1. These are the regulations and the case laws that you must carefully keep in the fertile land the Lord, your ancestors’ God, has given to you to possess for as long as you live on that land:
2. You must completely destroy every place where the nations that you are displacing worshipped their gods—whether on high mountains or hills or under leafy green trees.
3. Rip down their altars and shatter their sacred stones. Burn their sacred poles with fire. Hack their gods’ idols into pieces. Wipe out their names from that place.
4. Don’t act like they did toward the Lord your God!
5. Instead, you must search for the location the Lord your God will select from all your tribes to put his name there, as his residence, and you must go there.
6. You must bring your entirely burned offerings, your sacrifices, your tenth-part gifts, your contributions, your payments for solemn promises, your spontaneous gifts, and the oldest offspring of your herds and flocks to that place.
7. You will have a feast there, each of you and your families, in the Lord your God’s presence, and you will celebrate all you have done because the Lord your God has blessed you.
8. Don’t act like we’ve been acting here lately—everyone doing what seems right to them—
9. because up to this point you haven’t yet reached the place of rest or the inheritance the Lord your God is giving you.
10. But you are about to cross the Jordan River and will settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance. Then he will give you rest from all your enemies on every side so that you live safely and securely.
11. At that point, you must bring all that I am commanding you, your entirely burned offerings, your sacrifices, your tenth-part gifts, your contributions, and all your best payments that you solemnly promised to the Lord, to the location the Lord your God selects for his name to reside.
12. Then you will rejoice in the Lord your God’s presence: each of you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites who dwell in your cities because they have no designated inheritance.