¹⁸ so that there may not be among you man or woman or family or tribe, ^(A)whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations, ^(B)and that there may not be among you a root bearing ^(C)bitterness or wormwood; ¹⁹ and so it may not happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall have peace, even though I ^[a]follow the ^(D)dictates of my heart’—^(E)as though the drunkard could be included with the sober.

^20 (F)“The Lord would not spare him; for then ^(G)the anger of the Lord and ^(H)His jealousy would burn against that man, and every curse that is written in this book would settle on him, and the Lord ^(I)would blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ And the Lord ^(J)would separate him from all the tribes of Israel for adversity, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this Book of the ^(K)Law, ²² so that the coming generation of your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, would say, when they ^(L)see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid on it:

²³ ‘The whole land is brimstone, ^(M)salt, and burning; it is not sown, nor does it bear, nor does any grass grow there, ^(N)like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and His wrath.’ ²⁴ All nations would say, ^(O)‘Why has the Lord done so to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?’ ²⁵ Then people would say: ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt; ²⁶ for they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods that they did not know and that He had not given to them. ²⁷ Then the anger of the Lord was aroused against this land, ^(P)to bring on it every curse that is written in this book. ²⁸ And the Lord ^(Q)uprooted them from their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.’