The Wilderness Years

I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live long upon it, but will be utterly destroyed.

Then the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the LORD will drive you.

And there you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.

But if from there you will seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the LORD your God and listen to His voice.

For the LORD your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers, which He swore to them by oath.

Indeed, ask now from one end of the heavens to the other about the days that long preceded you, from the day that God created man on earth: Has anything as great as this ever happened or been reported?

Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking out of the fire, as you have, and lived?

Or has any god tried to take as his own a nation out of another nation—by trials, signs, wonders, and war, by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors—as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt, before your eyes?

You were shown these things so that you would know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides Him.

He let you hear His voice from heaven to discipline you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words out of the fire.

Because He loved your fathers, He chose their descendants after them and brought you out of Egypt by His presence and great power,

to drive out before you nations greater and mightier than you, and to bring you into their land and give it to you for your inheritance, as it is this day.

Know therefore this day and take to heart that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.

Keep His statutes and commandments, which I am giving you today, so that you and your children after you may prosper, and that you may live long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for all time.

Then Moses set aside three cities across the Jordan to the east

to which a manslayer could flee after killing his neighbor unintentionally without prior malice. To save one’s own life, he could flee to one of these cities:

Bezer in the wilderness on the plateau belonging to the Reubenites, Ramoth in Gilead belonging to the Gadites, or Golan in Bashan belonging to the Manassites.

This is the law that Moses set before the Israelites.

These are the testimonies, statutes, and ordinances that Moses proclaimed to them after they had come out of Egypt,

while they were in the valley across the Jordan facing Beth-peor in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon and was defeated by Moses and the Israelites after they had come out of Egypt.

They took possession of the land belonging to Sihon and to Og king of Bashan—the two Amorite kings across the Jordan to the east—

extending from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Valley as far as Mount Siyon (that is, Hermon),

including all the Arabah on the east side of the Jordan and as far as the Sea of the Arabah, below the slopes of Pisgah.

Then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: Hear, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances that I declare in your hearing this day. Learn them and observe them carefully.