Deuteronomy 4 – Verses from Deuteronomy 4 from the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible.

¹ And now, O Israel, listen to the decrees and laws that I am teaching you to fulfill, so that you may live and take possession of the land, which the Lord, the God of your ancestors, gives to you.

² Add nothing to the words that I command you and take nothing from them, but obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you.

³ You saw with your own eyes what the Lord did in Baal-peor. The Lord your God has destroyed from among you all who followed Baal-peor,

⁴ but you, who remained faithful to the Lord your God, are all alive today.

⁵ I have taught you decrees and laws, as the Lord my God commanded me, to be fulfilled in the land you are entering to take possession of.

⁶ You must obey and fulfill them, so other people will see your wisdom and discernment. When they hear all these decrees they will say: “Indeed this great nation is a wise and intelligent people.”

⁷ For what great nation has a God so near as the Lord our God, whenever we call upon Him?

⁸ Or, what great nation has decrees and precepts as righteous as this law that I am presenting to you today?

⁹ Just be careful! Be very careful, so that you never forget the things that your eyes have seen; keep them in your memory for the rest of your life. Tell them to your children and grandchildren.

¹⁰ There was a day when you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb, when the Lord said to me, “Gather the people before me to hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me as long as they live on the earth. , and teach them to your children.”

¹¹ You approached and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was burning with flames that rose to the sky, and was surrounded by a dark and dense cloud.

¹² Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the words, but you saw no form; only the voice could be heard.

¹³ He announced to them his covenant, the Ten Commandments. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and ordered them to do them.

¹⁴ On that occasion, the Lord told me to teach you decrees and laws so that you could fulfill them in the land you are going to take possession of.

¹⁵ On the day that the Lord spoke to you out of the fire in Horeb, you saw no form. So be very careful,

¹⁶ lest they corrupt themselves and make for themselves an idol, an image in any way resembling a man or a woman,

¹⁷ or any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the sky,

¹⁸ or to any creature that moves close to the ground or to any fish that lives in the waters beneath the earth.

¹⁹ And so that when you lift your eyes to heaven and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all the heavenly bodies, you do not turn aside and fall down before them, and worship what the Lord your God has distributed to you. all people under heaven.

²⁰ The Lord took you and brought you out of the iron smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as it is today.

²¹ The Lord was angry with me because of you and swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

²² I will die on this earth; I will not cross the Jordan. But you will cross over and take possession of that good land.

²³ Be careful not to forget the covenant that the Lord your God made with you; Do not make for yourself an idol in the shape of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden.

²⁴ For the Lord your God is a jealous God; It is a consuming fire.

²⁵ When you have children and grandchildren, and have been on earth for a long time, and you corrupt yourselves and make idols of any kind, doing what the Lord your God disapproves of, provoking his anger,

²⁶ I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will be quickly cut off from the land you are taking possession of by crossing the Jordan. You won't live there long; will be completely destroyed.

²⁷ The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and there will be only a few of you left among the nations to which the Lord will take you.

²⁸ There you will worship gods of wood and stone, gods made by human hands, gods who cannot see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

²⁹ And there they will seek the Lord their God, and they will find Him, if they seek Him with all their heart and with all their soul.

³⁰ When you are suffering and all these things have happened to you, then in future days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him.

³¹ For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon them, nor destroy them, nor forget the covenant he swore with his ancestors.

³² Ask, now, to the ancient times, before you existed, from the day that God created man on the earth. Ask from one side of the sky to the other: Has anything so great ever happened or been heard of anything like it?

³³ What people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you did, and are still alive?

³⁴ Or that God decided to take one nation from the midst of another to belong to him, with trials, signs, wonders and struggles, with a mighty hand and a strong arm, and with awesome and great deeds, according to all that the Lord did for you in Egypt, How did you see it with your own eyes?

³⁵ All this was shown to you so that you might know that the Lord is God; and that there is none other than him.

³⁶ From heaven he made you hear his voice, to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from the midst of the fire.

³⁷ And because he loved his ancestors and chose their descendants, he went in person to bring them out of Egypt with his great power,

³⁸ to drive out greater and stronger nations before you, to bring them in and inherit their land, as it is today.

³⁹ Recognize this today, and put it in your heart that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below. There is no other.

⁴⁰ Obey his decrees and commandments that I command you today, so that everything may go well with you and your descendants, and so that you may live a long time in the land that the Lord your God is giving you forever.

⁴¹ Then Moses separated three cities east of the Jordan,

⁴² where anyone who had killed someone without intention and without premeditation could flee. The persecuted person could flee to one of these cities in order to save his life.

⁴³ The cities were as follows: Bezer, in the desert plateau, for the tribe of Reuben; Ramoth in Gilead for the tribe of Gad; and Golan, in Bashan, for the tribe of Manasseh.

⁴⁴ This is the law that Moses presented to the Israelites.

⁴⁵ These are the commandments, decrees, and ordinances that Moses promulgated as laws for the Israelites when they left Egypt,

⁴⁶ on the other side of the Jordan, in the valley bordering Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, whom Moses and the Israelites defeated when they came out of Egypt.

⁴⁷ They took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two Amorite kings who lived east of the Jordan.

⁴⁸ This land extended from Aroer, on the bank of the river Arnon, to Mount Sihon, that is, Hermon,

⁴⁹ and it included all the region of the Arabah, east of the Jordan, as far as the Arabah Sea, below the slopes of Pisgah.