Deuteronomy 29:16-29

Modern English Version

¹⁶ (for you know that we lived in the land of Egypt and how we came through the nations which you passed by, ¹⁷ and you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them); ¹⁸ lest there 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 gods of these nations, and lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit; ¹⁹ and it happens that, when he hears the words of this covenant, he blesses himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,” thus destroying the watered ground with the dry. ²⁰ The Lord will not spare him; rather the anger of the Lord and His jealousy will smolder against that man. All the curses that are written in this book will rest on him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ The Lord will single him out for disaster out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this Book of the Law.

²² The generation to come, your children who will rise up after you and the foreigner who will come from a far land, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid on it, will say, ²³ “The whole land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows there, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and wrath.” ²⁴ All nations will say, “Why has the Lord done such to this land? What does the heatedness of this great anger mean?”

²⁵ Then men will 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 worshipped them, gods which they did not know and which He had not given to them. ²⁷ The anger of the Lord burned against this land, bringing on it all the curses that are written in this book. ²⁸ The Lord rooted them out of their land in anger and in wrath and in great indignation, and threw them into another land, as it is today.”

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