25. “When you have children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, and if you act corruptly, make an idol in the form of anything, and do what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, provoking Him to anger,
26. I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will quickly perish from the land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not live long there, but you will certainly be destroyed.
27. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be reduced to a few survivors among the nations where the Lord your God will drive you.
28. There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see, hear, eat, or smell.
29. But from there, you will search for the Lord your God, and you will find Him when you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul.
30. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, you will return to the Lord your God in later days and obey Him.
31. He will not leave you, destroy you, or forget the covenant with your fathers that He swore to them by oath, because the Lord your God is a compassionate God.
32. “Indeed, ask about the earlier days that preceded you, from the day God created man on the earth and from one end of the heavens to the other: Has anything like this great event ever happened, or has anything like it been heard of?
33. Has a people heard God’s voice speaking from the fire as you have, and lived?
34. Or has a god attempted to go and take a nation as his own out of another nation, by trials, signs, wonders, and war, by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, by great terrors, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
35. You were shown these things so that you would know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides Him.
36. He let you hear His voice from heaven to instruct you. He showed you His great fire on earth, and you heard His words from the fire.
37. Because He loved your fathers, He chose their descendants after them and brought you out of Egypt by His presence and great power,
38. to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you in and give you their land as an inheritance, as is now taking place.
39. Today, recognize and keep in mind that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other.
40. Keep His statutes and commands, which I am giving you today, so that you and your children after you may prosper and so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you for all time.”
41. Then Moses set apart three cities across the Jordan to the east.
42. Someone could flee there who committed manslaughter, killing his neighbor accidentally without previously hating him. He could flee to one of these cities and stay alive:
43. Bezer in the wilderness on the plateau land, belonging to the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead, belonging to the Gadites; or Golan in Bashan, belonging to the Manassites.
44. This is the law Moses gave the Israelites.