Deuteronomy 29:16-29

Amplified Bible

¹⁶ (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the nations along the way; ¹⁷ and you have seen their detestable acts and their [repulsive] idols of wood and stone, [lifeless images] of silver and gold, which they had with them), ¹⁸ so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the [false] gods of these nations; so that there will not be among you a root [of idolatry] bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood (bitterness). ¹⁹ It will happen that when he (a renegade) hears the words of this oath, and he ^[a]imagines himself as blessed, saying, ‘I will have peace and safety even though I walk within the stubbornness of my heart [rejecting God and His law], in order that the watered land dwindles away along with the dry [destroying everything],’ ²⁰ the Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but then the anger of the Lord and His ^[b]jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him; the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ Then the Lord will single him out for disaster from all the tribes of Israel [making an example of him], according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this Book of the Law.

²² Now the next generation, your children who come after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, when they see the plagues of this land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it, will say, ²³ ‘The whole land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it; it is like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and wrath.’ ²⁴ All the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done this thing to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’ ²⁵ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned (broke) the covenant of the Lord, the 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, [false] gods whom they have not known and whom He had not allotted (given) to them. ²⁷ So the anger of the Lord burned against this land, bringing on it every curse that is written in this book; ²⁸ and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and in wrath and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.’

²⁹ “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things which are revealed and disclosed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may do all of the words of this law.