Study Desk

Observe and hear all the things that I command thee, that it may be well with thee and thy children after thee for ever, when thou shalt do what is good and pleasing in the sight of the Lord thy God.

Children of Belial are gone out of the midst of thee, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, and have said: Let us go, and serve strange gods which you know not:

Be ye children of the Lord your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness for the dead;

Excepting women and children, cattle and other things, that are in the city. And thou shalt divide all the prey to the army, and thou shalt eat the spoils of thy enemies, which the Lord thy God shall give thee.

If a man have two wives, one beloved, and the other hated, and they have had children by him, and the son of the hated be the firstborn,

But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, and shall give him a double portion of all he hath: for this is the first of his children, and to him are due the first birthrights.

If any man be found soliciting his brother of the children of Israel, and selling him shall take a price, he shall be put to death, and thou shalt take away the evil from the midst of thee.

The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children for the fathers, but every one shall die for his own sin,

When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother:

So that he will not give them of the flesh of his children, which he shall eat: because he hath nothing else in the siege and the want, wherewith thy enemies shall distress thee within all thy gates.

And the filth of the afterbirths, that come forth from between her thighs, and the children that are born the same hour. For they shall eat them secretly for the want of all things, in the siege and distress, wherewith thy enemy shall oppress thee within thy gates.

These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab: beside that covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

Your children and your wives, and the stranger that abideth with thee in the camp, besides the hewers of wood, and them that bring water:

And the following generation shall say, and the children that shall be born hereafter, and the strangers that shall come from afar, seeing the plagues of that land and the evils wherewith the Lord hath afflicted it,

Secret things to the Lord our God: things that are manifest, to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

And shalt return to him, and obey his commandments, as I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul:

And the people being all assembled together, both men and women, children and strangers, that are within thy gates: that hearing they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and keep, and fulfil all the words of this law:

That their children also, who now are ignorant, may hear, and fear the Lord their God, all the days that they live in the land whither you are going over the Jordan to possess it.

Now therefore write you this canticle, and teach the children of Israel: that they may know it by heart, and sing it by mouth, and this song may be unto me for a testimony among the children of Israel.

Moses therefore wrote the canticle, and taught it to the children of Israel.