrase דָּם נָקִי (dam naqiy) means the blood of a person to whom no culpability or responsibility adheres because what he did was without malice aforethought (HALOT 224 s.v דָּם 4.b).
[19:10] 547 tn Heb “and blood will be upon you” (cf. KJV, ASV); NRSV “thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.”
[19:11] 548 tn Heb “his neighbor.”
[19:11] 549 tn Heb “rises against him and strikes him fatally.”
[19:12] 550 tn The גֹאֵל הַדָּם (go’el haddam, “avenger of blood”) would ordinarily be a member of the victim’s family who, after due process of law, was invited to initiate the process of execution (cf. Num 35:16-28). See R. Hubbard, NIDOTTE 1:789-94.
[19:13] 551 sn Purge out the blood of the innocent. Because of the corporate nature of Israel’s community life, the whole community shared in the guilt of unavenged murder unless and until vengeance occurred. Only this would restore spiritual and moral equilibrium (Num 35:33).
[19:14] 552 tn Heb “border.” Cf. NRSV “You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker.”
[19:14] 553 tn Heb “which they set off from the beginning.”
[19:14] 554 tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it.” This phrase has been left untranslated to avoid redundancy.
[19:15] 555 tn Heb “rise up” (likewise in v. 16).
[19:15] 556 tn Heb “may stand.”
[19:16] 557 tn Heb “violent” (חָמָס, khamas). This is a witness whose motivation from the beginning is to do harm to the accused and who, therefore, resorts to calumny and deceit. See I. Swart and C. VanDam, NIDOTTE 2:177-80.
[19:16] 558 tn Or “rebellion.” Rebellion against God’s law is in view (cf. NAB “of a defection from the law”).
[19:17] 559 tn The appositional construction (“before the
[19:18] 560 tn Heb “his brother” (also in the following verse).
[19:19] 561 tn Heb “you will burn out” (בִּעַרְתָּ, bi’arta). Like a cancer, unavenged sin would infect the whole community. It must, therefore, be excised by the purging out of its perpetrators who, presumably, remained unrepentant (cf. Deut 13:6; 17:7, 12; 21:21; 22:21-22, 24; 24:7).
[19:21] 562 sn This kind of justice is commonly called lex talionis or “measure for measure” (cf. Exod 21:23-25; Lev 24:19-20). It is likely that it is the principle that is important and not always a strict application. That is, the punishment should fit the crime and it may do so by the payment of fines or other suitable and equitable compensation (cf. Exod 22:21; Num 35:31). See T. S. Frymer-Kensky, “Tit for Tat: The Principle of Equal Retribution in Near Eastern and Biblical Law,” BA 43 (1980): 230-34.
[20:1] 563 tn Heb “horse and chariot.”
[20:2] 565 sn The reference to the priest suggests also the presence of the ark of the covenant, the visible sign of God’s presence. The whole setting is clearly that of “holy war” or “Yahweh war,” in which God himself takes initiative as the true commander of the forces of Israel (cf. Exod 14:14-18; 15:3-10; Deut 3:22; 7:18-24; 31:6, 8).
[20:2] 566 tn Heb “and he will say to the people.” Cf. NIV, NCV, CEV “the army”; NRSV, NLT “the troops.”
[20:4] 567 tn Or “to save you” (so KJV, NASB, NCV); or “to deliver you.”
[20:5] 568 tn Heb “people” (also in vv. 8, 9).
[20:5] 569 tn Heb “Who [is] the man” (also in vv. 6, 7, 8).
[20:5] 570 tn The Hebrew term חָנַךְ (khanakh) occurs elsewhere only with respect to the dedication of Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs 8:63 = 2 Chr 7:5). There it has a religious connotation which, indeed, may be the case here as well. The noun form (חָנֻכָּה, khanukah) is associated with the consecration of the great temple altar (2 Chr 7:9) and of the postexilic wall of Jerusalem (Neh 12:27). In Maccabean times the festival of Hanukkah was introduced to celebrate the rededication of the temple following its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1 Macc 4:36-61).
[20:5] 571 tn Heb “another man.”
[20:7] 572 tn Heb “Who [is] the man.”
[20:8] 573 tn Heb “his brother’s.”
[20:9] 575 tn The Hebrew text includes “to the people,” but this phrase has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[20:9] 576 tn Heb “princes of hosts.”
[20:11] 577 tn Heb “if it answers you peace.”
[20:11] 578 tn Heb “become as a vassal and will serve you.” The Hebrew term translated slaves (מַס, mas) refers either to Israelites who were pressed into civil service, especially under Solomon (1 Kgs 5:27; 9:15, 21; 12:18), or (as here) to foreigners forced as prisoners of war to become slaves to Israel. The Gibeonites exemplify this type of servitude (Josh 9:3-27; cf. Josh 16:10; 17:13; Judg 1:28, 30-35; Isa 31:8; Lam 1:1).
[20:13] 579 tn Heb “to your hands.”
[20:16] 580 tn The antecedent of the relative pronoun is “cities.”
[20:16] 581 tn Heb “any breath.”
[20:17] 582 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation seeks to reflect with “utterly.” Cf. CEV “completely wipe out.”
[20:17] 583 sn Hittite. The center of Hittite power was in Anatolia (central modern Turkey). In the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200
[20:17] 584 sn Amorite. Originally from the upper Euphrates region (Amurru), the Amorites appear to have migrated into Canaan beginning in 2200
[20:17] 585 sn Canaanite. These were the indigenous peoples of the land of Palestine, going back to the beginning of recorded history (ca. 3000
[20:17] 586 sn Perizzite. This probably refers to a subgroup of Canaanites (Gen 13:7; 34:30).
[20:17] 587 sn Hivite. These are usually thought to be the same as the Hurrians, a people well-known in ancient Near Eastern texts. They are likely identical to the Horites (see note on “Horites” in Deut 2:12).
[20:17] 588 tc The LXX adds “Girgashites” here at the end of the list in order to list the full (and usual) complement of seven (see note on “seven” in Deut 7:1).
[20:18] 589 tn Heb “to do according to all their abominations which they do for their gods.”
[20:19] 590 tn Heb “to fight against it to capture it.”
[20:19] 591 tn Heb “you must not destroy its trees by chopping them with an iron” (i.e., an ax).
