11 “You must love the Lord your God and obey every one of his commands. 2 Listen! I am not talking now to your children who have never experienced the Lord’s punishments or seen his greatness and his awesome power. 3 They weren’t there to see the miracles he did in Egypt against Pharaoh and all his land. 4 They didn’t see what God did to the armies of Egypt and to their horses and chariots—how he drowned them in the Red Sea as they were chasing you, and how the Lord has kept them powerless against you until this very day! 5 They didn’t see how the Lord cared for you time and again through all the years you were wandering in the wilderness, until your arrival here. 6 They weren’t there when Dathan and Abiram (the sons of Eliab, descendants[a] of Reuben) sinned, and the earth opened up and swallowed them, with their households and tents and all their belongings, as all Israel watched!
7 “But you have seen these mighty miracles! 8 How carefully, then, you should obey these commandments I am going to give you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and possess the land you are about to enter. 9 If you obey the commandments, you will have a long and good life in the land the Lord promised to your ancestors and to you, their descendants—a wonderful land ‘flowing with milk and honey’! 10 For the land you are about to enter and possess is not like the land of Egypt where you have come from, where irrigation is necessary. 11 It is a land of hills and valleys with plenty of rain— 12 a land that the Lord your God personally cares for! His eyes are always upon it, day after day throughout the year!
13 “And if you will carefully obey all of his commandments that I am going to give you today, and if you will love the Lord your God with all your hearts and souls and will worship him, 14 then he will continue to send both the early and late rains that will produce wonderful crops of grain, grapes for your wine, and olive oil. 15 He will give you lush pastureland for your cattle to graze in, and you yourselves shall have plenty to eat and be fully content.
16 “But beware that your hearts do not turn from God to worship other gods. 17 For if you do, the anger of the Lord will be hot against you, and he will shut the heavens—there will be no rain and no harvest, and you will quickly perish from the good land the Lord has given you. 18 So keep these commandments carefully in mind. Tie them to your hand to remind you to obey them, and tie them to your forehead between your eyes! 19 Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting at home, when you are out walking, at bedtime, and before breakfast! 20 Write them upon the doors of your houses and upon your gates, 21 so that as long as there is sky above the earth, you and your children will enjoy the good life awaiting you in the land the Lord has promised you.[b]
22 “If you carefully obey all the commandments I give you, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and clinging to him, 23 then the Lord will drive out all the nations in your land, no matter how much greater and stronger than you they might be. 24 Wherever you go, the land is yours. Your frontiers will stretch from the southern Negeb to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No one will be able to stand against you, for the Lord your God will send fear and dread ahead of you wherever you go, just as he has promised.
26 “I am giving you the choice today between God’s blessing or God’s curse! 27 There will be blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, 28 and a curse if you refuse them and worship the gods of these other nations. 29 When the Lord your God brings you into the land to possess it, a blessing shall be proclaimed from Mount Gerizim and a curse from Mount Ebal! 30 (Gerizim and Ebal are mountains west of the Jordan River, where the Canaanites live, in the wasteland near Gilgal, where the oaks of Moreh are.) 31 For you are to cross the Jordan and live in the land the Lord is giving you. 32 But you must obey all the laws I am giving you today.
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 11:6 descendants, literally, “sons.”
- Deuteronomy 11:21 you, literally, “your fathers.”