The Wilderness Years

I call on the sky and the earth to witness against you today that you will quickly disappear from the land that you are crossing the Yarden to possess. You will not prolong your days there but will be completely destroyed.

ADONAI will scatter you among the peoples; and among the nations to which ADONAI will lead you away, you will be left few in number.

There you will serve gods which are the product of human hands, made of wood and stone, which can't see, hear, eat or smell.

However, from there you will seek ADONAI your God; and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and being.

In your distress, when all these things have come upon you, in the acharit-hayamim, you will return to ADONAI your God and listen to what he says;

for ADONAI your God is a merciful God. He will not fail you, destroy you, or forget the covenant with your ancestors which he swore to them.

"Indeed, inquire about the past, before you were born: since the day God created human beings on the earth, from one end of heaven to the other, has there ever been anything as wonderful as this? Has anyone heard anything like it?

Did any other people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and stay alive?

Or has God ever tried to go and take for himself a nation from the very bowels of another nation, by means of ordeals, signs, wonders, war, a mighty hand, an outstretched arm and great terrors -like all that ADONAI your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

This was shown to you, so that you would know that ADONAI is God, and there is no other beside him.

From heaven he caused you to hear his voice, in order to instruct you; and on earth he caused you to see his great fire; and you heard his very words coming out from the fire.

Because he loved your ancestors, chose their descendants after them and brought you out of Egypt with his presence and great power,

in order to drive out ahead of you nations greater and stronger than you, so that he could bring you in and give you their land as an inheritance, as is the case today;

know today, and establish it in your heart, that ADONAI is God in heaven above and on earth below - there is no other.

Therefore, you are to keep his laws and mitzvot which I am giving you today, so that it will go well with you and with your children after you, and so that you will prolong your days in the land ADONAI your God is giving you forever."

Then Moshe separated three cities on the east side of the Yarden, toward the sunrise,

to which a killer might flee, that is, someone who kills by mistake a person whom he did not previously hate, and upon fleeing to one of these cities might live there.

The cities were Betzer in the desert, in the flatland, for the Re'uveni; Ramot in Gil'ad for the Gadi; and Golan in Bashan for the M'nashi.

This is the Torah which Moshe placed before the people of Isra'el -

these are the instructions, laws and rulings which Moshe presented to the people of Isra'el after they had come out of Egypt -

beyond the Yarden River, in the valley across from Beit-P'or, in the land of Sichon king of the Emori, who lived at Heshbon, whom Moshe and the people of Isra'el defeated when they came out of Egypt;

and they took possession of his land and the land of 'Og king of Bashan, the two kings of the Emori, who were beyond the Yarden toward the sunrise;

from 'Aro'er on the edge of the Arnon Valley to Mount Si'on," that is, Mount Hermon,

"with all the 'Aravah beyond the Yarden eastward, all the way to the Dead Sea at the foot of the slopes of Pisgah.

Then Moshe called to all Isra'el and said to them, "Listen, Isra'el, to the laws and rulings which I am announcing in your hearing today, so that you will learn them and take care to obey them.