1 These are the statutes and judgments you shall be careful to do in the land the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days you live on the earth. 2 You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations you are dispossessing served their gods, on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. 3 Tear down their altars, break their pillars, burn their Asherah poles with fire, and cut down the carved images of their gods. Destroy their name from that place. 4 You shall not do so to the LORD your God. 5 Instead, seek his dwelling at the place the LORD your God will choose from all your tribes to put his name there, and go there. 6 There you shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the raised offering of your hand, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. 7 There you shall eat before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your households, in all you put your hand to, in which the LORD your God has blessed you. 8 You shall not do as we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, 9 for you have not yet come to the rest and the inheritance the LORD your God is giving you. 10 But you shall cross the Jordan and live in the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you, so that you live in safety. 11 Then to the place the LORD your God will choose to make his name dwell there, you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the raised offering of your hand, and all the choice vow offerings you vow to the LORD. 12 You shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you, your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, and the Levite within your gates, for he has no portion or inheritance with you. 13 Be careful not to offer your burnt offerings at any place you see, 14 but only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes. There you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you. 15 However, you may slaughter animals and eat meat within all your gates, as much as your soul desires, according to the blessing the LORD your God has given you. The unclean and the clean may eat it, as they would a gazelle or deer. 16 Only you shall not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water. 17 You may not eat within your gates the tithe of your grain, your new wine, or your oil, the firstborn of your herds or flocks, any of the vow offerings you vow, your freewill offerings, or the raised offering of your hand. 18 But you shall eat it before the LORD your God at the place the LORD your God will choose, you, your son and daughter, your male and female slave, and the Levite within your gates. Rejoice before the LORD your God in all you put your hand to. 19 Be careful not to forsake the Levite all your days on your land.

20 When the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he has told you, and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ because your soul desires to eat meat, you may eat meat as much as your soul desires. 21 If the place the LORD your God will choose to put his name there is too far from you, you may slaughter animals from your herds and flocks that the LORD has given you, as I have commanded you, and eat within your gates as much as your soul desires. 22 You shall eat it as a gazelle or deer is eaten; the unclean and the clean may eat it together. 23 Only be firm in not eating the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the meat. 24 You shall not eat it; pour it out on the ground like water. 25 You shall not eat it, so that it may go well with you and your children after you, because you do what is right in the eyes of the LORD. 26 But take the holy things you have and your vow offerings, and go to the place the LORD will choose. 27 Offer your burnt offerings, the meat and the blood, on the altar of the LORD your God. The blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the LORD your God, and you shall eat the meat. 28 Keep and listen to all these words that I command you, so that it may go well with you and your children after you forever, because you do what is good and right in the eyes of the LORD your God.

29 When the LORD your God cuts off from before you the nations you are entering to dispossess, and you dispossess them and live in their land, 30 be careful not to be ensnared into following them after they have been destroyed from before you. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I will do the same.’ 31 You shall not do so to the LORD your God, for they have done for their gods every abomination the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. 32 Be careful to do everything that I command you. You shall not add to it or take away from it.