[20:19] 592 tn Heb “you may eat from them.” The direct object is not expressed; the word “fruit” is supplied in the translation for clarity.
[20:19] 593 tn Heb “to go before you in siege.”
[20:20] 594 tn Heb “however, a tree which you know is not a tree for food you may destroy and cut down.”
[20:20] 595 tn Heb “[an] enclosure.” The term מָצוֹר (matsor) may refer to encircling ditches or to surrounding stagings. See R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 238.
[21:1] 596 tn Heb “slain [one].” The term חָלָל (khalal) suggests something other than a natural death (cf. Num 19:16; 23:24; Jer 51:52; Ezek 26:15; 30:24; 31:17-18).
[21:1] 597 tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it,” but this has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[21:1] 598 tn Heb “struck,” but in context a fatal blow is meant; cf. NLT “who committed the murder.”
[21:2] 599 tn Heb “surrounding the slain [one].”
[21:3] 600 tn Heb “slain [one].”
[21:4] 601 tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.
[21:4] 602 sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.
[21:5] 603 tn Heb “the priests, the sons of Levi.”
[21:5] 604 tn Heb “in the name of the
[21:5] 605 tn Heb “by their mouth.”
[21:5] 606 tn Heb “every controversy and every blow.”
[21:6] 607 tn Heb “slain [one].”
[21:6] 608 tn Heb “wadi,” a seasonal watercourse through a valley.
[21:7] 609 tn Heb “our eyes.” This is a figure of speech known as synecdoche in which the part (the eyes) is put for the whole (the entire person).
[21:7] 610 tn Heb “seen”; the implied object (the crime committed) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[21:8] 611 tn Heb “Atone for.”
[21:8] 612 tn Heb “and do not place innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel.”
[21:9] 613 tn Heb “in the eyes of” (so ASV, NASB, NIV).
[21:10] 614 tn Heb “gives him into your hands.”
[21:11] 615 tn Heb “the prisoners.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy.
[21:12] 616 sn This requirement for the woman to shave her head may symbolize the putting away of the old life and customs in preparation for being numbered among the people of the
[21:13] 617 tn Heb “she is to…remove the clothing of her captivity” (cf. NASB); NRSV “discard her captive’s garb.”
[21:13] 618 tn Heb “sit”; KJV, NASB, NRSV “remain.”
[21:13] 619 tn Heb “go unto,” a common Hebrew euphemism for sexual relations.
[21:14] 620 sn Heb “send her off.” The Hebrew term שִׁלַּחְתָּה (shillakhtah) is a somewhat euphemistic way of referring to divorce, the matter clearly in view here (cf. Deut 22:19, 29; 24:1, 3; Jer 3:1; Mal 2:16). This passage does not have the matter of divorce as its principal objective, so it should not be understood as endorsing divorce generally. It merely makes the point that if grounds for divorce exist (see Deut 24:1-4), and then divorce ensues, the husband could in no way gain profit from it.
[21:14] 621 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates by the words “in any case.”
[21:14] 622 tn The Hebrew text includes “for money.” This phrase has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[21:14] 623 tn Or perhaps “must not enslave her” (cf. ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); Heb “[must not] be tyrannical over.”
[21:14] 624 sn You have humiliated her. Since divorce was considered rejection, the wife subjected to it would “lose face” in addition to the already humiliating event of having become a wife by force (21:11-13). Furthermore, the Hebrew verb translated “humiliated” here (עָנָה, ’anah), commonly used to speak of rape (cf. Gen 34:2; 2 Sam 13:12, 14, 22, 32; Judg 19:24), likely has sexual overtones as well. The woman may not be enslaved or abused after the divorce because it would be double humiliation (see also E. H. Merrill, Deuteronomy [NAC], 291).
[21:15] 625 tn Heb “one whom he loves and one whom he hates.” For the idea of שָׂנֵא (sane’, “hate”) meaning to be rejected or loved less (cf. NRSV “disliked”), see Gen 29:31, 33; Mal 1:2-3. Cf. A. Konkel, NIDOTTE 3:1256-60.
[21:15] 626 tn Heb “both the one whom he loves and the one whom he hates.” On the meaning of the phrase “one whom he loves and one whom he hates” see the note on the word “other” earlier in this verse. The translation has been simplified for stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy.
[21:16] 627 tn Heb “when he causes his sons to inherit what is his.”
[21:16] 628 tn Heb “the hated.”
[21:17] 629 tn See note on the word “other” in v. 15.
[21:17] 630 tn Heb “measure of two.” The Hebrew expression פִּי שְׁנַיִם (piy shÿnayim) suggests a two-thirds split; that is, the elder gets two parts and the younger one part. Cf. 2 Kgs 2:9; Zech 13:8. The practice is implicit in Isaac’s blessing of Jacob (Gen 25:31-34) and Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim (Gen 48:8-22).
[21:17] 631 tn Heb “his generative power” (אוֹן, ’on; cf. HALOT 22 s.v.). Cf. NAB “the first fruits of his manhood”; NRSV “the first issue of his virility.”
[21:18] 632 tn Heb “and he does not listen to them.”
[21:20] 633 tc The LXX and Smr read “to the men,” probably to conform to this phrase in v. 21. However, since judicial cases were the responsibility of the elders in such instances (cf. Deut 19:12; 21:3, 6; 25:7-8) the reading of the MT is likely original and correct here.
[21:21] 634 tn The Hebrew term בִּעַרְתָּה (bi’artah), here and elsewhere in such contexts (cf. Deut 13:5; 17:7, 12; 19:19; 21:9), suggests God’s anger which consumes like fire (thus בָעַר, ba’ar, “to burn”). See H. Ringgren, TDOT 2:203-4.
[21:21] 635 tc Some LXX traditions read הַנִּשְׁאָרִים (hannish’arim, “those who remain”) for the MT’s יִשְׂרָאֵל (yisra’el, “Israel”), understandable in light of Deut 19:20. However, the more difficult reading found in the MT is more likely original.
[21:23] 637 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates by “make certain.”
[21:23] 638 tn Heb “hung,” but this could convey the wrong image in English (hanging with a rope as a means of execution). Cf. NCV “anyone whose body is displayed on a tree.”
