Deuteronomy
29
- These are the terms of the covenant the
LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the
covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
- Moses summoned all the Israelites and said
to them: Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to
all his officials and to all his land.
- With your own eyes you saw those great trials,
those miraculous signs and great wonders.
- But to this day the LORD has not given you
a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.
- During the forty years that I led you through
the desert, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.
- You ate no bread and drank no wine or other
fermented drink. I did this so that you might know that I am the LORD your
God.
- When you reached this place, Sihon king
of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to fight against us, but we defeated
them.
- We took their land and gave it as an inheritance
to the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh.
- Carefully follow the terms of this covenant,
so that you may prosper in everything you do.
- All of you are standing today in the presence
of the LORD your God -- your leaders and chief men, your elders and officials,
and all the other men of Israel,
- together with your children and your wives,
and the aliens living in your camps who chop your wood and carry your water.
- You are standing here in order to enter
into a covenant with the LORD your God, a covenant the LORD is making with
you this day and sealing with an oath,
- to confirm you this day as his people, that
he may be your God as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob.
- I am making this covenant, with its oath,
not only with you
- who are standing here with us today in the
presence of the LORD our God but also with those who are not here today.
- You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt
and how we passed through the countries on the way here.
- You saw among them their detestable images
and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold.
- Make sure there is no man or woman, clan
or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go
and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you
that produces such bitter poison.
- When such a person hears the words of this
oath, he invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, "I will
be safe, even though I persist in going my own way." This will bring
disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.
- The LORD will never be willing to forgive
him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written
in this book will fall upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from
under heaven.
- The LORD 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.
- Your children who follow you in later generations
and foreigners who come from distant lands will see the calamities that have
fallen on the land and the diseases with which the LORD has afflicted it.
- The whole land will be a burning waste of
salt and sulfur -- nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing
on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim,
which the LORD overthrew in fierce anger.
- All the nations will ask: "Why has
the LORD done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger ?"
- And the answer will be: "It is because
this people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers,
the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt.
- They went off and worshiped other gods and
bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them.
- Therefore the LORD'S anger burned against
this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book.
- In furious anger and in great wrath the
LORD uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it
is now."
- The secret things belong to the LORD our
God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that
we may follow all the words of this law.
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