He has selected the best part for himself, for the portion of the ruler ¹  is set aside ²  there; he came with the leaders ³  of the people, he obeyed the righteous laws of the Lord and his ordinances with Israel.

What is going to happen to us? Our brothers have drained away our courage ¹  by describing people who are more numerous ²  and taller than we are, and great cities whose defenses appear to be as high as heaven ³  itself! Moreover, they said they saw ⁴  Anakites ⁵  there.”

You must by all means destroy ¹  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. ² 

Then you must come to the place the Lord your God chooses for his name to reside, bringing ¹  everything I am commanding you – your burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, ²  and all your choice votive offerings which you devote to him. ³ 

If the place he ¹  chooses to locate his name is too far for you, you may slaughter any of your herd and flock he ²  has given you just as I have stipulated; you may eat them in your villages ³  just as you wish.

In the presence of the Lord your God you must eat from the tithe of your grain, your new wine, ¹  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.

When he ¹  blesses you, if the ²  place where he chooses to locate his name is distant,

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.

but you must sacrifice it ¹  in the evening in ²  the place where he ³  chooses to locate his name, at sunset, the time of day you came out of Egypt.

You shall rejoice before him ¹  – you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites in your villages, ²  the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows among you – in the place where the Lord chooses to locate his name.

The person who pays no attention ¹  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.

Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will ¹  from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, ²  to the place the Lord chooses

and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, ¹  to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. ²  There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck.

accusing her of impropriety ¹  and defaming her reputation ²  by saying, “I married this woman but when I had sexual relations ³  with her I discovered she was not a virgin!”

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 ¹  ruined the reputation ²  of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.

But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she ¹  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!”

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 ¹  chooses to locate his name. ² 

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.

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.

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.