These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded
Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab,
besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb.
And Moses summoned 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, the great
trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. But
to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or
eyes to see or ears to hear. I have led you forty years in the
wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals
have not worn off your feet. You have not eaten bread, and you have
not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the
LORD your God. And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of
Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle,
but we defeated them. We took their land and gave it for an
inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of
the Manassites. Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do
them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
“You are standing today, all of you, before the LORD your God:
the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the
men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who
is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who
draws your water, so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of
the LORD your God, which the LORD your God is making with you
today, that he may establish you today as his people, and that he
may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. It is not with you
alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with whoever is
standing here with us today before the LORD our God, and with
whoever is not here with us today.
“You know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came
through the midst of the nations through which you passed. And you
have seen their detestable things, their idols of wood and stone,
of silver and gold, which were among them. Beware lest there be
among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning
away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those
nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous
and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn
covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe,
though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to
the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. The LORD will not be
willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and his
jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in
this book will settle upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name
from under heaven. And the LORD will single him out from all the
tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of
the covenant written in this Book of the Law. And the next
generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner
who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions
of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it
sick—the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing
sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow
like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD
overthrew in his anger and wrath—all the nations will say, ‘Why has
the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great
anger?’ Then 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, and went and
served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known
and whom he had not allotted to them. Therefore the anger of the
LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses
written in this book, and the LORD uprooted them from their land in
anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as
they are this day.’
“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.
