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6
1 These are the commandments and rules and regulations that the Lord your God has ordered me to teach you to follow in the country that you're going to enter and occupy. 2 This is so you and your children and grandchildren will show respect to the Lord your God throughout your lives by keeping all his rules and regulations that I give you, and so that you may have a long life.
3 Listen, people of Israel, and be careful to observe them, so that you may do well and have many descendants in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your forefathers, promised you. 4 Listen, people of Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is the only one.*“Is the only one”: or “is one.” 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind and with all your being and with all your strength. 6 The commands I'm giving you today must stay in your minds. 7 You are to explain them carefully to your children and talk about them when you're at home and when you're traveling, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them on your hands as reminders and put them on your foreheads as well. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your homes and on your gates.
10 The Lord your God is going to take you into the country he promised to give you and your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's a country with large, prosperous towns that you didn't build, 11 with houses full of plenty of good things that you didn't provide, that have wells you didn't dig, and vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant. When you eat and are full 12 make sure you don't forget the Lord who led you out of Egypt, out of the prison-house of slavery.
13 Respect the Lord your God. Worship only him, and make promises only in his name. 14 Don't worship any other gods, the gods of the peoples around you, 15 because the Lord your God, who lives among you, is an exclusive God, and the Lord your God will become angry with you, and he will wipe you out. 16 Don't test the Lord your God like you did at Massah.†See Exodus 17:7. 17 You must be careful to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and the laws and rules he's given you.
18 Do what's good and right in the Lord's sight so that it will go well for you and that you may enter and take over the good land that the Lord your God promised to give your forefathers. 19 He will drive out all your enemies ahead of you, just as he said.
20 In the future, when your children come and ask you, “What's the point of decrees and rules and regulations that the Lord our God ordered you to follow?” 21 then you are to tell them, “Once we were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord by his power led us out of Egypt. 22 Before our very eyes the Lord brought down incredible and terrifying signs and miracles on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on all his people. 23 But he led us out of there to take us here, giving us this country that he had promised to our forefathers. 24 The Lord ordered us to keep all these laws and to respect the Lord our God, so that we would always be safe and well, as we are today 25 And if we carefully observe each of these commandments as we live in the presence of the Lord, as he instructed us, then we will be right with him.”

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*6:4 “Is the only one”: or “is one.”

†6:16 See Exodus 17:7.

© 2018 Dr. Jonathan Gallagher