[21:23] 639 sn The idea behind the phrase cursed by God seems to be not that the person was impaled because he was cursed but that to leave him exposed there was to invite the curse of God upon the whole land. Why this would be so is not clear, though the rabbinic idea that even a criminal is created in the image of God may give some clue (thus J. H. Tigay, Deuteronomy [JPSTC], 198). Paul cites this text (see Gal 3:13) to make the point that Christ, suspended from a cross, thereby took upon himself the curse associated with such a display of divine wrath and judgment (T. George, Galatians [NAC], 238-39).
[22:1] 640 tn Heb “you must not see,” but, if translated literally into English, the statement is misleading.
[22:1] 641 tn Heb “brother’s” (also later in this verse). In this context it is not limited to one’s siblings, however; cf. NAB “your kinsman’s.”
[22:1] 642 tn Heb “hide yourself.”
[22:1] 643 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with the words “without fail.”
[22:2] 644 tn Heb “your brother” (also later in this verse).
[22:2] 645 tn Heb “is not.” The idea of “residing” is implied.
[22:2] 646 tn Heb “and you do not know him.”
[22:2] 647 tn Heb “it”; the referent (the ox or sheep mentioned in v. 1) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[22:3] 648 tn Heb “your brother” (also in v. 4).
[22:3] 649 tn Heb “you must not hide yourself.”
[22:4] 650 tn Heb “you must not see.” See note at 22:1.
[22:4] 651 tn Heb “and (must not) hide yourself from them.”
[22:4] 652 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “be sure.”
[22:4] 653 tn Heb “help him to lift them up.” In keeping with English style the singular is used in the translation, and the referent (“the animal”) has been specified for clarity.
[22:5] 654 tn Heb “a man’s clothing.”
[22:5] 655 tn The Hebrew term תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “offense”) speaks of anything that runs counter to ritual or moral order, especially (in the OT) to divine standards. Cross-dressing in this covenant context may suggest homosexuality, fertility cult ritual, or some other forbidden practice.
[22:6] 656 tn Heb “and the mother sitting upon the chicks or the eggs.”
[22:6] 657 tn Heb “sons,” used here in a generic sense for offspring.
[22:7] 658 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation seeks to reflect with “be sure.”
[22:8] 659 tn Or “a parapet” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); KJV “a battlement”; NLT “a barrier.”
[22:8] 660 tn Heb “that you not place bloodshed in your house.”
[22:9] 661 tn Heb “set apart.” The verb קָדַשׁ (qadash) in the Qal verbal stem (as here) has the idea of being holy or being treated with special care. Some take the meaning as “be off-limits, forfeited,” i.e., the total produce of the vineyard, both crops and grapes, have to be forfeited to the sanctuary (cf. Exod 29:37; 30:29; Lev 6:18, 27; Num 16:37-38; Hag 2:12).
[22:11] 662 tn The Hebrew term שַׁעַטְנֵז (sha’atnez) occurs only here and in Lev 19:19. HALOT 1610-11 s.v. takes it to be a contraction of words (שַׁשׁ [shash, “headdress”] + עַטְנַז [’atnaz, “strong”]). BDB 1043 s.v. שַׁעַטְנֵז offers the translation “mixed stuff” (cf. NEB “woven with two kinds of yarn”; NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “woven together”). The general meaning is clear even if the etymology is not.
[22:12] 663 tn Heb “twisted threads” (גְּדִלִים, gÿdilim) appears to be synonymous with צִיצִת (tsitsit) which, in Num 15:38, occurs in a passage instructing Israel to remember the covenant. Perhaps that is the purpose of the tassels here as well. Cf. KJV, ASV “fringes”; NAB “twisted cords.”
[22:13] 664 tn Heb “goes to her,” a Hebrew euphemistic idiom for sexual relations.
[22:13] 665 tn Heb “hate.” See note on the word “other” in Deut 21:15. Cf. NAB “comes to dislike”; NASB “turns against”; TEV “decides he doesn’t want.”
[22:14] 666 tn Heb “deeds of things”; NRSV “makes up charges against her”; NIV “slanders her.”
[22:14] 667 tn Heb “brings against her a bad name”; NIV “gives her a bad name.”
[22:14] 668 tn Heb “drew near to her.” This is another Hebrew euphemism for having sexual relations.
[22:15] 669 sn In light of v. 17 this would evidently be blood-stained sheets indicative of the first instance of intercourse. See E. H. Merrill, Deuteronomy (NAC), 302-3.
[22:16] 670 tn Heb “hated.” See note on the word “other” in Deut 21:15.
[22:17] 671 tn Heb “they will spread the garment.”
[22:18] 672 tn Heb “discipline.”
[22:19] 673 tn Heb “for he”; the referent (the man who made the accusation) has been specified in the translation to avoid confusion with the young woman’s father, the last-mentioned male.
[22:19] 674 tn Heb “brought forth a bad name.”
[22:21] 675 tn The Hebrew term נְבָלָה (nÿvalah) means more than just something stupid. It refers to a moral lapse so serious as to jeopardize the whole covenant community (cf. Gen 34:7; Judg 19:23; 20:6, 10; Jer 29:23). See C. Pan, NIDOTTE 3:11-13. Cf. NAB “she committed a crime against Israel.”
[22:21] 676 tn Heb “burn.” See note on Deut 21:21.
[22:22] 677 tn Heb “lying with” (so KJV, NASB), a Hebrew idiom for sexual relations.
[22:22] 678 tn Heb “a woman married to a husband.”
[22:22] 679 tn Heb “burn.” See note on the phrase “purge out” in Deut 21:21.
[22:23] 681 tn Heb “lies with.”
[22:24] 684 tn Heb “burn.” See note on the phrase “purge out” in Deut 21:21.
[22:25] 685 tn Heb “found,” also in vv. 27, 28.
[22:25] 686 tn Heb “lay with” here refers to a forced sexual relationship, as the accompanying verb “seized” (חָזַק, khazaq) makes clear.
[22:25] 687 tn Heb “the man who lay with her, only him.”
[22:26] 688 tn Heb “his neighbor.”
[22:27] 689 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the man who attacked the woman) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[22:28] 690 tn Heb “lies with.”
[22:30] 691 sn Beginning with 22:30, the verse numbers through 23:25 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 22:30 ET = 23:1 HT, 23:1 ET = 23:2 HT, 23:2 ET = 23:3 HT, etc., through 23:25 ET = 23:26 HT. With 24:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.
