So be sure to do them, because this will testify of your wise understanding ¹  to the people who will learn of all these statutes and say, “Indeed, this great nation is a very wise ²  people.”

But the Lord became angry with me because of you and vowed that I would never cross the Jordan nor enter the good land that he ¹  is about to give you. ² 

(I was standing between the Lord and you at that time to reveal to you the message ¹  of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and would not go up the mountain.) He said:

It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you – for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples.

Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn ¹  people!

Then I again fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights; I ate and drank nothing because of all the sin you had committed, doing such evil before the Lord as to enrage him.

You must stone him to death ¹  because he tried to entice you away from the Lord your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.

You must by all means lend ¹  to him and not be upset by doing it, ²  for because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you attempt.

The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives.

If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive ¹  in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house.

“The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you ¹  in everything you undertake ²  until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. ³ 

All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given ¹  you.

You will then eat your own offspring, ¹  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ²  by which your enemies will constrict you.

He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict ¹  you in your villages.

Likewise, the most ¹  tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, ²  will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters,

and will secretly eat her afterbirth ¹  and her newborn children ²  (since she has nothing else), ³  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, ¹  because you will have disobeyed ²  the Lord your God.

In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see.

Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

So now, promise me this with an oath sworn in the Lord’s name. ¹  Because I have shown allegiance to you, show allegiance to my family. ²  Give me a solemn pledge ³