Deuteronomy: Chapter 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 grown old on you, and your shoe has not grown old on your
foot.
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. that he may establish you this day to himself for
a people, and that he may be to you a 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. The Lord will not pardon him, but then the anger
of The Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse
that is written in this book shall lie on him, and The Lord will blot out his
name from under the sky.
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 sulphur, and
salt, [and] a burning, [that] it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows
therein, 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 means the heat of this great anger?
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 didn't 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.