1. Soon you will enter and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you as your property. When you have settled there,
2. take some of the first produce harvested from the fields in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and put it in a basket. Then go to the place where the Lord your God will choose for his name to live.
3. Go to the priest who is serving at that time, and tell him, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land that the Lord is giving us, as he swore to our ancestors.”
4. Then the priest will take the basket from you and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God.
5. You will make this formal statement in the presence of the Lord your God: “My ancestors were wandering Arameans. There were only a few of them when they went to Egypt and lived as foreigners. But then they became a great, powerful, and large nation.
6. So the Egyptians treated us cruelly, oppressed us, and made us do back-breaking work for them.
7. We cried out to the Lord God of our ancestors, and he heard us. He saw our misery, suffering, and oppression.