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Pagan Shrines to Be Destroyed12 These are the statutes and ordinances that you must diligently observe in the land that the L ord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to occupy all the days that you live on the earth. 2 You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. 3Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places. 4You shall not worship the L ord your God in such ways. 5But you shall seek the place that the L ord your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there. You shall go there, 6bringing there your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and your donations, your votive gifts, your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and flocks. 7And you shall eat there in the presence of the L ord your God, you and your households together, rejoicing in all the undertakings in which the L ord your God has blessed you. 8 You shall not act as we are acting here today, all of us according to our own desires, 9for you have not yet come into the rest and the possession that the L ord your God is giving you. 10When you cross over the Jordan and live in the land that the L ord your God is allotting to you, and when he gives you rest from your enemies all around so that you live in safety, 11then you shall bring everything that I command you to the place that the L ord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and your donations, and all your choice votive gifts that you vow to the L ord. 12And you shall rejoice before the L ord your God, you together with your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, and the Levites who reside in your towns (since they have no allotment or inheritance with you). A Prescribed Place of Worship13 Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place you happen to see. 14But only at the place that the L ord will choose in one of your tribes—there you shall offer your burnt offerings and there you shall do everything I command you. 15 Yet whenever you desire you may slaughter and eat meat within any of your towns, according to the blessing that the L ord your God has given you; the unclean and the clean may eat of it, as they would of gazelle or deer. 16The blood, however, you must not eat; you shall pour it out on the ground like water. 17Nor may you eat within your towns the tithe of your grain, your wine, and your oil, the firstlings of your herds and your flocks, any of your votive gifts that you vow, your freewill offerings, or your donations; 18these you shall eat in the presence of the L ord your God at the place that the L ord your God will choose, you together with your son and your daughter, your male and female slaves, and the Levites resident in your towns, rejoicing in the presence of the L ord your God in all your undertakings. 19Take care that you do not neglect the Levite as long as you live in your land. 20 When the L ord your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you, and you say, “I am going to eat some meat,” because you wish to eat meat, you may eat meat whenever you have the desire. 21If the place where the L ord your God will choose to put his name is too far from you, and you slaughter as I have commanded you any of your herd or flock that the L ord has given you, then you may eat within your towns whenever you desire. 22Indeed, just as gazelle or deer is eaten, so you may eat it; the unclean and the clean alike may eat it. 23Only be sure that you do not eat the blood; for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the meat. 24Do not eat it; you shall pour it out on the ground like water. 25Do not eat it, so that all may go well with you and your children after you, because you do what is right in the sight of the L ord. 26But the sacred donations that are due from you, and your votive gifts, you shall bring to the place that the L ord will choose. 27You shall present your burnt offerings, both the meat and the blood, on the altar of the L ord your God; the blood of your other sacrifices shall be poured out beside the altar of the L ord your God, but the meat you may eat. 28 Be careful to obey all these words that I command you today, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever, because you will be doing what is good and right in the sight of the L ord your God.
Warning against Idolatry29 When the L ord your God has cut off before you the nations whom you are about to enter to dispossess them, when you have dispossessed them and live in their land, 30take care that you are not snared into imitating them, after they have been destroyed before you: do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, “How did these nations worship their gods? I also want to do the same.” 31You must not do the same for the L ord your God, because every abhorrent thing that the L ord hates they have done for their gods. They would even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. 32You must diligently observe everything that I command you; do not add to it or take anything from it. New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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7 And there shall ye eat. We see that the sanctuary in which God manifested Himself is called His face; 105105 לפני, Heb.; in conspectu, Lat; before, A.V for, although believers are taught that always, wherever they dwell, they walk before God; yet they placed themselves nearer, and in some special manner in His sight, when they approached His sanctuary. By this mode of speaking God also stimulates the laziness or tardiness of the people, lest it should be irksome to them to come to the Ark of the Covenant for the purpose of sacrificing, inasmuch as this inestimable benefit would compensate for the labor and expense of the journey. I have elsewhere shewn that, when men are said to feast before the Lord, sacred feasts are thus distinguished from our daily meals. For this was as it were an accessory to the sacrifices, to eat what remained of the victims; and in this way the guests were made partakers of the offering, which custom even heathen nations imitated, though improperly. Again, God kindly invites them when He says, “ye shall rejoice in all that thou puttest thine hands unto,” for which some translate it, “in everything to which you shall have sent your hand;” literally it is, “in the sending forth of the land.” There is no ambiguity in the sense, for it refers to those works which require the motion and application of the hands. A little below, where I have translated it, “which he hath blessed,” (quibus benedixerit,) some insert the proposition in, and supply the pronoun you, (i.e., in which he hath blessed you;) but it is quite appropriate to say, that God blesses their works, although it may be understood of their families also. As to the command that the tithes should be eaten in the holy place, I do not extend it to tithes in general, 106106 “Ne s’estend pas en general a la nourriture des Levites;” does not extend generally to the maintenance of the Levites. — Fr. for it was hardly probable that the food of those who were dispersed through various cities should be transferred to another place, so that they would perish (at home) 107107 Added from Fr. from hunger; but I understand it of the second tithes, which the Levites separated to be a special and peculiar oblation; for we shall see elsewhere that what remained over passed into the nature of ordinary produce, as if the Levites ate of the fruits of their own possessions. |