First Reading

Moses said to the people:

"You are a people sacred to the Lord, your God;

he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth

to be a people peculiarly his own.

It was not because you are the largest of all nations

that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you,

for you are really the smallest of all nations.

It was because the Lord loved you

and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn your fathers,

that he brought you out with his strong hand

from the place of slavery,

and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

Understand, then, that the Lord, your God, is God indeed,

the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant

down to the thousandth generation

toward those who love him and keep his commandments,

but who repays with destruction a person who hates him;

he does not dally with such a one,

but makes them personally pay for it.

You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments,

the statutes and the decrees that I enjoin on you today."