29 These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites 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, to all his servants, and to all his land;
3 The great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders.
4 Yet the Lord has not given you a [mind and] 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 worn out upon you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet.
6 You have not eaten [grain] bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, that you might recognize and know [your dependence on Him Who is saying], I am the Lord your God.
7 And when you came to this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out against us to battle, but we defeated them.
8 We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites.
9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may deal wisely and prosper in all that you do.
10 All of you stand today 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 the stranger and sojourner in your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water—
12 That you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, and into His oath which He makes with you today,
13 That He may establish you this day as a people for Himself, and that He may be to you a God as He said to you and as He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
14 It is not with you only that I make this sworn covenant
15 But with future Israelites who do not stand here with us today before the Lord our God, as well as with those who are here with us this day.
16 You know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we came through the midst of the nations you crossed.
17 And you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them.
18 Beware lest there should be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose [mind and] heart turns away this day from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a [poisonous] root that bears gall and wormwood,
19 And lest, when he hears the words of this curse and oath, he flatters and congratulates himself in his [mind and] heart, saying, I shall have peace and safety, [a]though I walk in the stubbornness of my [mind and] heart [bringing down a hurricane of destruction] and sweep away the watered land 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 curses that are written in this book shall settle on him; the Lord will blot out his very name from under the heavens.
21 And the Lord will single him out for ruin and destruction from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this Book of the Law,
22 So that the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who shall come from a distant land, shall say, when they see the plagues of this land and the diseases with which the Lord has made it sick—
23 The whole land is brimstone and salt and a burned waste, not sown or bearing anything, where no grass can take root, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah with Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and 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 For they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they knew not and that He had not given to them.
27 So the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, bringing 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 unto the Lord our God, but the things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all of the words of this law.
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 29:19 It is on the strength of the Lord’s oath to be Israel’s God and so to protect them that this Israelite flatters himself into thinking he is secure, no matter how he may behave. In the history of religion such a delusion has been lamentably frequent, and persons depending upon the unlimited protection of election have presumed on this and recklessly indulged in evil (The Cambridge Bible). The Bible emphasizes the “security of the saints,” but it is equally emphatic concerning the insecurity of those in conscious and continued indifference to God (Ezek. 3:20; 18:24, 26; Gal. 6:8; James 1:21; II Pet. 1:10, 11; Rev. 22:14).