“Statutes and ordinances” (chuqqim u-mishpatim) is the pairing that will now run through this whole chapter — vv1, 5, 6, 8, 14, 40 and 45 all repeat it, seven times in forty-nine verses. This translation keeps the two nouns distinct throughout, matching the ASV; several shelf versions fold them into one English word (“regulations,” “law,” “decisiones judiciales”), which loses the fact that Hebrew names two different kinds of legal material side by side.

★ The verb is “listen” (shema) — the same root that becomes the name of the central Jewish declaration three chapters later, “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4, not yet on these pages). Before Moses gives a single statute, he tells Israel to LISTEN, and ties that listening directly to survival: “that you may live, and go in and possess the land.” Obedience is framed here not as duty for its own sake but as the precondition for staying alive in the land at all — a formula that returns almost unchanged at the chapter’s own close (v40).

★ This is the earliest appearance, in the order this project is translating, of a sentence that becomes one of the most consequential in the whole Bible: a text sealing itself against its own alteration. The same two verbs, in the same order — lo tosifu (‘you shall not add’) and lo tigre’u (‘you shall not take away,’ from the root gara, already tracking a different sense of the same verb at Numbers 27, already on these pages) — recur almost verbatim three chapters later, at Deuteronomy 13:1 in the Hebrew numbering (not yet on these pages; confirmed directly against the archived Hebrew text: lo tosef alav ve-lo tigra mimenu, ‘you shall not add to it, and you shall not take away from it’). The identical anxiety — a book worried about its own boundary — closes the entire Christian canon at Revelation 22:18-19 (already on these pages, though not yet in Spanish): anyone who ADDS to the words of this prophecy has the plagues added to him, and anyone who TAKES AWAY from its words has his share in the tree of life taken away. Sixty-six books apart, and the same two verbs stand guard at both ends.

⚠ Of the seven English witnesses checked, five different verb-pairs are in play. NIV and the NWT keep ‘add’/‘take away’ or ‘subtract’; KJV and ASV use ‘add’/‘diminish’; Douay-Rheims reads ‘add…take away’, matching NIV/NWT; TLB paraphrases to ‘add other laws or subtract from these’; and the Geneva Bible paraphrases furthest from the verbs themselves, ‘ye shall put nothing unto the word… neither shall ye take ought there from.’ On the Spanish side there is no real split: TNM, RV60, NVI and the RV 1909 all agree closely on ‘añadir…quitar.’

★ This is the payoff Deuteronomy 3’s own closing note predicted while checking its own forward boundary: “the same Baal-peor this chapter’s closing verse camps beside becomes, one chapter later, the example Moses reaches for first.” It is exactly that — the FIRST illustration once the sermon’s legal core opens, and it is not hypothetical. Israel is still camped in the valley opposite Beth-peor (3:29, already on these pages) when Moses says “your own eyes have seen.” Every man who joined himself to the Baal of Peor (Numbers 25:3, already on these pages) is dead; everyone else is alive, hearing this sermon, in the same valley. The chapter’s whole argument for obedience opens with a body count its own audience personally supplied.

“Held fast” (v4, davaq) is the same cleaving-verb already tracked at davaq — everywhere else this project has met it, the word describes a marriage bond (Genesis 2:24; Numbers 36:6, both already on these pages). Here it describes loyalty to a god instead of loyalty to a spouse — the identical verb applied to the one bond Deuteronomy will spend the rest of the book insisting must not have a rival.

This is a genuinely unusual argument for obeying a law: not that God commanded it, but that OTHER PEOPLES will be impressed by it. “This great nation is a wise and understanding people” (v6) is put in the mouth of outside observers, not Israel itself — the law’s value is measured, in part, by how it reads to people who never received it.

⚠ The double question in vv7–8 makes two separate claims, and this translation keeps them separate rather than collapsing them into one rhetorical flourish. V7 is about GOD’S NEARNESS (“what great nation has a god so near”); v8 is about the LAW’S OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS (“statutes and ordinances so righteous”). Access to God and the moral quality of the legal code are offered as two independent proofs of the nation’s greatness, not one restated twice.

★ V12 states the single fact everything from v15 onward is built on: “you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form — only a voice.” Sound without sight. The noun temunah, ‘form,’ recurs five times across this one chapter (vv12, 15, 16, 23, 25) — Israel did not see one at Horeb, and that single reported absence becomes the legal basis for what Israel must never manufacture afterward. What they didn’t see decides what they may not make.

