Now if you say to yourselves, ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?’ –

you must say to them, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt in a powerful way.

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.

He said, “I will reject them, I will see what will happen to them; for they are a perverse generation, children who show no loyalty.

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, you must not take the mother from the young.

They must declare to the elders of his city, “Our son is stubborn and rebellious and pays no attention to what we say – he is a glutton and drunkard.”

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.

They include the Anakites, a numerous and tall people whom you know about and of whom it is said, “Who is able to resist the Anakites?”

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.

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.

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.

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, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.

In fact, what other great nation has a god so near to them like the Lord our God whenever we call on him?

Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked – that has never pulled with the yoke –

The Lord found him in a desolate land, in an empty wasteland where animals howl. He continually guarded him and taught him; he continually protected him like the pupil of his eye.

Have a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the middle of fire, as you yourselves have, and lived to tell about it?

You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself.

You must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done among you,

However, suppose a person hates someone else and stalks him, attacks him, kills him, and then flees to one of these cities.

A person of illegitimate birth may not enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation no one related to him may do so.