Love and Obey

11 You must love the Lord your God and keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments always. ² Know this day that I am not speaking with your children who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord your God, His greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm, ³ and His signs and His works which He did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to all his land, ⁴ and what He did to the army of Egypt, to their horses, and to their chariots, when He made the water of the Red Sea to flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord utterly destroyed them, ⁵ and what He did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place, ⁶ and what He did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, their households, their tents, and everything that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel. ⁷ But your eyes have seen all the great deeds of the Lord which He did.

⁸ Therefore you must keep all the commandments which I am commanding you today, so that you may be strong and go in and possess the land which you are going to possess; ⁹ and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰ For the land which you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt from where you came, where you sowed your seed and watered it with your foot like a vegetable garden, ¹¹ but the land, which you are entering to possess, is a land of hills and valleys and drinks water from the rain of heaven, ¹² a land for which the Lord your God cares. The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year.

¹³ It will be, if you will diligently obey My commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹⁴ then I will give you the rain of your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. ¹⁵ I will provide grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be full.

¹⁶ Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived, and you turn away and serve other gods and worship them. ¹⁷ Then the Lord’s wrath will be inflamed against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the land will not yield its fruit, and you will quickly perish from the good land which the Lord is giving you. ¹⁸ Therefore you must fix these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, so that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. ¹⁹ You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. ²⁰ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the days of heaven on the earth.

²² For if you diligently keep all these commandments which I am commanding you to do—to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him— ²³ then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. ²⁴ Every place where the soles of your feet tread will be yours. Your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, as far as the Mediterranean Sea. ²⁵ No man will be able to resist you, for the Lord your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land where you shall tread, just as He has spoken to you.

²⁶ See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: ²⁷ the blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you today, ²⁸ and the curse, if you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way which I am commanding you today, to go after other gods which you have not known. ²⁹ Now it shall be, when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you are entering to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰ Are they not on the other side of the Jordan, west where the sun goes down, in the land of the Canaanites, who dwell in the plain opposite Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh? ³¹ For you will cross over the Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and you will possess it, and dwell in it. ³² You must be careful to do all the statutes and judgments which I am setting before you today.