¹⁶ For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we traveled through the midst of the nations that you traveled^[a] through. ¹⁷ And you have seen their detestable things and their idols of wood and stone, silver, and gold that were among them, ¹⁸ so that there is not^[b] among you a man or a woman or a clan or a tribe whose heart^[c] turns today^[d] from being with Yahweh our God to go to serve the gods of these nations, so that there is not among you a root sprouting poison and wormwood. ¹⁹ And then when he hears the words of this oath, then^[e] he will assure himself^[f] in his heart, saying,^[g] ‘Safety shall be mine even though I go in the stubbornness of my heart,’^[h] thereby destroying the well-watered land along with the parched.^{[i] 20} Yahweh will not be willing to forgive him, for by then the anger of Yahweh will smoke, and his passion against that man and all the curses written in this scroll will descend on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ And Yahweh will single him out for calamity out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in the scroll of this law.

²² “And the next generation, that is, your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a distant land, when^[j] they will see the plagues of that land and its diseases that Yahweh has inflicted upon it, will say, ²³ ‘All its land is brimstone and salt left by fire, none of its land will be sown,^[k] and it will not make plants sprout out and it will not grow any vegetation; it is as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Adman and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overturned in his anger and in his wrath.’ ²⁴ And all the nations will say, ‘Why^[l] has Yahweh done such a thing^[m] to this land? What caused the fierceness of this great anger?’ ²⁵ And they will say,^[n] ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their ancestors,^[o] which he made^[p] with them when he brought them out^[q] from the land of Egypt. ²⁶ And they went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods whom they did not know them and he^[r] had not allotted to them. ²⁷ So the anger of Yahweh was kindled^[s] against that land to bring upon it all the curses written in this scroll, ²⁸ and Yahweh uprooted them from their land in anger and in wrath and in great fury, and he cast them into another land, just as it is today.’^[t]

²⁹ “The hidden things belong to Yahweh^[u] our God, but the revealed things belong to us^[v] to know and to our children forever,^[w] in order to do all the words of this law.”