[22:30] 692 tn Heb “take.” In context this refers to marriage, as in the older English expression “take a wife.”
[22:30] 693 sn This presupposes either the death of the father or their divorce since it would be impossible for one to marry his stepmother while his father was still married to her.
[22:30] 694 tn Heb “uncover his father’s skirt” (so ASV, NASB). This appears to be a circumlocution for describing the dishonor that would come to a father by having his own son share his wife’s sexuality (cf. NAB, NIV “dishonor his father’s bed”).
[23:1] 695 tn Heb “bruised by crushing,” which many English versions take to refer to crushed testicles (NAB, NRSV, NLT); TEV “who has been castrated.”
[23:1] 696 tn Heb “cut off with respect to the penis”; KJV, ASV “hath his privy member cut off”; English versions vary in their degree of euphemism here; cf. NAB, NRSV, TEV, NLT “penis”; NASB “male organ”; NCV “sex organ”; CEV “private parts”; NIV “emasculated by crushing or cutting.”
[23:1] 697 sn The Hebrew term translated “assembly” (קָהָל, qahal) does not refer here to the nation as such but to the formal services of the tabernacle or temple. Since emasculated or other sexually abnormal persons were commonly associated with pagan temple personnel, the thrust here may be primarily polemical in intent. One should not read into this anything having to do with the mentally and physically handicapped as fit to participate in the life and ministry of the church.
[23:2] 698 tn Or “a person born of an illegitimate marriage.”
[23:2] 699 tn Heb “enter the assembly of the
[23:3] 700 sn An Ammonite or Moabite. These descendants of Lot by his two daughters (cf. Gen 19:30-38) were thereby the products of incest and therefore excluded from the worshiping community. However, these two nations also failed to show proper hospitality to Israel on their way to Canaan (v. 4).
[23:3] 701 tn The Hebrew term translated “ever” (עַד־עוֹלָם, ’ad-’olam) suggests that “tenth generation” (vv. 2, 3) also means “forever.” However, in the OT sense “forever” means not “for eternity” but for an indeterminate future time. See A. Tomasino, NIDOTTE 3:346.
[23:3] 702 tn Heb “enter the assembly of the
[23:4] 703 tn Heb “hired against you.”
[23:5] 704 tn Heb “the
[23:5] 705 tn The verb אָהַב (’ahav, “love”) here and commonly elsewhere in the Book of Deuteronomy speaks of God’s elective grace toward Israel. See note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.
[23:7] 707 tn Heb “sojourner.”
[23:8] 708 sn Concessions were made to the Edomites and Egyptians (as compared to the others listed in vv. 1-6) because the Edomites (i.e., Esauites) were full “brothers” of Israel and the Egyptians had provided security and sustenance for Israel for more than four centuries.
[23:9] 709 tn Heb “evil.” The context makes clear that this is a matter of ritual impurity, not moral impurity, so it is “evil” in the sense that it disbars one from certain religious activity.
[23:10] 710 tn Heb “nocturnal happening.” The Hebrew term קָרֶה (qareh) merely means “to happen” so the phrase here is euphemistic (a “night happening”) for some kind of bodily emission such as excrement or semen. Such otherwise normal physical functions rendered one ritually unclean whether accidental or not. See Lev 15:16-18; 22:4.
[23:12] 711 tn Heb “so that one may go outside there.” This expression is euphemistic.
[23:13] 712 tn Heb “sit.” This expression is euphemistic.
[23:13] 713 tn Heb “with it”; the referent (the spade mentioned at the beginning of the verse) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[23:13] 714 tn Heb “what comes from you,” a euphemism.
[23:14] 715 tn Heb “give [over] your enemies.”
[23:14] 716 tn Heb “nakedness of a thing”; NLT “any shameful thing.” The expression עֶרְוַת דָּבָר (’ervat davar) refers specifically to sexual organs and, by extension, to any function associated with them. There are some aspects of human life that are so personal and private that they ought not be publicly paraded. Cultically speaking, even God is offended by such impropriety (cf. Gen 9:22-23; Lev 18:6-12, 16-19; 20:11, 17-21). See B. Seevers, NIDOTTE 3:528-30.
[23:15] 717 tn The Hebrew text includes “from his master,” but this would be redundant in English style.
[23:17] 719 tn The Hebrew term translated “sacred prostitute” here (קְדֵשָׁה [qÿdeshah], from קַדֵשׁ [qadesh, “holy”]; cf. NIV “shrine prostitute”; NASB “cult prostitute”; NRSV, TEV, NLT “temple prostitute”) refers to the pagan fertility cults that employed female and male prostitutes in various rituals designed to evoke agricultural and even human fecundity (cf. Gen 38:21-22; 1 Kgs 14:24; 15:12; 22:47; 2 Kgs 23:7; Hos 4:14). The Hebrew term for a regular, noncultic (i.e., “secular”) female prostitute is זוֹנָה (zonah).
[23:17] 720 tn Heb “daughters.”
[23:17] 721 tn The male cultic prostitute was called קָדֵשׁ (qadesh; see note on the phrase “sacred prostitute” earlier in this verse). The colloquial Hebrew term for a “secular” male prostitute (i.e., a sodomite) is the disparaging epithet כֶּלֶב (kelev, “dog”) which occurs in the following verse (cf. KJV, ASV, NAB, NASB).
[23:18] 723 tn Here the Hebrew term זוֹנָה (zonah) refers to a noncultic (i.e., “secular”) female prostitute; see note on the phrase “sacred prostitute” in v. 17.
[23:18] 724 tn Heb “of a dog.” This is the common Hebrew term for a noncultic (i.e., “secular”) male prostitute. See note on the phrase “sacred male prostitute” in v. 17.
[23:19] 725 tn Heb “to your brother” (likewise in the following verse). Since this is not limited to actual siblings, “fellow Israelite” is used in the translation (cf. NAB, NASB “countrymen”).
[23:21] 726 tn Heb “the
[23:21] 727 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which is reflected in the translation by “surely.”
[23:21] 728 tn Heb “and it will be a sin to you”; NIV, NCV, NLT “be guilty of sin.”
[23:24] 729 tn Heb “grapes according to your appetite, your fullness.”
[23:24] 730 tn Heb “in your container”; NAB, NIV “your basket.”
[23:25] 731 sn For the continuation of these practices into NT times see Matt 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5.