“The ten words” (aseret ha-devarim, v13) renders the Hebrew literally rather than the traditional ‘ten commandments.’ Devarim, ‘words,’ is the very noun that gives this book its own Hebrew name — Deuteronomy opens, “these are the WORDS that Moses spoke” (1:1, already on these pages) — so the covenant document at Horeb and the sermon reporting it share, in Hebrew, the identical noun.

This is the chapter’s central argument, and one of the most famous passages in the whole book. Four categories of forbidden image span the whole created order — land animals, birds, crawling things, and fish (vv17–18) — the same fourfold sweep Genesis 1 uses to describe creation itself, now turned into an exhaustive list of what must NOT be carved: nothing in the world Jehovah made may stand in for him.

★ “Carved image” (pesel) and “form” (temunah) — see n9 — appear together here for the first time on these pages. NIV translates pesel outright as ‘an idol,’ collapsing the object into its abuse; KJV, ASV and Geneva keep ‘graven image’, and only the NWT keeps ‘carved image’, matching this translation — all four a manufacturing description that leaves the theological verdict to the sentence around the noun rather than to the noun itself.

⚠ V19’s sun, moon and stars are described as things Jehovah “allotted to all the peoples under the whole heavens” — a striking claim the chapter does not pause to explain. Astral worship among the OTHER nations is framed less as simple error and more as a permitted-but-not-for-Israel arrangement. Every witness checked keeps the giving/allotting sense rather than softening it toward mere neglect, though the verb itself varies — NIV ‘apportioned,’ NWT ‘allotted,’ TNM 1987 ‘ha repartido’ — the RV60 reaches for a different verb again, ‘concedido’ (granted), and the TNM’s own 2019 revision moves to ‘se los ha dado’ (has given), the identical 1984/1987-vs-2013/2019 drift already tracked elsewhere on this shelf.

The “iron furnace” (v20) is a physical, not merely emotional, image for Egypt — the literal apparatus for smelting ore, applied to what Israel itself endured there. Nachalah, ‘inheritance,’ names what Israel becomes to God as a result — the same word that ran through Deuteronomy 2’s whole argument about what four nations already held (already on these pages), now pointed in the opposite direction: instead of God granting LAND to a nation, God takes a NATION as his own holding.

★ This is the third and final occurrence of a citation Deuteronomy 1:38’s own note already counted in advance: “three times in Deuteronomy (1:37, 3:26, 4:21), Moses says he was excluded because of them.” Checking the Hebrew of all three directly shows something that note’s own English phrasing flattens: the wording is not repeated at all. 1:37 uses biglalchem, ‘on account of you,’ from the root galal, ‘to roll’; 3:26 uses lema’ankhem, ‘for your sake,’ from ma’an, ‘purpose’; this verse uses al-divreikhem — literally ‘concerning your WORDS,’ from davar, the very root that names the whole book. Three appearances, three different Hebrew idioms, one unresolved tension with Numbers 20’s own account of Moses’ actual fault at the waters of Meribah, already flagged and left open at 1:38.

⚠ The English shelf mostly erases the difference the Hebrew keeps. ASV and KJV render THIS verse ‘for your sakes’ — the identical English phrase they also used at 3:26, even though the underlying Hebrew word has changed from ma’an to davar. Only the Geneva Bible and the Douay-Rheims keep the literal sense here: Geneva reads ‘the Lord was angry with me for your WORDS,’ and Douay, independently, ‘the Lord was angry with me for your WORDS’ — the one place on the whole English shelf where the noun survives translation. On the Spanish side, the RV 1909’s ‘sobre vuestros NEGOCIOS’ (‘concerning your affairs’) comes closest to a literal ‘matters’ sense; NVI’s ‘por culpa de ustedes’ (‘through your fault’) and both TNM editions’ own ‘por causa de’/‘por culpa de’ all smooth toward the same idea as the English majority’s ‘because of you,’ without keeping the literal noun.

The warning against the carved image is restated, echoing v16 almost word for word, and then given its reason in the starkest terms available: eish okhlah, ‘a devouring fire,’ and el qanna, ‘a jealous God.’

★ Qanna is an adjective the Hebrew Bible uses only of God — this is its second appearance on these pages, after Exodus 34:14 (already on these pages), where the same word closes the covenant remade after the golden calf: “Jehovah, whose NAME is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Whatever else changes between Sinai and the plains of Moab, forty years later, this one description of God does not.

Of the seven English witnesses checked, NIV, KJV and Geneva read ‘consuming fire…jealous God’; the ASV alone matches this translation’s own ‘devouring fire,’ a real if minor point of agreement; and the NWT prefers ‘exacting exclusive devotion’ for qanna, a periphrasis rather than a translation, matched in Spanish by the TNM’s own ‘que exige devoción exclusiva.’ RV60, the RV 1909 and NVI all keep ‘Dios celoso’ plainly.

