Catholic Public Domain Version

Deuteronomy 12:3-20 Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV)

3. Scatter their altars and break their statues. Burn their sacred groves with fire and crush their idols. Abolish their names from those places.

4. But you shall not do the same to the Lord your God.

5. Instead, you shall approach the place which the Lord your God will choose among all your tribes, so that he may set his name there, and may dwell in that place.

6. And you shall offer, in that place, your holocausts and victims, the tithes and first-fruits of your hands, and your vows and gifts, the firstborn of the cattle and of the sheep.

7. And you shall eat it there, in the sight of the Lord your God. And you shall rejoice in all the things to which you shall set your hand: you and your household, which the Lord your God has blessed for you.

8. You shall not do there the things that we are doing here today: each one doing what seems good to himself.

9. For even until the present time, you did not arrive at the rest and the possession, which the Lord your God will give to you.

10. You shall cross over the Jordan, and you shall live in the land which the Lord your God will give to you, so that you may have rest from all the surrounding enemies, and so that you may live without any fear,

11. in the place which the Lord your God will choose, so that his name may be in it. To that place, you shall bring all the things that I instruct you: holocausts, and victims, and tithes, and the first-fruits of your hands, and whatever is best among the gifts that you shall vow to the Lord.

12. In that place, you shall feast before the Lord your God: you, and your sons and daughters, your men and women servants, as well as the Levite who dwells in your cities. For he has no other portion or possession among you.

13. Take care that you do not offer your holocausts in any place that you see.

14. Instead, you shall offer sacrifices in the place which the Lord will choose within one of your tribes, and you shall do whatsoever I instruct you.

15. So, if you wish to eat, and if the eating of flesh pleases you, then kill and eat according to the blessing of the Lord your God, which he has given to you, in your cities: you may eat it whether it is unclean, that is, having blemish or defect, or whether it is clean, that is, whole and without blemish, of the kind which is permitted to be offered, such as the roe deer and the stag.

16. Only the blood you shall not eat. Instead, you shall pour it upon the ground like water.

17. You may not eat in your towns the tithes of your crops, and your wine and oil, the firstborn of your herds and your flocks, nor anything which you will vow, or which you will offer spontaneously, nor the first-fruits of your hands.

18. But you shall eat these before the Lord your God, in the place which the Lord your God will choose: you, and your son, and your daughter, and your man servant and woman servant, and the Levite who dwells in your cities. And you shall rejoice and be refreshed in the sight of the Lord your God by all the things to which you will extend your hand.

19. Be careful, lest you abandon the Levite, at anytime while you are living in the land.

20. When the Lord your God will have enlarged your borders, just as he has spoken to you, and when you would eat the flesh that your soul desires,