[24:1] 732 tn Heb “nakedness of a thing.” The Hebrew phrase עֶרְוַת דָּבָר (’ervat davar) refers here to some gross sexual impropriety (see note on “indecent” in Deut 23:14). Though the term usually has to do only with indecent exposure of the genitals, it can also include such behavior as adultery (cf. Lev 18:6-18; 20:11, 17, 20-21; Ezek 22:10; 23:29; Hos 2:10).
[24:2] 733 tn Heb “his house.”
[24:3] 734 tn Heb “hates.” See note on the word “other” in Deut 21:15.
[24:3] 735 tn Heb “writes her a document of divorce.”
[24:4] 736 tn Heb “to return to take her to be his wife.”
[24:4] 737 sn The issue here is not divorce and its grounds per se but prohibition of remarriage to a mate whom one has previously divorced.
[24:4] 738 tn Heb “cause the land to sin” (so KJV, ASV).
[24:5] 739 tn Heb “go out with.”
[24:5] 740 tc For the MT’s reading Piel שִׂמַּח (simmakh, “bring joy to”), the Syriac and others read שָׂמַח (samakh, “enjoy”).
[24:6] 741 sn Taking millstones as security on a loan would amount to taking the owner’s own life in pledge, since the millstones were the owner’s means of earning a living and supporting his family.
[24:7] 742 tn Heb “from his brothers, from the sons of Israel.” The terms “brothers” and “sons of Israel” are in apposition; the second defines the first more specifically.
[24:7] 743 tn Or “and enslaves him.”
[24:7] 744 tn Heb “that thief.”
[24:7] 745 tn Heb “burn.” See note on the word “purge” in Deut 19:19.
[24:8] 746 tn Heb “to watch carefully and to do.”
[24:9] 747 sn What the
[24:10] 748 tn Heb “his pledge.” This refers to something offered as pledge of repayment, i.e., as security for the debt.
[24:11] 749 tn Heb “his pledge.”
[24:12] 750 tn Heb “may not lie down in his pledge.” What is in view is the use of clothing as guarantee for the repayment of loans, a matter already addressed elsewhere (Deut 23:19-20; 24:6; cf. Exod 22:25-26; Lev 25:35-37). Cf. NAB “you shall not sleep in the mantle he gives as a pledge”; NRSV “in the garment given you as the pledge.”
[24:13] 751 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation seeks to reflect with “by all means.”
[24:13] 752 tn Or “righteous” (so NIV, NLT).
[24:14] 753 tn Heb “your brothers,” but not limited only to actual siblings; cf. NASB “your (+ own NAB) countrymen.”
[24:14] 754 tn Heb “who are in your land in your gates.” The word “living” is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[24:16] 755 tn Heb “sons” (so NASB; twice in this verse). Many English versions, including the KJV, read “children” here.
[24:19] 756 tn Heb “in the field.”
[24:19] 757 tn Heb “of your hands.” This law was later applied in the story of Ruth who, as a poor widow, was allowed by generous Boaz to glean in his fields (Ruth 2:1-13).
[24:20] 758 tn Heb “knock down after you.”
[24:21] 759 tn Heb “glean after you.”
[25:1] 761 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the judges) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[25:1] 762 tn Heb “declare to be just”; KJV, NASB “justify the righteous”; NAB, NIV “acquitting the innocent.”
[25:1] 763 tn Heb “declare to be evil”; NIV “condemning the guilty (+ party NAB).”
[25:2] 764 tn Heb “and it will be.”
[25:2] 765 tn Heb “if the evil one is a son of smiting.”
[25:2] 766 tn Heb “according to his wickedness, by number.”
[25:3] 767 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the judge) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[25:3] 768 tn Heb “Forty blows he may strike him”; however, since the judge is to witness the punishment (v. 2) it is unlikely the judge himself administered it.
[25:3] 769 tn Heb “your brothers” but not limited only to an actual sibling; cf. NAB) “your kinsman”; NRSV, NLT “your neighbor.”
[25:4] 770 tn Heb “an.” By implication this is one’s own animal.
[25:5] 771 tn Heb “take her as wife”; NRSV “taking her in marriage.”
[25:5] 772 sn This is the so-called “levirate” custom (from the Latin term levir, “brother-in-law”), an ancient provision whereby a man who died without male descendants to carry on his name could have a son by proxy, that is, through a surviving brother who would marry his widow and whose first son would then be attributed to the brother who had died. This is the only reference to this practice in an OT legal text but it is illustrated in the story of Judah and his sons (Gen 38) and possibly in the account of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 2:8; 3:12; 4:6).
[25:6] 773 tn Heb “and it will be that.”
[25:6] 774 tn Heb “the firstborn.” This refers to the oldest male child.
[25:7] 775 tn Heb “want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister in law.” In the second instance the pronoun (“she”) has been used in the translation to avoid redundancy.
[25:9] 776 sn The removal of the sandal was likely symbolic of the relinquishment by the man of any claim to his dead brother’s estate since the sandal was associated with the soil or land (cf. Ruth 4:7-8). Spitting in the face was a sign of utmost disgust or disdain, an emotion the rejected widow would feel toward her uncooperative brother-in-law (cf. Num 12:14; Lev 15:8). See W. Bailey, NIDOTTE 2:544.
[25:9] 777 tn Heb “build the house of his brother”; TEV “refuses to give his brother a descendant”; NLT “refuses to raise up a son for his brother.”
[25:10] 778 tn Heb “called,” i.e., “known as.”
[25:10] 780 tn Cf. NIV, NCV “The Family of the Unsandaled.”
[25:11] 781 tn Heb “a man and his brother.”
[25:11] 782 tn Heb “shameful parts.” Besides the inherent indelicacy of what she has done, the woman has also threatened the progenitive capacity of the injured man. The level of specificity given this term in modern translations varies: “private parts” (NAB, NIV, CEV); “genitals” (NASB, NRSV, TEV); “sex organs” (NCV); “testicles” (NLT).
[25:13] 783 tn Heb “a stone and a stone.” The repetition of the singular noun here expresses diversity, as the following phrase indicates. See IBHS 116 §7.2.3c.
[25:13] 784 tn Heb “a large and a small,” but since the issue is the weight, “a heavy and a light one” conveys the idea better in English.
