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13
Moses warned them against idolatry
1 “Possibly there will be people among you who say that they are prophets. They may say that they are able to interpret the meaning of dreams or perform various kinds of miracles [DOU]. 2 They will say those things in order to induce/persuade you to worship gods that you have never known about before. But even if what they predict happens, 3 do not pay attention to what they say. Yahweh our God will be testing you to find out if you love him with all your inner being. 4 You must conduct your lives as Yahweh our God wants you to, and you must revere him, and do what he tells you to do [MTY], and worship only him, and ◄be faithful to/have a close relationship with► him.
5 “But you must execute anyone who falsely says that he is a prophet, or someone who falsely says that he can interpret dreams, or who tells you to rebel against Yahweh our God, who rescued your ancestors from being slaves in Egypt. People like that are only wanting to cause you to stop conducting your lives as Yahweh has commanded you to do. Execute them, to get rid of this evil among you. 6 It does not matter if even your brother or your daughter or your wife or some close/dear friend secretly urges you, saying ‘Let’s worship other gods. They are gods which you or your ancestors have never known about. 7 Some of them may encourage you to worship gods that people-groups that live near you worship, or gods that groups who live far away worship. 8 Do not [SYN] do what they suggest. Do not even listen to them. Do not even be merciful to them, and do not keep secret what they have done. 9 Execute them! You who are their relative must be the first one to throw stones at them to kill them, and then let everyone else [MTY] throw stones at them, too. 10 Kill such people by throwing stones at them, because they are trying to cause you to stop worshiping Yahweh our God, who rescued your ancestors from being slaves in Egypt. 11 When they are executed, all the Israeli people will hear what happened, and they will become afraid, and none of them will do such an evil thing again.
12 “When you are living in one of the towns in the land that Yahweh our God is giving to you, you may hear 13 that some worthless people there among you [IDM] are deceiving the people of their town, saying, ‘Let’s go and worship other gods,’ but they are gods that you have never heard about before. 14 Investigate it thoroughly/carefully. If you find out that it is true that such a disgraceful thing has happened, 15 kill all the people in that town. And kill all their livestock, too. Destroy the town completely. 16 Gather all the possessions that belonged to the people who lived there and pile them up in the city plaza. Then burn the town and everything in it, as though it were an offering to Yahweh that would be completely burned on the altar. The ruins/ashes must stay there forever; the town must never be rebuilt. 17 None of you Israelis must take for yourselves [IDM] anything that Yahweh has said must be destroyed. But if you do what I say, Yahweh will stop being angry with you, and he will act mercifully toward you. And he will cause you to have many children/descendants, which is what he promised our ancestors that he would do. 18 Yahweh our God will do all those things if you do what he is telling you to do, and if you obey all the commandments that I am giving to you today and do what Yahweh says is right for you to do.”

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© 2008-2017 Ellis W. Deibler, Jr.