Deuteronomy 29
1 Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “You saw everything the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, all his officials, and his whole land.
2 You saw the great trials your eyes witnessed, those signs and great wonders.
3 But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear.
4 I led you for forty years through the wilderness. Your clothes did not wear out, and the sandal did not wear out on your foot.
5 You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you would know that I am the LORD your God.
6 You came to this place, and Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to meet us in battle, and we defeated them.
7 We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh.
8 Keep the words of this covenant and put them into practice, so that you may prosper in everything you do.
9 Today all of you are standing before the LORD your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders and officials, every man of Israel,
10 your children and your wives, and the foreigner living among you in your camp, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water.
11 You are here to enter into the covenant of the LORD your God and the oath that the LORD your God makes with you today.
12 He is establishing you today as his people, and he will be your God, as he told you and as he swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
13 It is not with you alone that I am making this covenant and oath.
14 It is also with those who are standing here with us today before the LORD our God, and with those who are not here with us today.”
15 “You know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we passed through the nations along the way.
16 You saw their detestable things and their idols of wood and stone, silver and gold, which were with them.
17 Let there be no man, woman, clan, or tribe among you whose heart turns away from the LORD our God today to go and serve the gods of those nations. Let there be no root among you that bears poisonous and bitter fruit.
18 When someone hears the words of this oath, they may congratulate themselves in their heart and say, ‘I will have peace, even though I follow the stubbornness of my heart.’ In this way, the well-watered land is swept away along with the dry.
19 The LORD will not be willing to forgive that person. Instead, the anger and jealousy of the LORD will smoke against him, and every curse written in this book will fall on him. The LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
20 The LORD will set him apart for disaster from all the tribes of Israel, in keeping with all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the Law.
21 The next generation—your children who rise up after you—and the foreigner who comes from a distant land will speak of it. They will see the plagues on that land and the diseases with which the LORD has struck it.
22 It is all sulfur and salt, the whole land scorched. Nothing is sown there, nothing sprouts, and no grass grows. It is like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and fury.
23 All the nations will say, ‘Why did the LORD do this to this land? What caused such great, burning anger?’
24 And they will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.
25 They went and served other gods and bowed down to them—gods they had not known and that he had not given them.
26 So the anger of the LORD burned against that land, bringing upon it every curse written in this book.
27 The LORD uprooted them from their soil in anger, fury, and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as we see today.’
28 The hidden things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may put all the words of this Law into practice.”
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