[25:14] 785 tn Heb “an ephah and an ephah.” An ephah refers to a unit of dry measure roughly equivalent to five U.S. gallons (just under 20 liters). On the repetition of the term to indicate diversity, see IBHS 116 §7.2.3c.
[25:15] 786 tn Or “just”; Heb “righteous.”
[25:16] 787 tn The Hebrew term translated here “abhorrent” (תּוֹעֵבָה, to’evah) speaks of attitudes and/or behaviors so vile as to be reprehensible to a holy God. See note on the word “abhorrent” in Deut 7:25.
[25:17] 788 tn Heb “what Amalek” (so NAB, NRSV). Here the individual ancestor, the namesake of the tribe, is cited as representative of the entire tribe at the time Israel was entering Canaan. Consistent with this, singular pronouns are used in v. 18 and the singular name appears again in v. 19. Since readers unfamiliar with the tribe of Amalekites might think this refers to an individual, the term “Amalekites” and the corresponding plural pronouns have been used throughout these verses (cf. NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
[25:18] 789 sn See Exod 17:8-16.
[25:19] 790 tn Heb “ the
[25:19] 791 tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it.”
[25:19] 792 tn Or “from beneath the sky.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
[25:19] 793 sn This command is fulfilled in 1 Sam 15:1-33.
[26:1] 794 tn Heb “and it will come to pass that.”
[26:2] 795 tn Heb “the
[26:2] 796 sn The place where he chooses to locate his name. This is a circumlocution for the central sanctuary, first the tabernacle and later the Jerusalem temple. See Deut 12:1-14 and especially the note on the word “you” in v. 14.
[26:3] 797 tc For the MT reading “your God,” certain LXX
[26:3] 798 tc The Syriac adds “your God” to complete the usual formula.
[26:3] 799 tn Heb “swore on oath.”
[26:3] 800 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 7, 15).
[26:4] 801 tn Heb “your hand.”
[26:5] 802 tn Though the Hebrew term אָבַד (’avad) generally means “to perish” or the like (HALOT 2-3 s.v.; BDB 1-2 s.v.; cf. KJV “a Syrian ready to perish”), a meaning “to go astray” or “to be lost” is also attested. The ambivalence in the Hebrew text is reflected in the versions where LXX Vaticanus reads ἀπέβαλεν (apebalen, “lose”) for a possibly metathesized reading found in Alexandrinus, Ambrosianus, ἀπέλαβεν (apelaben, “receive”); others attest κατέλειπεν (kateleipen, “leave, abandon”). “Wandering” seems to suit best the contrast with the sedentary life Israel would enjoy in Canaan (v. 9) and is the meaning followed by many English versions.
[26:5] 803 sn A wandering Aramean. This is a reference to Jacob whose mother Rebekah was an Aramean (Gen 24:10; 25:20, 26) and who himself lived in Aram for at least twenty years (Gen 31:41-42).
[26:5] 805 tn Heb “sojourned there few in number.” The words “with a household” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons and for clarity.
[26:7] 806 tn Heb “the
[26:8] 807 tn Heb “by a powerful hand and an extended arm.” These are anthropomorphisms designed to convey God’s tremendously great power in rescuing Israel from their Egyptian bondage. They are preserved literally in many English versions (cf. KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV).
[26:10] 808 tn Heb “the
[26:11] 809 tn Or “household” (so NASB, NIV, NLT); Heb “house” (so KJV, NRSV).
[26:12] 810 tn Heb includes “the tithes of.” This has not been included in the translation to avoid redundancy.
[26:12] 811 tn The terms “Levite, resident foreigner, orphan, and widow” are collective singulars in the Hebrew text (also in v. 13).
[26:13] 813 tn Heb “the sacred thing.” The term הַקֹּדֶשׁ (haqqodesh) likely refers to an offering normally set apart for the
[26:13] 814 tn Heb “according to all your commandment that you commanded me.” This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[26:14] 815 sn These practices suggest overtones of pagan ritual, all of which the confessor denies having undertaken. In Canaan they were connected with fertility practices associated with harvest time. See E. H. Merrill, Deuteronomy (NAC), 335-36.
[26:14] 816 tn Heb “the
[26:16] 817 tn Or “mind and being”; cf. NCV “with your whole being”; TEV “obey them faithfully with all your heart.”
[26:19] 818 tn Heb “so that.” Verses 18-19 are one sentence in the Hebrew text, but the translation divides it into three sentences for stylistic reasons. The first clause in verse 19 gives a result of the preceding clause. When Israel keeps God’s law, God will bless them with fame and honor (cf. NAB “he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory”; NLT “And if you do, he will make you greater than any other nation”).
[26:19] 819 tn Heb “for praise and for a name and for glory.”
[26:19] 820 tn Heb “and to be.” A new sentence was started here for stylistic reasons.
[27:1] 821 tn Heb “the whole commandment.” See note at 5:31.
[27:1] 822 tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today” (likewise in v. 10).
[27:2] 823 tn The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
[27:2] 824 tn Heb “plaster” (so KJV, ASV; likewise in v. 4). In the translation “cover” has been used for stylistic reasons.
[27:4] 826 tc Smr reads “Mount Gerizim” for the MT reading “Mount Ebal” to justify the location of the Samaritan temple there in the postexilic period. This reading is patently self-serving and does not reflect the original. In the NT when the Samaritan woman of Sychar referred to “this mountain” as the place of worship for her community she obviously had Gerizim in mind (cf. John 4:20).
[27:10] 827 tn Heb “listen to the voice of the
[27:12] 828 tn The word “tribes” has been supplied here and in the following verse in the translation for clarity.
[27:14] 829 tn Heb “Israelite man.”
[27:15] 830 tn Heb “man,” but in a generic sense here.
[27:15] 831 tn The Hebrew term translated here “abhorrent” (תּוֹעֵבָה, to’evah) speaks of attitudes and/or behaviors so vile as to be reprehensible to a holy God. See note on the word “abhorrent” in Deut 7:25.
[27:15] 832 tn Heb “craftsman’s hands.”
[27:15] 833 tn Or “So be it!” The term is an affirmation expressing agreement with the words of the Levites.
[27:16] 834 tn The Levites speak again at this point; throughout this pericope the Levites pronounce the curse and the people respond with “Amen.”
