Study Desk

Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you.

You must be blameless before the Lord your God.

Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—from your fellow Israelites; you must listen to him.

This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the Lord your God: "Please do not make us hear the voice of the Lord our God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die."

When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,

you must set apart for yourselves three cities in the middle of your land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession.

You shall build a roadway and divide into thirds the whole extent of your land that the Lord your God is providing as your inheritance; anyone who kills another person should flee to the closest of these cities.

If the Lord your God enlarges your borders as he promised your ancestors and gives you all the land he pledged to them,

and then you are careful to observe all these commandments I am giving you today (namely, to love the Lord your God and to always walk in his ways), then you must add three more cities to these three.

You must not shed innocent blood in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty.

You must not encroach on your neighbor's property, which will have been defined in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

When you go to war against your enemies and see chariotry and troops who outnumber you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, is with you.

for the Lord your God goes with you to fight on your behalf against your enemies to give you victory."

The Lord your God will deliver it over to you and you must kill every single male by the sword.

However, the women, little children, cattle, and anything else in the city—all its plunder—you may take for yourselves as spoil. You may take from your enemies the plunder that the Lord your God has given you.

As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive.

Instead you must utterly annihilate them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded you,

so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God.

If a homicide victim should be found lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you, and no one knows who killed him,