¹⁴ “I make this covenant and this oath, ^(A)not with you alone, ¹⁵ but with him who stands here with us today before the Lord our God, ^(B)as well as with him who is not here with us today ¹⁶ (for you know that we dwelt in the land of Egypt and that we came through the nations which you passed by, ¹⁷ and you saw their ^[a]abominations and their idols which were among them—wood and stone and silver and gold); ¹⁸ so that there may not be among you man or woman or family or tribe, ^(C)whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations, ^(D)and that there may not be among you a root bearing ^(E)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 ^[b]follow the ^(F)dictates of my heart’—^(G)as though the drunkard could be included with the sober.

^20 (H)“The Lord would not spare him; for then ^(I)the anger of the Lord and ^(J)His jealousy would burn against that man, and every curse that is written in this book would settle on him, and the Lord ^(K)would blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ And the Lord ^(L)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 ^(M)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 ^(N)see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid on it:

²³ ‘The whole land is brimstone, ^(O)salt, and burning; it is not sown, nor does it bear, nor does any grass grow there, ^(P)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, ^(Q)‘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, ^(R)to bring on it every curse that is written in this book. ²⁸ And the Lord ^(S)uprooted them from their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.’