[27:16] 835 tn The Hebrew term קָלָה (qalah) means to treat with disdain or lack of due respect (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV “dishonors”; NLT “despises”). It is the opposite of כָּבֵד (kaved, “to be heavy,” that is, to treat with reverence and proper deference). To treat a parent lightly is to dishonor him or her and thus violate the fifth commandment (Deut 5:16; cf. Exod 21:17).
[27:20] 836 tn Heb “who lies with” (so NASB, NRSV); also in vv. 22, 23. This is a Hebrew idiom for having sexual relations (cf. NIV “who sleeps with”; NLT “who has sexual intercourse with”).
[27:20] 837 tn See note at Deut 22:30.
[27:20] 838 tn Heb “he uncovers his father’s skirt” (NASB similar). See note at Deut 22:30.
[27:21] 839 tn Heb “lies with any animal” (so NASB, NRSV). “To lie with” is a Hebrew euphemism for having sexual relations with someone (or in this case, some animal).
[27:24] 840 tn Or “strikes down” (so NRSV).
[28:1] 841 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “indeed.”
[28:1] 842 tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today” (likewise in v. 15).
[28:2] 843 tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”
[28:3] 844 tn Or “in the country” (so NAB, NIV, NLT). This expression also occurs in v. 15.
[28:4] 845 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
[28:6] 846 sn Come in…go out. To “come in” and “go out” is a figure of speech (merism) indicating all of life and its activities.
[28:7] 847 tn Heb “who rise up against” (so NIV).
[28:7] 848 tn Heb “way” (also later in this verse and in v. 25).
[28:8] 849 tn Heb “the
[28:9] 850 tn Heb “the commandments of the
[28:9] 851 tn Heb “and walk in his ways” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
[28:10] 852 tn Heb “the name of the Lord is called over you.” The Hebrew idiom indicates ownership; see 2 Sam 12:28; Isa 4:1, as well as BDB 896 s.v. קָרָא Niph. 2.d.(4).
[28:11] 853 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “will give you a lot of children.”
[28:11] 854 tn Heb “the
[28:11] 855 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 36, 64).
[28:12] 856 tn Heb “all the work of your hands.”
[28:13] 857 tn Heb “the
[28:13] 858 tn Heb “commanding” (so NRSV); NASB “which I charge you today.”
[28:14] 859 tn Heb “from all the words which I am commanding.”
[28:14] 860 tn Heb “in order to serve.”
[28:15] 861 tn Heb “do not hear the voice of.”
[28:15] 862 tn Heb “and overtake you” (so NIV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “and overwhelm you.”
[28:18] 863 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
[28:19] 864 sn See note on the similar expression in v. 6.
[28:20] 865 tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”
[28:20] 866 tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”
[28:20] 867 tc For the MT first person common singular suffix (“me”), the LXX reads either “Lord” (Lucian) or third person masculine singular suffix (“him”; various codices). The MT’s more difficult reading probably represents the original text.
[28:21] 868 tn Heb “will cause pestilence to cling to you.”
[28:22] 869 tn Heb “The
[28:22] 870 tn Or perhaps “consumption” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV). The term is from a verbal root that indicates a weakening of one’s physical strength (cf. NAB “wasting”; NIV, NLT “wasting disease”).
[28:22] 871 tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”
[28:22] 872 tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).
[28:23] 873 tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”
[28:23] 874 tn Or “heavens” (also in the following verse). The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
[28:25] 875 tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (za’avah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zÿva’ah, “terror”).
[28:28] 876 tn Heb “heart” (so KJV, NASB).
[28:29] 877 tn Heb “you will not cause your ways to prosper.”
[28:30] 878 tc For MT reading שָׁגַל (shagal, “ravish; violate”), the Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate presume the less violent שָׁכַב (shakhav, “lie with”). The unexpected counterpart to betrothal here favors the originality of the MT.
[28:32] 879 tn Heb “and there will be no power in your hand”; NCV “there will be nothing you can do.”
[28:36] 880 tc The LXX reads the plural “kings.”
[28:40] 881 tn Heb “your olives will drop off” (נָשַׁל, nashal), referring to the olives dropping off before they ripen.
[28:42] 882 tn The Hebrew term denotes some sort of buzzing or whirring insect; some have understood this to be a type of locust (KJV, NIV, CEV), but other insects have also been suggested: “buzzing insects” (NAB); “the cricket” (NASB); “the cicada” (NRSV).
[28:43] 883 tn Heb “the foreigner.” This is a collective singular and has therefore been translated as plural; this includes the pronouns in the following verse, which are also singular in the Hebrew text.
[28:45] 884 tn Heb “commanded”; NAB, NIV, TEV “he gave you.”
[28:46] 885 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the curses mentioned previously) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[28:46] 886 tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).
[28:48] 887 tn Heb “lack of everything.”
[28:48] 888 tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the
[28:49] 889 tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”
[28:49] 890 tn Some translations understand this to mean “like an eagle swoops down” (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), comparing the swift attack of an eagle to the attack of the Israelites’ enemies.
[28:51] 891 tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).
[28:51] 892 tn Heb “increase of herds.”
[28:51] 893 tn Heb “growth of flocks.”
[28:52] 894 tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.
[28:53] 895 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”
[28:53] 896 tn Heb “siege and stress.”
[28:55] 897 tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”
[28:56] 898 tc The LXX adds σφόδρα (sfodra, “very”) to bring the description into line with v. 54.
[28:56] 899 tn Heb “delicateness and tenderness.”
[28:57] 900 tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”
[28:57] 901 tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”
[28:57] 902 tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”
[28:58] 903 tn Heb “If you are not careful to do.”
[28:60] 904 sn These are the plagues the
[28:60] 905 tn Heb “will cling to you” (so NIV); NLT “will claim you.”
[28:61] 906 tn The Hebrew term תּוֹרָה (torah) can refer either (1) to the whole Pentateuch or, more likely, (2) to the book of Deuteronomy or even (3) only to this curse section of the covenant text. “Scroll” better reflects the actual document, since “book” conveys the notion of a bound book with pages to the modern English reader. Cf. KJV, NASB, NRSV “the book of this law”; NIV, NLT “this Book of the Law”; TEV “this book of God’s laws and teachings.”
[28:62] 907 tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
[28:62] 908 tn Heb “have not listened to the voice of.”
[28:63] 909 tn Heb “the
[28:66] 910 tn Heb “you will not be confident in your life.” The phrase “from one day to the next” is implied by the following verse.
