Deuteronomy 12:20-32
English Standard Version
Chapter 12
20"When the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you, and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ because you crave meat, you may eat meat whenever you desire. 21If the place that the Lord your God will choose to put his name there is too far from you, then you may kill any of your herd or your flock, which the Lord has given you, as I have commanded you, and you may eat within your towns whenever you desire. 22Just as the gazelle or the deer is eaten, so you may eat of it. The unclean and the clean alike may eat of it. 23Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. 24You shall not eat it; you shall pour it out on the earth like water. 25You shall not eat it, that all may go well with you and with your children after you, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord. 26But the holy things that are due from you, and your vow offerings, you shall take, and you shall go to the place that the Lord will choose, 27and offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of the Lord your God. The blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God, but the flesh you may eat. 28Be careful to obey all these words that I command you, that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God.
29"When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land,
30take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? — that I also may do the same.’
31You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
