The Wilderness Years

I call heauen and earth to record against you this day, that ye shall shortly perish from the land, whereunto ye goe ouer Iorden to possesse it: ye shall not prolong your dayes therein, but shall vtterly be destroyed.

And the Lord shall scatter you among the people, and ye shall be left few in nomber among the nations, whither the Lord shall bring you:

And there ye shall serue gods, euen ye worke of mans hand, wood, and stone, which neither see, nor heare, nor eate, nor smelll.

But if from thence thou shalt seeke the Lord thy God, thou shalt finde him, if thou seeke him with all thine heart, and with all thy soule.

When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come vpon thee, at the length if thou returne to the Lord thy God, and bee obedient vnto his voyce,

(For the Lord thy God is a mercifull God) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the couenant of thy fathers, which hee sware vnto them.

For inquire now of the dayes that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man vpon the earth, and aske from the one ende of heauen vnto the other, if there came to passe such a great thing as this, or whether any such like thing hath bene heard.

Did euer people heare the voyce of God speaking out of the middes of a fire, as thou hast heard, and liued?

Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from among nations, by tentations, by signes, and by wonders, and by warre, and by a mightie hand, and by a stretched out arme, and by great feare, according vnto all that the Lord your God did vnto you in Egypt before your eyes?

Vnto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest knowe, that the Lord hee is God, and that there is none but he alone.

Out of heauen hee made thee heare his voyce to instruct thee, and vpon earth he shewed thee his great fire, and thou heardest his voyce out of the middes of the fire.

And because hee loued thy fathers, therefore hee chose their seede after them, and hath brought thee out of Egypt in his sight by his mightie power,

To thrust out nations greater and mightier then thou, before thee, to bring thee in, and to giue thee their land for inheritance: as appeareth this day.

Vnderstande therefore this day, and consider in thine heart, that the Lord, he is God in heauen aboue, and vpon the earth beneath: there is none other.

Thou shalt keepe therefore his ordinances, and his commandements which I commaund thee this day, that it may goe well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayst prolong thy dayes vpon the earth, which the Lord thy God giueth thee for euer.

Then Moses separated three cities on this side of Iorden toward the sunne rising:

That the slayer should flee thither, which had killed his neighbour at vnwares, and hated him not in time past, might flee, I say, vnto one of those cities, and liue:

That is, Bezer in the wildernesse, in the plaine countrey of the Reubenites: and Ramoth in Gilead among the Gadites: and Golan in Bashan among them of Manasseh.

So this is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel.

These are the witnesses, and the ordinances, and the lawes which Moses declared to the children of Israel after they came out of Egypt,

On this side Iorden, in the valley ouer against Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon King of the Amorites, which dwelt at Heshbon, whom Moses and the children of Israel smote, after they were come out of Egypt:

And they possessed his land, and the lande of Og King of Bashan, two Kings of the Amorites, which were on this side Iorden towarde the sunne rising:

From Aroer, which is by the banke of the riuer Arnon, euen vnto mount Sion, which is Hermon,

And all the plaine by Iorden Eastwarde, euen vnto the Sea, of ye plaine, vnder the springs of Pisgah.

Then Moses called all Israiel, and saide vnto them, Heare, O Israel, the ordinances and the lawes which I propose to you this day, that yee may learne them, and take heede to obserue them.