Deuteronomy 29

1These are the words of the covenant that Yahweh commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.

2Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: “You have seen everything that Yahweh did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to his whole land—

3the great trials that your eyes saw, those great signs and wonders.

4But to this day Yahweh has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.

5I led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes did not wear out on you, and your sandals did not wear out on your feet.

6You ate no bread and drank no wine or beer, so that you might know that I am Yahweh your God.

7When you reached this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to fight against us, but we defeated them.

8We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.

9So carefully keep the words of this covenant and follow them, so that you may prosper in everything you do.

10Today all of you are standing before Yahweh your God—your leaders, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel,

11your little children, your wives, and the foreigners in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water—

12so that you may enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God and into his oath, which Yahweh your God is making with you today,

13so that he may establish you today as his people, and he may be your God, as he promised you and as he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

14I am making this covenant and this oath not with you alone,

15but with those who are standing here with us today before Yahweh our God, and also with those who are not here with us today.

16You know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we passed through the nations on our way here.

17You saw their vile images and their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, that they had among them.

18Make sure there is no man or woman, no family or tribe, among you today whose heart turns away from Yahweh our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears poisonous and bitter fruit.

19When such a person hears the words of this oath, he may congratulate himself in his heart, thinking, ‘I will be safe, even though I follow my own stubborn heart.’ That would bring ruin on the watered land and the dry alike.

20Yahweh will never be willing to forgive him. Instead, Yahweh’s anger and his jealousy will smolder against that man, every curse written in this book will settle on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under heaven.

21Yahweh will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.

22The generation to come, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant land will see the plagues of that land and the diseases with which Yahweh has afflicted it, and they will talk about it.

23The whole land will be a burned-out waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and producing nothing, with no plant growing on it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger and wrath.

24All the nations will ask, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this land? Why this great, burning anger?’

25Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

26They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they had not known and that he had not given to them.

27So Yahweh’s anger burned against that land, and he brought on it every curse written in this book.

28In anger, fury, and great wrath Yahweh uprooted them from their land and threw them into another land, as it is today.’

29The hidden things belong to Yahweh our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may carry out all the words of this law.