1These are the words of the covenant that Yahweh commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he made with them at Horeb.
2Then Moses called out to all Israel and said to them: You yourselves have seen all that Yahweh did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land—
3the great trials that your eyes saw, those great signs and wonders.
4Yet Yahweh has not given you a heart to know, or eyes to see, or ears to hear, to this very day.
5I led you forty years in the wilderness; your garments did not wear out on you, and your sandal did not wear out on your foot.
6You did not eat bread, and you did not drink wine or strong drink, so that you would know that I am Yahweh your God.
7When you came to this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to meet us in battle, and we struck them down.
8We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites.
9So keep the words of this covenant and do them, so that you may prosper in all that you do.
10You are standing today, all of you, before Yahweh your God—your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, every man of Israel—
11your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in the midst of your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water—
12so that you may enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God, and into his sworn oath, which Yahweh your God is cutting with you today,
13in order to establish you today as a people for himself, and that he may be God to you, just as he spoke to you and just as he swore to your fathers—to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
14And it is not with you alone that I am cutting this covenant and this sworn oath,
15but with whoever is here standing with us today before Yahweh our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.
16For you yourselves know how we dwelt in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the midst of the nations that you passed through.
17And you saw their detestable things and their idols—wood and stone, silver and gold—that were among them.
18Beware lest there be among you a man or woman, or a clan or tribe, whose heart is turning away today from Yahweh our God to go and serve the gods of those nations—lest there be among you a root bearing poison and wormwood,
19and when he hears the words of this oath, he blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I will have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart’—so as to sweep away the watered along with the dry.
20Yahweh will not be willing to forgive him; rather, at that time Yahweh’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and every oath-curse written in this book will settle upon him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under the heavens.
21And Yahweh will single him out for disaster from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the oath-curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Torah.
22Then the later generation, your children who arise after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, will say—when they see the plagues of that land and its diseases with which Yahweh has made it sick—
23‘The whole land is brimstone and salt, a burnt waste, not sown, not sprouting, with no vegetation coming up in it—like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger and his wrath’—
24then all the nations will say, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this land? What is this great burning anger?’
25And they will say, ‘It is because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which he cut with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt,
26and they went and served other gods and bowed down to them—gods that they had not known and that he had not allotted to them.
27So the anger of Yahweh burned against that land, to bring upon it every curse written in this book;
28and Yahweh uprooted them from their soil in anger and wrath and great fury, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.’
29The hidden things belong to Yahweh our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this Torah.
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