Deuteronomy 11-13

Chapter 11-  Love and obey the Lord.....Moses continues to repeat this because it is so vitally important....God says, "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads."

Phylactery

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Look up phylacteries or phylactery in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Phylactery may refer to:

• The Jewish tefillin, or strip of parchment inscribed with passages from Exodus 13 and Deuteronomy 6, enclosed in a black calf-skin case and fastened by thongs to the forehead or left hand or arm as commanded in Deuteronomy 6, verse 8. Used as early as the 3rd century B.C.

Rabbis ended up taking this verse literally in later times as you can see from the images above.

Chapter 12 deals with the Laws for proper worship in the new land.....they are getting prepared to have a stable place, and the laws change slightly to apply....this is what happens today when God deals with us in different times and cultures....the basic truths stay the same always.....there will always be blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience....we have those choices....we have those consequences.

Chapter 13 addresses worshipping other gods...the Isrealites were going into Canaan, where false gods and prophets were prevelant.  God feels very strongly about this and tells the people to put false prophets to death....this is for a deterrent so that Isreal will hear and be afraid and so that no one among them will do such an evil thing again. God does tell them not to act impetuously, but to inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly, and you will see that later in Deuteronomy this will bode well for some Isrealite tribes.