Old Testament · Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 29

1And 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; 2the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs^a and those great wonders^b; 3but the LORD has not given to you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.

4And I led you forty years in the wilderness; your garments did not wear out upon you, and your sandal did not wear out upon your foot.
5Bread you did not eat, and wine and strong drink you did not drink; that you might know that I am the LORD your God.

6And you came to this place, and Sihon king of Heshbon, and Og king of Bashan, came out to meet us to battle, and we smote them. 7And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenite, and to the Gadite, and to the half tribe of the Manassite. 8And you shall keep the words of this covenant^c, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

9You are standing this day, all of you, before the LORD your God: your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, every man^d of Israel, 10your little ones, your wives^e, and your sojourner who is in the midst of your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water; 11for your passing into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into His oath, which the LORD your God is cutting with you this day; 12in order to establish you this day to Himself for a people, and that He may be to you for God, as He spoke to you, and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

13And not with you alone do I cut this covenant and this oath; 14but with him who is here with us, standing this day before the LORD our God, and with him who is not here with us this day —

15for you know how we dwelt in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the midst of the nations through which you passed; 16and you saw their detestable things, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were with them —

17lest there be among you a man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns this day from the LORD our God, to go to serve^f the gods of those nations; lest there be among you a root bearing gall and wormwood; 18and it shall be, when he hears the words of this oath, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying: 'Peace shall be to me, though in the stubbornness of my heart I walk' — in order to sweep away the watered with the dry. 19The LORD will not be willing to pardon him, for then the anger of the LORD and His jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the oath written in this book will lie upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under the heavens. 20And the LORD will separate him for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the oaths of the covenant written in this book of the Torah.

21And the latter generation will say — your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land — when they see the plagues of that land, and its sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick; 22brimstone and salt, a burning, is all its land; it is not sown, and it does not sprout, and no herb grows up in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His anger and in His wrath —

23and all the nations will say: 'For what reason has the LORD done thus to this land? What is the heat of this great anger?'

24And they will say: 'Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which He cut with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt; 25and they went and served other gods, and bowed down to them, gods that they did not know, and that He had not allotted to them; 26and the anger of the LORD was kindled against that land, to bring upon it all the curse written in this book; 27and the LORD plucked them from off their ground^g in anger, and in wrath, and in great fury, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.'

28The hidden things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to do all the words of this Torah.