Study Desk

"When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord . And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

You shall be blameless before the Lord your God,

for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

"The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—

just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.'

"When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses,

you shall set apart three cities for yourselves in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

You shall measure the distances and divide into three parts the area of the land that the Lord your God gives you as a possession, so that any manslayer can flee to them.

And if the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers—

provided you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I command you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways—then you shall add three other cities to these three,

lest innocent blood be shed in your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.

"You shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

"When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

for the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.'

And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword,

but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you.

But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes,

but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded,

that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God.