1 These are the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
2 Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: "You have seen with your own eyes everything the LORD did in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to his whole land,
3 the great testings your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders.
4 Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.
5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and the sandal on your foot has not worn out.
6 You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you would know that I am the LORD your God.
7 When you reached this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan marched out to fight us, but we defeated them.
8 We captured their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.
9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant and carry them out, so that you may succeed in everything you do.
10 Today all of you are standing in the presence of the LORD your God: your leaders, your tribes, your elders, and your officials, every man of Israel,
11 your children and your wives, and the sojourner in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water,
12 so that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into the oath he is making with you today,
13 to confirm you today as his people and to be your God, as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
14 It is not with you alone that I am making this covenant and this oath,
15 but with everyone who stands here with us today in the presence of the LORD our God, and also with everyone who is not here with us today.
16 You yourselves know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we made our way through the nations along our route.
17 You saw their abominations and their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, that were among them.
18 Be sure that there is no man or woman, no clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Be sure there is no root among you producing poison and wormwood,
19 someone who hears the words of this oath and congratulates himself in his heart, thinking, 'I will be safe, though I follow the stubbornness of my own heart,' to sweep away the watered along with the parched.
20 The LORD will never be willing to pardon him. Instead, the LORD's anger and jealousy will smoke against that man, every curse written in this book will rest on him, and the LORD will wipe out his name from under heaven.
21 The LORD will set him apart from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, in keeping with all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.
22 The generation to come, your children who follow you, and the foreigner who comes from a far country will speak of it when they see the plagues of that land and the diseases the LORD has inflicted on it,
23 the whole land a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and bearing nothing, with no plant growing in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and fury.
24 All the nations will ask, 'Why has the LORD treated this land like this? Why this fierce, great anger?'
25 And the answer will be, 'It is because they abandoned 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 off and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they had not known and that he had not given to them.
27 Therefore the LORD's anger blazed against this land, and he brought on it every curse written in this book.
28 In anger, fury, and great indignation the LORD tore them out of their land and threw them into another land, as it is today.'
29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may carry out all the words of this law.