Study Desk

For everyone doing these things is detestable to Yahweh, and because of these detestable things Yahweh your God is driving them out from before you.

You must be blameless before Yahweh your God.

For these nations that you are about to dispossess listen to interpreters of signs and to diviners, but Yahweh your God has not allowed you to do the same.

"Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your countrymen, and to him you shall listen.

This is according to all that you asked from Yahweh your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘I do not want again to hear the voice of Yahweh my God, and I do not want to see again this great fire, so that I may not die!'

"When Yahweh your God has exterminated the nations concerning whom Yahweh your God is giving to you their land, and you have dispossessed them, and you have settled in their towns and in their houses,

you shall set apart three cities for you in the midst of your land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to take possession of it.

You shall prepare the roads for yourselves, and you shall divide the regions of your land into thirds that Yahweh your God gives you as a possession, so that it will be available for any manslayer to flee there.

Then if Yahweh your God enlarges your territory just as he swore to your ancestors and gives to you all the land that he promised to give to your ancestors,

then if you diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you today by loving Yahweh your God and by going in his ways at all times, then you shall add three more cities for yourselves to these three.

Do this so that innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land that Yahweh your God is giving to you as an inheritance and thereby bloodguilt would be on you.

"You shall not move the boundary marker of your neighbor that former generations set up on your property in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to take possession of it.

"If you go out to war against your enemies and you see a horse and a chariot, an army larger that you, you shall not be afraid because of them; for Yahweh your God is with you, the one who brought you from the land of Egypt.

for Yahweh your God is going with you to fight for you against your enemies to help you.'

And Yahweh your God will give it into your hand, and you shall kill all its males with the edge of the sword.

Only the women and the little children and the domestic animals and all that shall be in the city, all of its spoil you may loot for yourselves, and you may enjoy the spoil of your enemies that Yahweh you God has given to you.

But from the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving to you as an inheritance, you shall not let anything live that breathes.

Rather, you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, just as Yahweh your God has commanded you,

so that they may not teach you to do like all their detestable things that they do for their gods and thereby you sin against Yahweh your God.

"If someone slain is found in the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you to take possession of it and is lying in the field, and it is not known who killed him,