< 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 Horeb.
2 Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;
3 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders:
4 but the LORD has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.
5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your shoes have not worn out on your feet.
6 You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink; that you may know that I am the LORD your God.
7 When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we struck them:
8 and we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of the Manassites.
9 Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
10 You stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel,
11 your little ones, your wives, and your foreigner who is in the midst of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water;
12 that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you this day,
13 so that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may your God, as he spoke to you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
14 Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath,
15 but with him who stands here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day
16 (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed;
17 and you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them);
18 lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood;
19 and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to destroy the moist with the dry."
20 God will not be willing to forgive him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse that is written in this book shall rest on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
21 The LORD will set him apart to evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.
22 The generation to come, your children who shall rise up after you, and the foreigner who shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick;
23 and that the whole land of it is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:
24 even all the nations shall say, "Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?"
25 Then men shall say, "Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt,
26 and went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods that they did not know, and that he had not given to them:
27 therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring on it all the curse that is written in this book;
28 and the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as at this day."
29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
