THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY

 

Deuteronomy Chapter 29

1 ¶ These are the words of the covenant, that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he made with them in Horeb.

2 So Moses summoned 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 miracles:

4 Yet the LORD has not given you a heart to understand, 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 grown old upon you, and your shoe has not grown old on your foot.

6 You have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink: that you might know that I am the LORD your God.

7 And 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 defeated them:

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

9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

10 ¶ You are all standing before the LORD your God this very day; the captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

11 Your little ones, your wives, and the stranger that is in your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water:

12 That you should enter into a covenant with the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you this day:

13 That he may today establish you as a people for himself, and that he may be to you a God, as he has said to you, and as he has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

14 It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant;

15 But with future Israelites who are not here with us this day, as well as with him who stands here with us this day before the LORD our God:

16 (For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which you passed by;

17 And you have seen their abominations, and their idols, of wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)

18 Beware lest there be among you a man, or a woman, or a family, or a tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there be among you a poisonous root that bears gall and wormwood;

19 One who when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, congratulates himself in his heart, saying, I shall be safe, even though I walk in the self-deception of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

20 The LORD will not forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will burn against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book will rest upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.

21 And the LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for destruction, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:

22 So that the generation to come, your children who shall rise up after you, and the stranger who shall come from a distant land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD has laid upon it;

23 The whole land is brimstone, and salt, and a burned waste, that it is not sown, bears nothing, and has no grass growing in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

24 Indeed all nations will ask, Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this great hot anger?

25 Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt:

26 For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given to them:

27 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are 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 it is this day.

29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may carry out all the words of this law.