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.
22. I myself shall die in this country; I shall not cross the Jordan; but you are going to cross over and take possession of that good land.
23. Be careful, therefore, lest you forget the covenant which the Lord, your God, has made with you, and fashion for yourselves against his command an idol in any form whatsoever.
24. For the Lord, your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
25. When you have children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, should you then act corruptly by fashioning an idol in the form of anything, and by this evil done in his sight provoke the Lord, your God,
26. I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you, that you shall all quickly perish from the land which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You shall not live in it for any length of time but shall be utterly wiped out.
27. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and there shall remain but a handful of you among the nations to which the Lord will drive you.
28. There you shall serve gods that are works of human hands, of wood and stone, gods which can neither see nor hear, neither eat nor smell.