6. Observe them carefully, for this is your wisdom and discernment in the sight of the peoples, who will hear of all these statutes and say, “This great nation is truly a wise and discerning people.”
7. For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?
8. Or what great nation has statutes and ordinances that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?
9. However, be on your guard and be very careful not to forget the things your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart as long as you live, but make them known to your children and to your children’s children,
10. that day you stood before the Lord, your God, at Horeb, when the Lord said to me: Assemble the people for me, that I may let them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me as long as they live in the land and may so teach their children.
11. You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain blazed to the heart of the heavens with fire and was enveloped in a dense black cloud.
12. Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words, but saw no form; there was only a voice.
13. He proclaimed to you his covenant, which he commanded you to keep: the ten words, which he wrote on two stone tablets.
14. At that time the Lord charged me to teach you the statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land you are about to cross into and possess.
15. Because you saw no form at all on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, be strictly on your guard
16. not to act corruptly by fashioning an idol for yourselves to represent any figure, whether it be the form of a man or of a woman,
17. the form of any animal on the earth, the form of any bird that flies in the sky,
18. the form of anything that crawls on the ground, or the form of any fish in the waters under the earth.
19. And when you look up to the heavens and behold the sun or the moon or the stars, the whole heavenly host, do not be led astray into bowing down to them and serving them. These the Lord, your God, has apportioned to all the other nations under the heavens;
20. but you the Lord has taken and led out of that iron foundry, Egypt, that you might be his people, his heritage, as you are today.
21. But the Lord was angry with me on your account and swore that I should not cross the Jordan nor enter the good land which the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage.