1. “These are the statutes and ordinances that you are to make sure to do in the land that Adonai, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess—all the days that you live on the earth.
2. You must utterly destroy all the places where the nations that you will dispossess served their gods—on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.
3. You are to tear down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their Asherah poles in the fire and cut down the carved images of their gods, and you are to obliterate their name from that place.
4. “You are not to act like this toward Adonai your God.
5. Rather you are to seek only the place Adonai your God chooses from all your tribes to put His Name to dwell—there you will come.
6. There you are to bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, the offering of your hand, your vow and freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock.
7. There you and your households will eat before Adonai your God and rejoice in every undertaking of your hand, as Adonai your God has blessed you.
8. You will not do all the things as we are doing here today—everyone doing what is right in his own eyes.
9. For you have not yet come to the resting place and the inheritance that Adonai your God is giving you.
10. But when you cross over the Jordan and settle in the land that Adonai your God enables you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies around you, you will dwell in safety.
11. “Then the place Adonai your God chooses to make His Name dwell, there you are to bring all that I command you—your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, the offering of your hand, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to Adonai.