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

When your children ask you later on, “What are the stipulations, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God commanded you?”

We will be innocent if we carefully keep all these commandments before the Lord our God, just as he demands.”

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!

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.

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.

So realize that the Lord your God is the true God, the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

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.

you must not fear them. You must carefully recall what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt,

He, 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.

For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of brooks, springs, and fountains flowing forth in valleys and hills,

Be sure you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today.

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 people!

Now at the end of the forty days and nights the Lord presented me with the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant.

Moreover, he said to me, “I have taken note of these people; they are a stubborn lot!

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.

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.

Then he said to me, “Get up, set out leading the people so they may go and possess the land I promised to give to their ancestors.”

However, only to your ancestors did he show his loving favor, and he chose you, their descendants, from all peoples – as is apparent today.

and that you may enjoy long life in the land the Lord promised to give to your ancestors and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.