¹ If ever you have among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and he gives you a sign or a wonder,

² And the sign or the wonder takes place, and he says to you, Let us go after other gods, which are strange to you, and give them worship;

³ Then give no attention to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God is testing you, to see if all the love of your heart and soul is given to him.

⁴ But keep on in the ways of the Lord your God, fearing him and keeping his orders and hearing his voice, worshipping him and being true to him.

⁵ And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams is to be put to death; for his words were said with the purpose of turning you away from the Lord your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt and made you free from the prison-house; and of forcing you out of the way in which the Lord your God has given you orders to go. So you are to put away the evil from among you.

⁶ If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife of your heart, or the friend who is as dear to you as your life, working on you secretly says to you, Let us go and give worship to other gods, strange to you and to your fathers;

⁷ Gods of the peoples round about you, near or far, from one end of the earth to the other;

⁸ Do not be guided by him or give attention to him; have no pity on him or mercy, and give him no cover;

⁹ But put him to death without question; let your hand be the first stretched out against him to put him to death, and then the hands of all the people.

¹⁰ Let him be stoned with stones till he is dead; because it was his purpose to make you false to the Lord your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house.

¹¹ And all Israel, hearing of it, will be full of fear, and no one will again do such evil as this among you.

¹² And if word comes to you, in one of the towns which the Lord your God is giving you for your resting-place,

¹³ That good-for-nothing persons have gone out from among you, turning the people of their town from the right way and saying, Let us go and give worship to other gods, of whom you have no knowledge;

¹⁴ Then let a full search be made, and let questions be put with care; and if it is true and certain that such a disgusting thing has been done among you;

¹⁵ Then take up arms against the people of that town and give it up to the curse, with all its cattle and everything in it.

¹⁶ And take all the goods into the middle of its open space, burning the town and all its property with fire as an offering to the Lord your God; it is to be a waste for ever; there is to be no more building there.

¹⁷ Keep not a thing of what is cursed for yourselves: so the Lord may be turned away from the heat of his wrath, and have mercy on you, and give you increase as he said in his oath to your fathers:

¹⁸ So long as you give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, and keep all his orders which I give you today, and do what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God.

¹ When the Lord your God takes you into the land where you are going, which is to be your heritage, and has sent out the nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you;

² And when the Lord has given them up into your hands and you have overcome them, give them up to complete destruction: make no agreement with them, and have no mercy on them:

³ Do not take wives or husbands from among them; do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons.

⁴ For through them your sons will be turned from me to the worship of other gods: and the Lord will be moved to wrath against you and send destruction on you quickly.

⁵ But this is what you are to do to them: their altars are to be pulled down and their pillars broken, and their holy trees cut down and their images burned with fire.

⁶ For you are a holy people to the Lord your God: marked out by the Lord your God to be his special people out of all the nations on the face of the earth.

⁷ The Lord did not give you his love or take you for himself because you were more in number than any other people; for you were the smallest of the nations:

⁸ But because of his love for you, and in order to keep his oath to your fathers, the Lord took you out with the strength of his hand, making you free from the prison-house and from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

⁹ Be certain, then, that the Lord your God is God; whose faith and mercy are unchanging, who keeps his word through a thousand generations to those who have love for him and keep his laws;

¹⁰ Rewarding his haters to their face with destruction; he will have no mercy on his hater, but will give him open punishment.

¹¹ So keep the orders and the laws and the decisions which I give you today and do them.

¹² And it will be, that if you give attention to these decisions and keep and do them, then the Lord will keep his agreement with you and his mercy, as he said in his oath to your fathers.

¹³ And he will give you his love, blessing you and increasing you: he will send his blessing on the offspring of your body and the fruit of your land, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which by his oath to your fathers he undertook to give you.

¹⁴ You will have greater blessings than any other people: no male or female among you or among your cattle will be without offspring.

¹⁵ And the Lord will take away from you all disease, and will not put on you any of the evil diseases of Egypt which you have seen, but will put them on your haters.

¹⁶ And you are to send destruction on all the peoples which the Lord your God gives into your hands; have no pity on them, and do not give worship to their gods; for that will be a cause of sin to you.

¹⁷ If you say in your hearts, These nations are greater in number than we are: how are we to take their land from them?

¹⁸ Have no fear of them, but keep well in mind what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt;

¹⁹ The great punishments which your eyes saw, and the signs and the wonders and the strong hand and the stretched-out arm, by which the Lord your God took you out: so will the Lord your God do to all the peoples who are the cause of your fears.

²⁰ And the Lord will send a hornet among them, till all the rest who have kept themselves safe from you in secret places have been cut off.

²¹ Have no fear of them: for the Lord your God is with you, a great God greatly to be feared.

²² The Lord your God will send out the nations before you little by little; they are not to be rooted out quickly, for fear that the beasts of the field may be increased overmuch against you.

²³ But the Lord your God will give them up into your hands, overpowering them till their destruction is complete.

²⁴ He will give their kings into your hands, and you will put their names out of existence under heaven; there is not one of them who will not give way before you, till their destruction is complete.

²⁵ The images of their gods are to be burned with fire: have no desire for the gold and silver on them, and do not take it for yourselves, for it will be a danger to you: it is a thing disgusting to the Lord your God:

²⁶ And you may not take a disgusting thing into your house, and so become cursed with its curse: but keep yourselves from it, turning from it with fear and hate, for it is a cursed thing.