1These are the words of the covenant which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab. This was besides the covenant he made with them at Horeb.
2Moses called all Israel together 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:"
3the great trials your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great wonders.
4Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.
5I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your shoes have not worn out on your feet.
6You have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink. This was so that you would know that I am the LORD your God.
7When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out to fight against us, and we struck them down.
8We took their land and gave it to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh to be their inheritance.
9So keep the words of this covenant and do them, so that you may do well in all that you do.
10Today you are all standing before the LORD your God: the leaders of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,
11your little ones, your wives, and the stranger who is in your camp, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water.
12You are here so that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God is making with you today.
13Today he is making you his own people, and he will be your God, as he said to you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
14I am not making this covenant and this oath with you alone.
15I am making it with everyone standing here with us today before the LORD our God, and also with everyone who is not here with us today.
16(For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the nations you passed by.
17You saw their detestable things and their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them.)
18Be careful that there is no man or woman or family or tribe among you whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Be careful that there is no root among you that bears bitter poison and wormwood.
19When such a person hears the words of this curse, he may bless himself in his heart and say, 'I shall have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.' So he adds drunkenness to thirst.
20The LORD will not spare him. The anger of the LORD and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curses written in this book will fall on him. The LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
21The 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.
22Then the generation to come, your children who rise up after you, and the stranger who comes from a far country, will see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses the LORD has laid on it, and they will say:
23"The whole land is burning sulphur and salt, a wasteland. Nothing is sown there, nothing grows there, and no grass comes up in it. It is like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and in his fury."
24All the nations will say, "Why has the LORD done this to this land? What does this great burning anger mean?"
25Then people will say, "It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt."
26They went and served other gods and worshipped them, gods they did not know and gods he had not given to them.
27So the anger of the LORD burned against this land, to bring on it all the curses written in this book.
28"The LORD tore them out of their land in anger, in fury and in great rage, and threw them into another land, as it is today."
29The secret things belong to the LORD our God. But the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, so that we may do all the words of this law.