Then Moses called all the people of Israel together and said to them: ¹  “Listen, Israel, to the statutes and ordinances that I am about to deliver to you today; learn them and be careful to keep them!

You must not worship or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I punish ¹  the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons for the sin of the fathers who reject ²  me, ³ 

The Lord said these things to your entire assembly at the mountain from the middle of the fire, the cloud, and the darkness with a loud voice, and that was all he said. ¹  Then he inscribed the words ²  on two stone tablets and gave them to me.

Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you – a land with large, fine cities you did not build,

When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you – Hittites, ¹  Girgashites, ²  Amorites, ³  Canaanites, ⁴  Perizzites, ⁵  Hivites, ⁶  and Jebusites, ⁷  seven ⁸  nations more numerous and powerful than you –

Do not think to yourself after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, “Because of my own righteousness the Lord has brought me here to possess this land.” It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out ahead of you.

Remember – don’t ever forget ¹  – how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him. ² 

As for your sinful thing ¹  that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ²  ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.

Otherwise the people of the land ¹  from which you brought us will say, “The Lord was unable to bring them to the land he promised them, and because of his hatred for them he has brought them out to kill them in the desert.” ² 

Now, if you pay close attention ¹  to my commandments that I am giving you today and love ²  the Lord your God and serve him with all your mind and being, ³ 

and the curse if you pay no attention ¹  to his ²  commandments and turn from the way I am setting before ³  you today to pursue ⁴  other gods you have not known.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are to possess, you must pronounce the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. ¹ 

You must gather all of its plunder into the middle of the plaza ¹  and burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin ²  forever – it must never be rebuilt again.

Be careful lest you entertain the wicked thought that the seventh year, the year of cancellation of debts, has almost arrived, and your attitude ¹  be wrong toward your impoverished fellow Israelite ²  and you do not lend ³  him anything; he will cry out to the Lord against you and you will be regarded as having sinned. ⁴ 

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 must bring to your city gates ¹  that man or woman who has done this wicked thing – that very man or woman – and you must stone that person to death. ² 

If a matter is too difficult for you to judge – bloodshed, ¹  legal claim, ²  or assault ³  – matters of controversy in your villages ⁴  – you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses. ⁵ 

When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,”

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

Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.