New International Version

Deuteronomy 4:28-43 New International Version (NIV)

28. There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.

29. But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.

30. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him.

31. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.

32. Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?

33. Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?

34. Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

35. You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other.

36. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.

37. Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength,

38. to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

39. Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.

40. Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.

41. Then Moses set aside three cities east of the Jordan,

42. to which anyone who had killed a person could flee if they had unintentionally killed a neighbor without malice aforethought. They could flee into one of these cities and save their life.

43. The cities were these: Bezer in the wilderness plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead, for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan, for the Manassites.