for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will erupt against you and he will quickly destroy you.

Remember – don’t ever forget ¹  – how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him. ² 

When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God and had cast for yourselves a metal calf; ¹  you had quickly turned aside from the way he ²  had commanded you!

And when he ¹  sent you from Kadesh-Barnea and told you, “Go up and possess the land I have given you,” you rebelled against the Lord your God ²  and would neither believe nor obey him.

A single witness may not testify ¹  against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established ²  only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

When you go to war against your enemies and see chariotry ¹  and troops ²  who outnumber you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, is with you.

However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, ¹  and you may use it to build siege works ²  against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.

You must pay his wage that very day before the sun sets, for he is poor and his life depends on it. Otherwise he will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

If two men ¹  get into a hand-to-hand fight, and the wife of one of them gets involved to help her husband against his attacker, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, ² 

instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty ¹  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ²  will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you.

The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth ¹  as the eagle flies, ²  a nation whose language you will not understand,

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,

The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger ¹  will rage ²  against that man; all the curses ³  written in this scroll will fall upon him ⁴  and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. ⁵ 

Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!

Now write down for yourselves the following song and teach it to the Israelites. Put it into their very mouths so that this song may serve as my witness against the Israelites!

“Take this scroll of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. It will remain there as a witness against you,

for I know about your rebellion and stubbornness. ¹  Indeed, even while I have been living among you to this very day, you have rebelled against the Lord; you will be even more rebellious after my death! ² 

Gather to me all your tribal elders and officials so I can speak to them directly about these things and call the heavens and the earth to witness against them.

They will be starved by famine, eaten by plague, and bitterly stung; ¹  I will send the teeth of wild animals against them, along with the poison of creatures that crawl in the dust.

Cry out, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge his servants’ blood; he will take vengeance against his enemies, and make atonement for his land and people.