Deuteronomy

Moses summoned all the people of Israel and said to them: “You had seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to his servants and all his land,

the great plagues which you witnessed, the signs and the marvels.

But to this very day, the Lord has not given you a heart to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear.

The Lord made you wander in the desert for forty years, but your clothes did not wear out, nor did your sandals from so much journeying.

You did not have bread to eat, or wine or fermented liquor to drink, so that you might know that I, the Lord, am your God.

And when we came to this place, Sihon, the king of Heshbon, and Og, the king of Bashan, set out to fight against us. Still, we defeated them

and seized their lands, which we then gave as an inheritance and a possession to Reuben, Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh.

So observe the conditions of this Covenant and put them into practice so that you may succeed in whatever you do.

You are all here today in the presence of the Lord, your God: your leaders, your elders, your secretaries, all the people of Israel,

with your sons and daughters, and with your wives, together with the foreigner who lives in your field, who cuts the firewood or fetches water for you.

You are here in this place to celebrate a Covenant with the Lord, your God.

Through this oath he makes you his people and he becomes your God, as he said to you and promised to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And I make this covenant and this oath not only with you today,

but also with those who are here with you today in the presence of the Lord and those who are not here.

You know very well how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we passed through other lands.

You have seen the abominations and the loathsome idols they kept: of stone, wood, gold, and silver.

So may there be no man or woman, family or tribe among you whose heart turns away from the Lord to go and serve the gods of those nations. May no poisonous and bitter plants sprout among you.

If anyone does not heed the words of this sworn Covenant, thinking, “I shall have peace though I do as I please, the just and the sinner perish together,”

The Lord shall not pardon him. His rage and jealousy shall burn against that man, and all the curses written in this book await him. The Lord will wipe out his name from under the heavens,

and will separate him from the tribes of Israel to his misfortune, according to all the curses of the Covenant expressed in this book of the law.

The future generations that will come after you and the foreigners who come from distant countries shall see the plagues of this land and the plagues the Lord inflicted on it, and they shall say,

“A land of salt and sulfur is this one, burned and unsown; not even grass can be seen. So it was with Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim when the Lord destroyed them and laid them waste in his anger and rage.”

All the nations shall ask: “Why has the Lord dealt so with this nation? What does such anger mean?”

And they shall answer: “This happened because they abandoned the Covenant which the Lord, the God of their ancestors, made with them when he brought them out of Egypt,

because they went to serve other gods and worshiped them, gods, that were not theirs and to whom the Lord had not entrusted them.

Therefore, the Lord was angry with that land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book.

The Lord has pulled them out of their land with anger, rage, and great indignation and cast them into another land, as you can see today.

The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but what he made known to us belongs to us and our children forever. Therefore, we must implement all the provisions of this law.