1 Soon you will enter and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you as your property. When you have settled there,
2 take some of the first produce harvested from the fields in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and put it in a basket. Then go to the place where the Lord your God will choose for his name to live.
3 Go to the priest who is serving at that time, and tell him, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land that the Lord is giving us, as he swore to our ancestors.”
4 Then the priest will take the basket from you and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God.
5 You will make this formal statement in the presence of the Lord your God: “My ancestors were wandering Arameans. There were only a few of them when they went to Egypt and lived as foreigners. But then they became a great, powerful, and large nation.
6 So the Egyptians treated us cruelly, oppressed us, and made us do back-breaking work for them.
7 We cried out to the Lord God of our ancestors, and he heard us. He saw our misery, suffering, and oppression.