Vaetchanan

Moses recounts his plea to cross over and see the good land, and the refusal: "Enough — speak to Me no more of this matter." He is to ascend Pisgah and see it with his eyes, and to commission and strengthen Joshua, who will bring the people in. From there the address turns to the commandments themselves: add nothing and take nothing away; your eyes saw Baal Peor; and what great nation has God so near to it, or statutes so righteous? "Only guard yourself... lest you forget the things your eyes saw" — Horeb, the mountain burning, the voice from the midst of the fire, and no form seen — therefore no carved image of any figure, nothing worshiped of what is in heaven or earth. Exile is foretold if they corrupt themselves, and return: "from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him, if you search with all your heart." Has anything so great ever happened — a people taken from the midst of a people, by signs and wonders and war? "Know this day... the LORD is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other." Moses sets apart three cities of refuge east of the Jordan.

The Ten Words are restated to the generation that will cross — "not with our fathers did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, we, these here today, all of us alive" — the Sabbath grounded this time in the exodus from slavery. Moses recalls the people's terror at the voice from the fire, their request that he stand between, and God's approval: "would that their heart were such, to fear Me and keep My commandments always."

Then the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." The words are to be on the heart, taught diligently to children, spoken sitting and walking, lying down and rising, bound as a sign on the hand and between the eyes, written on the doorposts and gates. Warnings follow — do not forget Him amid houses you did not build and vineyards you did not plant; do not test Him as at Massah; tell your son, when he asks, "we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the LORD brought us out with a strong hand." The portion closes with the seven nations: no covenant, no intermarriage, their altars torn down — "for you are a holy people to the LORD your God... not because you were more numerous than any people did the LORD desire you, for you were the fewest — but because the LORD loved you."