< Deuteronomy 29 >
1 These [are] the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Choreb.
2 And Moses called all the sons of Israel and said to them, You have seen all things that the Lord did in the land of Egypt before you to Pharao and his servants, and all his land;
3 the great temptations which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great wonders.
4 Yet the Lord God has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, until this day.
5 And he led you forty years in the wilderness; your garments did not grow old, and your sandals were not worn away off your feet.
6 You did not eat bread, you did not drink wine or strong drink, that you might know that I [am] the Lord your God.
7 And you came as far as this place; and there came forth Seon king of Esebon, and Og king of Basan, to meet us in war.
8 And we struck them and took their land, and I gave it for an inheritance to Ruben and Gad, and to the half-tribe of Manasse.
9 And you shall take heed to do all the words of this covenant, that you may understand all things that you shall do.
10 You all stand today before the Lord your God, the heads of your tribes, and your elders, and your judges, and your officers, every man of Israel,
11 your wives, and your children, and the stranger who is in the midst of your camp, from your hewer of wood even to your drawer of water,
12 that you should enter into the covenant of the Lord your God and into his oaths, as many as the Lord your God appoints you this day;
13 that he may appoint you to himself for a people, and he shall be your God, as he said to you, and as he sware to your fathers, Abraam, and Isaac, and Jacob.
14 And I do not appoint to you alone this covenant and this oath;
15 but to those also who are here with you today before the Lord your God, and to those who are not here with you today.
16 For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, how we came through the midst of the nations through whom you came.
17 And you saw their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which are amongst them.
18 Lest there be amongst you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart has turned aside from the Lord your God, having gone to serve the gods of these nations; lest there be in you a root springing up with gall and bitterness.
19 And it shall be if one shall hear the words of this curse, and shall flatter himself in his heart, saying, Let good happen to me, for I will walk in the error of my heart, lest the sinner destroy the guiltless with [him]:
20 God shall by no means be willing to pardon him, but then the wrath of the Lord and his jealousy shall flame out against that man; and all the curses of this covenant shall attach themselves to him, which are written in this book, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.
21 And the Lord shall separate that man for evil of all the children of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in the book of this law.
22 And another generation shall say—even your sons who shall rise up after you, and the stranger who shall come from a land afar off, and shall see the plagues of that land and their diseases, which the Lord has sent upon it,
23 brimstone and burning salt, (the whole land shall not be sown, neither shall any green thing spring, nor rise upon it, as Sodom and Gomorrha were overthrown, Adama and Seboim, which the Lord overthrew in his wrath and anger: )—
24 and all the nations shall say, Why has the Lord done thus to this land? what [is] this great fierceness of anger?
25 And [men] shall say, Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, the things which he appointed to their fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt:
26 and they went and served other gods, which they knew not, neither did he assign [them] to them.
27 And the Lord was exceedingly angry with that land to bring upon it according to all the curses which are written in the book of this law.
28 And the Lord removed them from their land in anger, and wrath, and very great indignation, and cast them out into another land as at present.
29 The secret things [belong] to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed [belong] to us and to our children for ever, to do all the words of this law.