Study Desk

For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?

how you once stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, "Assemble the people for me, and I will let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me as long as they live on the earth, and may teach their children so";

And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven.

The Lord was angry with me because of you, and he vowed that I should not cross the Jordan and that I should not enter the good land that the Lord your God is giving for your possession.

So be careful not to forget the covenant that the Lord your God made with you, and not to make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you.

For the Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.

When you have had children and children's children, and become complacent in the land, if you act corruptly by making an idol in the form of anything, thus doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, and provoking him to anger,

From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.

In your distress, when all these things have happened to you in time to come, you will return to the Lord your God and heed him.

Because the Lord your God is a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.

For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of heaven to the other: has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of?

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

Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.

So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.

Keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am commanding you today for your own well-being and that of your descendants after you, so that you may long remain in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me,

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.