The LORD your God commands you this day to follow these statutes and ordinances. You must be careful to follow them with all your heart and with all your soul.
Parallel translations
- WEB Today Yahweh your God commands you to do these statutes and ordinances. You shall therefore keep and do them with all your heart and with all your soul.
- KJV This day the LORD thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments: thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thine heart, and with all thy soul.
- NKJV “This day the Lord your God commands you to observe these statutes and judgments; therefore you shall be careful to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.
- NASB “This day the Lord your God commands you to perform these statutes and ordinances. Therefore you shall be careful to perform them with all your heart and with all your soul.
- NLT “Today the Lord your God has commanded you to obey all these decrees and regulations. So be careful to obey them wholeheartedly.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God commands Israel to keep these statutes wholeheartedly, with all their heart and soul. Obedience must be inward and total, not merely external.
Overview
This verse calls for keeping God's laws from the heart, engaging the whole inner person, not mere outward conformity. It echoes the great command to love God with all one's heart and soul (Deuteronomy 6:5). Such wholehearted devotion is what God has always sought and what He works in His people through the new covenant, writing His law on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- John 14:15If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
- Deut 12:1These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to follow all the days you live in the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess.
- 1 Jn 5:2–3By this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep His commandments.
- Deut 4:1–6Hear now, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to follow, so that you may live and may enter and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you.
- Deut 6:1These are the commandments and statutes and ordinances that the LORD your God has instructed me to teach you to follow in the land that you are about to enter and possess,
- Deut 6:5And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
- Deut 13:3–4you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul.
- Deut 6:17You are to diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God and the testimonies and statutes He has given you.
- Deut 11:8You shall therefore keep every commandment I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and possess the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess,
- Deut 12:32See that you do everything I command you; do not add to it or subtract from it.
- Deut 4:29But if from there you will seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.
- Matt 28:20and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
- John 14:21–24Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.”
- Deut 8:2Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments.
- Deut 11:1You shall therefore love the LORD your God and always keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Moses promised a Prophet like himself to whom Israel must listen (18:15); Jesus is that Prophet, the one who keeps the covenant we broke and becomes the curse for us by hanging on a tree (Gal 3:13).
How Deuteronomy 26:16 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.