Study Desk

When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.

For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord ; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

You must remain completely loyal to the Lord your God.

Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the Lord your God does not permit you to do so.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.

This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: "If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die."

When the Lord your God has cut off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and in their houses,

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

You shall calculate the distances and divide into three regions the land that the Lord your God gives you as a possession, so that any homicide can flee to one of them.

If the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your ancestors—and he will give you all the land that he promised your ancestors to give you,

provided you diligently observe this entire commandment that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God and walking always in his ways—then you shall add three more cities to these three,

so that the blood of an innocent person may not be shed in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.

You must not move your neighbor's boundary marker, set up by former generations, on the property that will be allotted to you 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, 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 from the land of Egypt.

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

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

You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you.

But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.

You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded,

so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord your God.