Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, ¹  cut down their sacred Asherah poles, ²  and burn up their idols.

For a fire has been kindled by my anger, and it burns to lowest Sheol; ¹  it consumes the earth and its produce, and ignites the foundations of the mountains.

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 worship the Lord your God the way they do! ¹  For everything that is abhorrent ²  to him, ³  everything he hates, they have done when worshiping their gods. They even burn up their sons and daughters before their gods!

The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. ¹ 

You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent ¹  to the Lord your God.

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.

with the harvest of the earth and its fullness and the pleasure of him who resided in the burning bush. ¹  May blessing rest on Joseph’s head, and on the top of the head of the one set apart ²  from his brothers.

Then, when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness while the mountain was ablaze, all your tribal leaders and elders approached me.

You approached and stood at the foot of the mountain, a mountain ablaze to the sky above it ¹  and yet dark with a thick cloud. ² 

So I turned and went down the mountain while it ¹  was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.

That is why the Lord’s anger erupted against this land, bringing on it all the curses ¹  written in this scroll.

The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger ¹  will rage ²  against that man; all the curses ³  written in this scroll will fall upon him ⁴  and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. ⁵ 

They will be starved by famine, eaten by plague, and bitterly stung; ¹  I will send the teeth of wild animals against them, along with the poison of creatures that crawl in the dust.

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.

He ¹  will afflict you with weakness, ²  fever, inflammation, infection, ³  sword, ⁴  blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish.

Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger ¹  all about?”

For the Lord your God is a consuming fire; he is a jealous God. ¹ 

Make sure you do not offer burnt offerings in any place you wish,

for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will erupt against you and he will quickly destroy you.