Words of the Covenant

1These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

2And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land;

3The great trials which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:

4Yet the LORD has not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.

5And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not worn out upon you, and your shoes have not worn out upon your foot.

6You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink: that you might know that I am the LORD your God.

7And when you came unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we defeated them:

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

9Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

10You stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

11Your little ones, your wives, and your stranger that is in your camp, from the hewer of your wood unto the drawer of your water:

12That you should enter into covenant with the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you this day:

13That he may establish you today for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto you a God, as he has said unto you, and as he has sworn unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

14Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;

15But with him that stands here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

16(For you know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which you passed by;

17And you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)

18Lest there should be among you a man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears bitterness or wormwood;

19And it comes to pass, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

20The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.

21And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:

22So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD has laid upon it;

23And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor does it bear, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

24Even all nations shall say, Why has the LORD done thus unto this land? what does the heat of this great anger mean?

25Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:

26For they went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:

27And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

28And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

29The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.