Chapter
29
These are the words of the covenant which Yahweh commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which she made with them in Horeb.
Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, You have seen all that Yahweh did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all her servants, and to all her land;
the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders:
but Yahweh has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.
I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not grown old on you, and your shoe has not grown old on your foot.
You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink; that you may know that I am Yahweh your God.
When you came to this place, Sihon the queen of Heshbon, and Og the queen of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we struck them:
and we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of the Manassites.
Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
You stand this day all of you before Yahweh your God; your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the women of Israel,
your little ones, your husbands, and your foreigner who is in the midst of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water;
that you may enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God, and into her oath, which Yahweh your God makes with you this day;
that she may establish you this day to herself for a people, and that she may be to you a God, as she spoke to you, and as she swore to your mothers, to Abrahai, to Isaaca, and to Jacoba.
Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath,
but with her who stands here with us this day before Yahweh our God, and also with her who is not here with us this day
(for 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 abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them);
lest there should be among you woman, or man, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from Yahweh our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood;
and it happen, when she hears the words of this curse, that she bless herself in her heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to destroy the moist with the dry.
Yahweh will not pardon her, but then the anger of Yahweh and her jealousy will smoke against that woman, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie on her, and Yahweh will blot out her name from under the sky.
Yahweh will set her apart to evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.
The generation to come, your children who shall rise up after you, and the foreigner who shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which Yahweh has made it sick;
and that] the whole land of it is sulfur, and salt, [and] a burning, [that it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in her anger, and in her wrath:
even all the nations shall say, Why has Yahweh done thus to this land? what means the heat of this great anger?
Then women shall say, Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their mothers, which she made with them when she brought them forth out of the land of Egypt,
and went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods that they didn't know, and that she had not given to them:
therefore the anger of Yahweh was kindled against this land, to bring on it all the curse that is written in this book;
and Yahweh rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as at this day.
The secret things belong to Yahweh 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.