¹⁸ Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you ^(A)a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, ¹⁹ one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. ²⁰ The Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather ^(B)the anger of the Lord and ^(C)his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the Lord ^(D)will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ And the Lord will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. ²² And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, ^(E)will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the Lord has made it sick— ²³ the whole land burned out with brimstone and ^(F)salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, ^(G)an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, ^(H)Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and wrath— ²⁴ all the nations ^(I)will say, ^(J)‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ ²⁵ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned 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,