² and return to the Lord your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today,^(A)

⁹ but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place where I have chosen to establish my name.’^(A)

²⁸ There you will serve gods made by human hands, objects of wood and stone that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.^{(A) 29} From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.^{(B) 30} In your distress, when all these things have happened to you in time to come, you will return to the Lord your God and heed him. ³¹ Because the Lord your God is a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.^(C)