Warnings and teachings about future disobedience

²⁵ Once you have had children and grandchildren and have grown old on the land, if you ruin things by making an idol, in any form whatsoever, and do what is evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and anger him, ²⁶ I call heaven and earth as my witnesses against you today: You will definitely disappear—and quickly—from the land that you are crossing over the Jordan River to possess. You won’t extend your time there but will instead be totally destroyed. ²⁷ The Lord will scatter you among the nations. Only a very few of you will survive in the countries where the Lord will drag you. ²⁸ There you will worship other^[a] gods, made of wood and stone by human hands—gods that cannot see, listen, eat, or smell. ²⁹ You will seek the Lord your God from there, and you will find him^[b] if you seek him with all your heart and with all your being. ³⁰ In your distress, when all these things happen to you in the future, you will return to the Lord your God and you will obey his voice, ³¹ because the Lord your God is a compassionate God. He won’t let you go, he won’t destroy you, and he won’t forget the covenant that he swore to your ancestors.