[29:1] 911 sn Beginning with 29:1, the verse numbers through 29:29 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 29:1 ET = 28:69 HT, 29:2 ET = 29:1 HT, 29:3 ET = 29:2 HT, etc., through 29:29 ET = 29:28 HT. With 30:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.
[29:1] 912 sn Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai (which some English versions substitute here for clarity, cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
[29:2] 913 tn The Hebrew text includes “to your eyes,” but this is redundant in English style (cf. the preceding “you have seen”) and is omitted in the translation.
[29:3] 914 tn Heb “testings.” This is a reference to the plagues; see note at 4:34.
[29:4] 915 tn Heb “a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear” (NASB similar); NAB, NRSV “a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.”
[29:5] 916 tn The Hebrew text includes “on you.” This has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[29:5] 917 tn The Hebrew text includes “from on your feet.”
[29:6] 918 tc The LXX reads “that he is the
[29:10] 920 tc Heb “your heads, your tribes.” The Syriac presupposes either “heads of your tribes” or “your heads, your judges,” etc. (reading שֹׁפְטֵכֶם [shofÿtekhem] for שִׁבְטֵיכֶם [shivtekhem]). Its comparative difficulty favors the originality of the MT reading. Cf. KJV “your captains of your tribes”; NRSV “the leaders of your tribes”; NLT “your tribal leaders.”
[29:12] 922 tn Heb “for you to pass on into the covenant of the Lord your God and into his oath, which the Lord your God is cutting with you today.”
[29:13] 923 tn Heb “in order to establish you today to him for a people and he will be to you for God.” Verses 10-13 are one long sentence in Hebrew. The translation divides this into two sentences for stylistic reasons.
[29:13] 924 tn Heb “fathers” (also in v. 25).
[29:15] 925 tn This is interpreted by some English versions as a reference to generations not yet born (cf. TEV, CEV, NLT).
[29:17] 926 tn The Hebrew term שִׁקּוּץ (shiquts) refers to anything out of keeping with the nature and character of Yahweh and therefore to be avoided by his people Israel. It is commonly used with or as a synonym for תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “detestable, abhorrent”; 2 Kgs 23:13; Jer 16:18; Ezek 5:11; 7:20; 11:18, 21; see note on the term “abhorrent” in Deut 7:25). See M. Grisanti, NIDOTTE 4:243-46.
[29:17] 927 tn The Hebrew text includes “which were with them.” Verses 16-17 constitute a parenthetical comment.
[29:18] 928 tn Heb “yielding fruit poisonous and wormwood.” The Hebrew noun לַעֲנָה (la’anah) literally means “wormwood” (so KJV, ASV, NAB, NASB), but is used figuratively for anything extremely bitter, thus here “fruit poisonous and bitter.”
[29:19] 929 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the subject of the warning in v. 18) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[29:19] 930 tn Heb “in his heart.”
[29:19] 931 tn Or “invokes a blessing on himself.” A formalized word of blessing is in view, the content of which appears later in the verse.
[29:19] 933 tn Heb “thus destroying.” For stylistic reasons the translation begins a new sentence here.
[29:19] 934 tn Heb “the watered with the parched.” The word “ground” is implied. The exact meaning of the phrase is uncertain although it appears to be figurative. This appears to be a proverbial observation employing a figure of speech (a merism) suggesting totality. That is, the Israelite who violates the letter and even spirit of the covenant will harm not only himself but everything he touches – “the watered and the parched.” Cf. CEV “you will cause the rest of Israel to be punished along with you.”
[29:20] 935 tn Heb “the wrath of the
[29:20] 936 tn Heb “smoke,” or “smolder.”
[29:20] 937 tn Heb “the entire oath.”
[29:20] 938 tn Or “will lie in wait against him.”
[29:20] 939 tn Heb “blot out his name from under the sky.”
[29:21] 940 tn Heb “set him apart.”
[29:21] 941 tn Heb “for evil”; NAB “for doom”; NASB “for adversity”; NIV “for disaster”; NRSV “for calamity.”
[29:22] 942 tn Heb “will say and see.” One expects a quotation to appear, but it seems to be omitted. To avoid confusion in the translation, the verb “will say” is omitted.
[29:23] 943 tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” This construction is a hendiadys intended to intensify the emotion.
[29:24] 944 tn Heb “this great burning of anger”; KJV “the heat of this great anger.”
[29:26] 945 tn Heb “did not assign to them”; NASB, NRSV “had not allotted to them.”
[29:27] 946 tn Heb “the entire curse.”
[29:29] 947 tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); KJV, ASV, NIV, NRSV “children.”
[30:1] 948 tn Heb “the blessing and the curse.”
[30:1] 949 tn Heb “and you bring (them) back to your heart.”
[30:2] 950 tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); KJV, ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “children.”
[30:2] 951 tn Or “heart and soul” (also in vv. 6, 10).
[30:2] 952 tn Heb “according to all.”
[30:3] 953 tn Heb “the
[30:4] 954 tn Heb “are at the farthest edge of the heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
[30:5] 955 tn Heb “the
[30:5] 956 tn Heb “fathers” (also later in this verse and in vv. 9, 20).
[30:6] 957 tn Heb “circumcise” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “will give you and your descendents obedient hearts.” See note on the word “cleanse” in Deut 10:16.
[30:6] 958 tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).
[30:6] 959 tn Heb “the
[30:8] 960 tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I now enjoin on you.”
[30:9] 961 tc The MT reads “hand” (singular). Most versions read the plural.
[30:9] 962 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV); NRSV “of your body.”
[30:9] 963 tn Heb “return and.” The Hebrew verb is used idiomatically here to indicate the repetition of the following action.
[30:9] 964 tn The Hebrew text includes “for good.”
[30:10] 965 tn Heb “to the
[30:11] 966 tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you.”
[30:16] 968 tc A number of LXX
[30:16] 969 tn Heb “which you are going there to possess it.” This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.
[30:17] 970 tn Heb “your heart,” as a metonymy for the person.
[30:18] 971 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “certainly.”
[30:18] 972 tn Heb “to go there to possess it.”
[30:20] 973 tn The words “I also call on you” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons. In the Hebrew text vv. 19-20 are one long sentence, which the translation divides into two.
[30:20] 974 tn Heb “he is your life and the length of your days to live.”
