Moreover, at that same time the Lord commanded me to teach you statutes and ordinances for you to keep in the land which you are about to enter and possess.

Teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up.

You are children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald for the sake of the dead.

You must by all means destroy 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.

Then their children, who have not known this law, will also hear about and learn to fear the Lord your God for as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

Instruct these people as follows: ‘You are about to cross the border of your relatives the descendants of Esau, who inhabit Seir. They will be afraid of you, so watch yourselves carefully.

Look! I have taught you statutes and ordinances just as the Lord my God told me to do, so that you might carry them out in the land you are about to enter and possess.

Then the Lord spoke to you from the middle of the fire; you heard speech but you could not see anything – only a voice was heard.

Now these are the commandments, 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

and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy!

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.

He will hand over their kings to you and you will erase their very names from memory. Nobody will be able to resist you until you destroy them.

Instead, the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy is one of hills and valleys, a land that drinks in water from the rains,

Fix these words of mine into your mind and being, and tie them as a reminder on your hands and let them be symbols on your forehead.

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.

Both you and your families must feast there before the Lord your God and rejoice in all the output of your labor with which he has blessed you.

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 (since they have no allotment or inheritance with you).

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.

“Therefore, keep the terms of this covenant and obey them so that you may be successful in everything you do.

You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God – the heads of your tribes, your elders, your officials, every Israelite man,