Deuteronomy

29 These are the words of the covenant which Yahweh commanded Moses to solemnise with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab,—besides the covenant, which he solemnised with them in Horeb.

2 And Moses called unto all Israel and said unto them,—Ye yourselves saw all that Yahweh did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, unto Pharaoh and unto all his servants and unto all his land:

3 the great provings which thine own eyes saw,—those great signs and wonders:

4 yet hath Yahweh not given unto you a heart to know, or eyes to see or ears to hear,—until this day.

5 I led you, therefore, forty years in the desert,—your mantles fell not with age from off you, even thy sandal fell not with age from off thy foot:

6 Bread ye did not eat, and wine and strong drink ye did not drink,—that ye might know that I, Yahweh, was your God.

7 And when ye entered into this place, then came forth Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan to meet us in battle, and we smote them;

8 and we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto the Reubenites and unto the Gadites,—and unto the half tribe of Manasseh.

9 Ye must therefore keep the words of this covenant, and do them,—that ye may prosper in all that ye do.

10 Ye are stationed to-day, all of you, before Yahweh your God,—your heads, your tribes, and your elders, and your officers, every man of Israel;

11 your little ones, your wives, and thy sojourner that is in the midst of thy camps,—from him that heweth thy wood unto him that draweth thy water:

12 that thou mayest pass through into the covenant of Yahweh thy God and into his oath,—which Yahweh thy God is solemnising with thee to-day:

13 that he may confirm thee to-day as his own people, while he becometh thine own God, as he spake unto thee,—and as he sware unto thy fathers, unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob.

14 And not with you alone am I solemnising this covenant and this oath;

15 but with him who is here with us standing to-day before Yahweh our God,—and with him who is not here with us to-day.

16 (For ye know, how we dwelt in the land of Egypt,—and how we passed through the midst of the nations which ye did pass through;

17 and ye saw their disgusting images, and their manufactured gods,—the wood and the stone, the silver and the gold that are with them.)

18 Lest there be among you—a man or a woman or a family or a tribe whose heart is turning to-day from Yahweh our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations,—lest there be among you a root fruitful of poison and wormwood;

19 and so it come to pass, while he is hearing the words of this oath, that he will bless himself in his heart—saying, Prosperity shall I have, although in the stubbornness of my heart I go on,—so that the drunkenness addeth to the thirst:

20 Yahweh will not be willing to forgive him, but then will the anger of Yahweh and his jealousy smoke against that man, and all the oath that is written in this scroll shall settle down upon him,—and Yahweh wipe out his name from under the heavens;

21 and Yahweh single him out for calamity, out of all the tribes of Israel,—according to all the oaths of the covenant that is written in this scroll of the law.

22 So that the generation coming after—your sons who shall rise up after you, and the foreigner who shall come in from a far-off land, will say—when they see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses thereof wherewith Yahweh hath made it sick:

23 brimstone and salt burning up all the land thereof, it shall not be sown, neither shall it shoot forth, neither shall there come up thereon any herbage,—like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger and in his wrath:

24 yea all the nations will say, For what cause hath Yahweh done thus unto this land? what meaneth this great heat of anger?

25 Then will men say, Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers,—which he solemnised with them, when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt;

26 and went and served other gods, and bowed down to them,—gods which they had not known, and in which he had given them no share:

27 therefore did the anger of Yahweh kindle upon that land,—to bring in upon it all the curse that is written in this scroll;

28 and therefore hath Yahweh rooted them out from off their own soil, in anger and in wrath and in great indignation,—and cast them into another land as at this day.

29 The secret things [belong unto Yahweh our God] and the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children unto times age-abiding, that we may do all the words of this law.