Study Desk

"For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD; and because of these detestable things the LORD your God will drive them out before you.

"You shall be blameless before the LORD your God.

"For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do so.

"The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.

"This is according to all that you asked of the LORD your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, 'Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.'

"When the LORD your God cuts off the nations, whose land the LORD your God gives you, and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and in their houses,

you shall set aside three cities for yourself in the midst of your land, which the LORD your God gives you to possess.

"You shall prepare the roads for yourself, and divide into three parts the territory of your land which the LORD your God will give you as a possession, so that any manslayer may flee there.

"If the LORD your God enlarges your territory, just as He has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which He promised to give your fathers—

if you carefully observe all this commandment which I command you today, to love the LORD your God, and to walk in His ways always—then you shall add three more cities for yourself, besides these three.

"So innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, and bloodguiltiness be on you.

"You shall not move your neighbor's boundary mark, which the ancestors have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that the LORD your God gives you to possess.

"When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you.

for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.'

"When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.

"Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.

"Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.

"But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,

so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God.

"If a slain person is found lying in the open country in the land which the LORD your God gives you to possess, and it is not known who has struck him,