who ate the best of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise and help you; let them be your refuge!

You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, ¹  burn up their sacred Asherah poles, ²  and cut down the images of their gods; you must eliminate their very memory from that place.

You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, ¹  for the Lord your God will be testing you to see if you love him ²  with all your mind and being. ³ 

Cry out, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge his servants’ blood; he will take vengeance against his enemies, and make atonement for his land and people.

Let me please cross over to see the good land on the other side of the Jordan River – this good hill country and the Lebanon!” ¹ 

But you who remained faithful to the Lord your God are still alive to this very day, every one of you.

You must not tremble in their presence, for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a great and awesome God.

So you must love the resident foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fins and scales you may eat,

for the Lord your God goes with you to fight on your behalf against your enemies to give you victory.” ¹ 

For anyone who acts dishonestly in these ways is abhorrent ¹  to the Lord your God.

However, if you ¹  turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods,

Suppose he goes with someone else ¹  to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax ²  to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose ³  from the handle and strikes ⁴  his fellow worker ⁵  so hard that he dies. The person responsible ⁶  may then flee to one of these cities to save himself. ⁷ 

But the Lord told me: “Tell them this: ‘Do not go up and fight, because I will not be with you and you will be defeated by your enemies.’”

The Amorite inhabitants of that area ¹  confronted ²  you and chased you like a swarm of bees, striking you down from Seir as far as Hormah. ³ 

You have witnessed what the Lord did at Baal Peor, ¹  how he ²  eradicated from your midst everyone who followed Baal Peor. ³ 

But if you seek the Lord your God from there, you will find him, if, indeed, you seek him with all your heart and soul. ¹ 

In your distress when all these things happen to you in the latter days, ¹  if you return to the Lord your God and obey him ² 

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

I lay flat on the ground before the Lord for forty days and nights, ¹  for he ²  had said he would destroy you.