Chapter 29

The Covenant in Moab

1 1aThese are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the bcovenant which He had made with them at Horeb.

2 1And 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 all his servants and all his land;

3 athe great trials which your eyes have seen, those great signs and wonders.

4 “Yet to this day athe Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear.

5 “I have led you forty years in the wilderness; ayour clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot.

6 “aYou have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, in order that you might know that I am the Lord your God.

7 “aWhen you 1reached this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out to meet us for battle, but we 2defeated them;

8 and we took their land and agave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites.

9 “aSo keep the words of this covenant to do them, bthat you may prosper in all that you do.

10 “You stand today, all of you, before the Lord your God: your chiefs, your tribes, your elders and your officers, even all the men of Israel,

11 your little ones, your wives, and the alien who is within your camps, from athe one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water,

12 that you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath which the Lord your God is making with you today,

13 in order that He may establish you today as His people and that aHe may be your God, just as He spoke to you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

14 “Now not with you alone am I amaking this covenant and this oath,

15 abut both with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here today

16 (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;

17 moreover, you have seen their abominations and their idols of awood, stone, silver, and gold, which they had with them);

18 aso that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you ba root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.

19 “It shall be when he hears the words of this curse, that he will 1boast, saying, ‘I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart in order 2to destroy the watered land with the dry.’

20 “The Lord shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and aHis jealousy will 1bburn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will 2rest on him, and the Lord will cblot out his name from under heaven.

21 “Then the Lord will single him out for 1adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant awhich are written in this book of the law.

22 “Now the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you and athe foreigner who comes from a distant land, when they see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which the Lord has 1afflicted it, will say,

23 ‘All its land is abrimstone and salt, ba burning waste, 1unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of cSodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.’

24 “All the nations will say, ‘aWhy has the Lord done thus to this land? Why this great 1outburst of anger?’

25 “Then men will say, ‘aBecause they forsook 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.

26 ‘They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not 1allotted to them.

27 ‘Therefore, the anger of the Lord burned against that land, ato bring upon it every curse which is written in this book;

28 and athe Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.’

29 “aThe secret things belong to the Lord our God, but bthe things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.