★ This is the earliest sustained prophecy of exile in the whole Torah, delivered before Israel has even crossed the Jordan. Idolatry — repeating v16’s own language of the carved image almost verbatim — leads to destruction and scattering “among the peoples,” left “few in number,” the very fate history will later record for both the northern and southern kingdoms.

What keeps this from being a bare threat is vv29–31: even IN exile, seeking God “with all your heart and all your soul” finds him, because — the reason given plainly — “Jehovah your God is a merciful God” (el rachum). That is the identical phrase that opens the great self-description Jehovah gives of his own name at Exodus 34:6 (already on these pages): “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious.” The threat and the mercy are spoken by the same voice, in the same breath, some four decades before either one comes true.

★ This is one of the most emphatic monotheistic statements anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, made twice in nine verses with almost identical wording: “Jehovah, he is God… there is no other” (v35), and again, expanded, “Jehovah, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth below; there is no other” (v39). Of eleven witnesses checked — NIV, KJV, ASV, NWT (both editions), TNM (both editions), RV60, RV 1909 and NVI — ten keep the plain force of it; only the Geneva Bible strengthens v35 further, reading ‘that there is none but HE ALONE’ rather than the more common ‘beside him.’

The argument that gets Israel there is entirely historical, not philosophical. Has any nation EVER heard a god speak and lived (v33)? Has any god EVER attempted to take a nation for himself out of the middle of another nation (v34)? Both questions expect the answer no, and both are answered from Israel’s own recent experience rather than from reasoning about the nature of divinity in the abstract.

V37’s “he loved your fathers” is the first time in Deuteronomy that Jehovah’s choice of Israel is explained by a single, unqualified motive — not size, not merit, not military use, simply love (ahavah) for the patriarchs, extended forward onto their own descendants who never met them.

★ Notice the timing: this is a bare narrative aside, placed before Deuteronomy has given a single word of actual refuge-law (that waits for Deuteronomy 19, not yet on these pages) and years before Joshua formally activates the whole six-city system (Joshua 20–21, not yet on these pages). Moses simply acts — he designates three cities on the Transjordan side, for the very tribes whose Transjordan allotment this book has just finished narrating (3:12–17, already on these pages).

⚠ The technical legal term for these towns — arei ha-miqlat, ‘cities of refuge,’ discussed at miqlat (twenty occurrences elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, eleven of them in Numbers 35, already on these pages) — is conspicuously NOT used here. Moses calls them simply “three cities.” The fixed legal name comes later; the thing itself comes first.

Bezer, Ramoth in Gilead, and Golan in Bashan are all named here for the first time on these pages, assigned respectively to Reuben, Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh — the exact three groups Deuteronomy 3 just settled east of the Jordan.

These six verses function as a colophon — a closing label, of the kind ancient documents append to identify what they are and where they were given — restating in summary what the book has already narrated: the defeat of Sihon and Og, the Transjordan conquest, the valley opposite Beth-peor where Israel is camped. Nothing here is new content; the book is formally marking a structural seam before the sermon’s language shifts.

★ V48 gives Hermon a FOURTH name, and it is worth being precise about the letters. Deuteronomy 3’s own note already tracked three: Hermon itself, Sirion (the Sidonians’ name, 3:9, already on these pages), and Senir (the Amorites’ name). Here the Hebrew reads har Sion — spelled with a sin and an aleph — “Mount Sion — that is, Hermon.” Searched consonantally, this exact spelling occurs in exactly TWO verses in the whole Hebrew Bible: this one, and an unrelated town of the same consonants in Issachar’s territory (Joshua 19:19, not yet on these pages, a different place entirely). It is emphatically NOT the famous Zion of Jerusalem, spelled with a tsade and occurring 156 times — a wholly different Hebrew word that only looks and sounds alike once it is carried into English or Spanish letters.

⚠ Most likely “Sion” here is simply a scribal variant of “Sirion” itself (the very word from three chapters earlier, with one letter swapped) — which is exactly how two witnesses on the shelf treat it: the NIV and TLB both translate it outright as ‘Mount SIRION,’ silently correcting the spelling rather than transliterating it. Every other version checked — KJV, ASV, Geneva, Douay-Rheims, both NWT editions, and the whole Spanish shelf (RV60, RV 1909, NVI, both TNM editions) — keeps the literal ‘Sion’/‘Siyón’/‘Sión,’ reproducing a name that on the page sits one letter from the most famous hill in the Bible. This translation keeps ‘Sion’ too, precisely because the ambiguity is real and worth a reader noticing, rather than silently resolved the way NIV and TLB resolve it.