“These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do
in the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you
to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. You shall
surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall
dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the
hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars
and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire.
You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy
their name out of that place. You shall not worship the LORD your
God in that way. But you shall seek the place that the LORD your
God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his
habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring
your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the
contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill
offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. And
there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall
rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in
which the LORD your God has blessed you.
“You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today,
everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, for you have not
as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the LORD your
God is giving you. But when you go over the Jordan and live in the
land that the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, and when he
gives you rest from all your enemies around, so that you live in
safety, then to the place that the LORD your God will choose, to
make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command
you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the
contribution that you present, and all your finest vow offerings
that you vow to the LORD. And you shall rejoice before the LORD
your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants
and your female servants, and the Levite that is within your towns,
since he has no portion or inheritance with you. Take care that you
do not offer your burnt offerings at any place that you see, but at
the place that the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, there
you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all
that I am commanding you.
“However, you may slaughter and eat meat within any of your
towns, as much as you desire, according to the blessing of the LORD
your God that he has given you. The unclean and the clean may eat
of it, as of the gazelle and as of the deer. Only you shall not eat
the blood; you shall pour it out on the earth like water. You may
not eat within your towns the tithe of your grain or of your wine
or of your oil, or the firstborn of your herd or of your flock, or
any of your vow offerings that you vow, or your freewill offerings
or the contribution that you present, but you shall eat them before
the LORD your God in the place that the LORD your God will choose,
you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your
female servant, and the Levite who is within your towns. And you
shall rejoice before the LORD your God in all that you undertake.
Take care that you do not neglect the Levite as long as you live in
your land.
“When the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he has
promised you, and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ because you crave
meat, you may eat meat whenever you desire. If the place that the
LORD your God will choose to put his name there is too far from
you, then you may kill any of your herd or your flock, which the
LORD has given you, as I have commanded you, and you may eat within
your towns whenever you desire. Just as the gazelle or the deer is
eaten, so you may eat of it. The unclean and the clean alike may
eat of it. Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the
blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.
You shall not eat it; you shall pour it out on the earth like
water. You shall not eat it, that all may go well with you and with
your children after you, when you do what is right in the sight of
the LORD. But the holy things that are due from you, and your vow
offerings, you shall take, and you shall go to the place that the
LORD will choose, and offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the
blood, on the altar of the LORD your God. The blood of your
sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the LORD your God,
but the flesh you may eat. Be careful to obey all these words that
I command you, that it may go well with you and with your children
after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight
of the LORD your God.
“When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations whom you
go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their
land, take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they
have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about
their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I
also may do the same.’ You shall not worship the LORD your God in
that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have
done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their
daughters in the fire to their gods.
“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You
shall not add to it or take from it.
