Study Desk

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

"You are to be blameless before the LORD your God.

"For these nations, which you are going to dispossess, listen to soothsayers and 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; to him you shall listen.

"This is in accordance with everything that you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, 'Do not let me hear the voice of the LORD my God again, and do not let me see this great fire anymore, or I will die!'

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

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

"You shall prepare the roads for yourself, and divide into three regions the territory of your land which the LORD your God will give you as an inheritance, so that anyone who commits manslaughter may flee there.

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

if you carefully follow all of this commandment which I am commanding 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 is giving you as an inheritance, and guilt for bloodshed will not be on you.

"You shall not displace your neighbor's boundary marker, which the ancestors have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.

"When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses, 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 is going 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.

"However, the women, the children, the animals, and everything that is in the city, all of its spoils, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall use the spoils 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 anything that breathes alive.

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

so that they will not teach you to do all the same detestable practices of theirs which they have done for their gods, by which you would sin against the LORD your God.

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