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.

However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, ¹  and you may use it to build siege works ²  against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.

Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse ¹  must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked – that has never pulled with the yoke –

for they did not meet you with food and water on the way as you came from Egypt, and furthermore, they hired ¹  Balaam son of Beor of Pethor in Aram Naharaim to curse you.

You must go to the priest in office at that time and say to him, “I declare today to the Lord your ¹  God that I have come into the land that the Lord ²  promised ³  to our ancestors ⁴  to give us.”

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.”

When you cross the Jordan River ¹  to the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must erect great stones and cover ²  them with plaster.

“The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you ¹  in everything you undertake ²  until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. ³ 

The Lord will force you and your king ¹  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.

They will besiege all of your villages ¹  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.

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 ¹  you in your villages.

and will secretly eat her afterbirth ¹  and her newborn children ²  (since she has nothing else), ³  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he ¹  will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess.

(28:69) ¹  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. ² 

Today he will affirm that you are his people and that he is your God, ¹  just as he promised you and as he swore by oath to your ancestors ²  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

“When you have experienced all these things, both the blessings and the curses ¹  I have set before you, you will reflect upon them ²  in all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you.

What ¹  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. ² 

Then the Lord said to Moses, “You are about to die, ¹  and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they ²  are going. They ³  will reject ⁴  me and break my covenant that I have made with them. ⁵ 

he said to them, “Keep in mind all the words I am solemnly proclaiming to you today; you must command your children to observe carefully all the words of this law.

for both of you ¹  rebelled against me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the desert of Zin when you did not show me proper respect ²  among the Israelites.