26. I call to witness against you today the heaven and the earth, that you will perish soon and completely from the land that you are crossing the Jordan into it to take possession of it; you will not live long on it, but you will be completely destroyed.
27. And Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations to where Yahweh will lead you.
28. And you will there serve gods made by human hands, of wood and stone, gods that cannot see and cannot hear and cannot eat and cannot smell.
29. But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God and will find him, if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.
30. In your distress when all these things have found you in the latter days, then you will return to Yahweh your God, and you will listen to his voice.
31. For Yahweh your God is a compassionate God; he will not abandon you, and he will not destroy you, and he will not forget the covenant of your ancestors that he swore to them.
32. “Yes, ask, please, about former days that preceded you from the day that God created humankind on the earth; ask even from one end of the heaven up to the other end of heaven whether anything ever happened like this great thing or whether anything like it was ever heard.
33. Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, just as you heard it, and lived?
34. Or has a god ever attempted to go to take for himself a nation from the midst of a nation, using trials and signs and wonders and war, with an outstretched arm and with great and awesome deeds, like all that Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
35. You yourselves were shown this wonder in order for you to acknowledge that Yahweh is the God; there is no other God besides him.
36. From heaven he made you hear his voice to teach you, and on the earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from the midst of the fire.
37. And because he loved your ancestors he chose their descendants after them. And he brought you forth from Egypt with his own presence, by his great strength,
38. to drive out nations greater and more numerous than you from before you, to bring you and to give to you their land as an inheritance, as it is this day.
39. So you shall acknowledge today, and you must call to mind that Yahweh is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no other God.
40. And you shall keep his rules and his commandments that I am commanding you today, so that it may go well for you and for your children after you, and so that you may remain a long time on the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you during all of those days.”
41. Then Moses set apart three cities on the other side of the Jordan, toward the east,
42. in order for a manslayer to flee there who has killed his neighbor without intent and was not hating him previously, and so he could flee to one of these cities and be safe.
43. He set apart Bezer in the wilderness in the land of the plateau of the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead of the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan of the Manassites.
44. Now this is the law that Moses set before the Israelites;