consuming fire, an impassioned God. The second open portion ends here. Moses called heaven and earth to witness against the Israelites that should they make for themselves a sculptured image when they were in the land, then God would scatter them among the peoples, leaving only a scant few alive. There in exile they would serve man-made gods of wood and stone, that would not be able to see, hear, eat, or smell. But when they were in distress and they searched for God with all their heart and soul, returned to God, and obeyed God, then they would find God, even there. For God is a compassionate God, Who would not fail them, let them perish, or forget the covenant that He made on oath with their fathers. Moses invited the Israelites to consider whether any people had ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire and survived, or any god had taken one nation from the midst of another by prodigious acts and awesome power as their God had done for them in Egypt before their very eyes. Moses said that it had been clearly demonstrated to them that the Lord alone is God and that there is none beside God. Moses thus admonished them to observe God's laws and commandments, which Moses enjoined upon them that day, that it might go well with them and their children, and that they might long remain in the land that God was assigning to them for all time. The second reading and the third open portion end here. Third reading — Deuteronomy 4:41–49 In the third reading, Moses set aside three cities of refuge on the east side of the Jordan to which a manslayer who unwittingly slew a person without having been hostile to him in the past could escape and live: Bezer among the Reubenites, Ramoth in Gilead among the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan among the Manassites. The third reading and the fourth open portion end with . Fourth reading — Deuteronomy 5:1–18 (or 5:1–22) In the fourth reading, Moses summoned the Israelites and called on them to hear the laws that he proclaimed that day, to study and observe them faithfully. At Horeb, God made a covenant with them — not with their fathers, but with them, the living, every one of them. God spoke to them face to face out of