²⁵ “When you have had children and children’s children and become complacent in the land, if you act corruptly by making an idol in the form of anything, thus doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God and provoking him to anger,^{(A) 26} I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to occupy; you will not live long on it but will be utterly destroyed.^{(B) 27} The Lord will scatter you among the peoples; only a few of you will be left among the nations where the Lord will lead you.^{(C) 28} There you will serve gods made by human hands, objects of wood and stone that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.^{(D) 29} From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.^{(E) 30} In your distress, when all these things have happened to you in time to come, you will return to the Lord your God and heed him. ³¹ Because the Lord your God is a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.^(F)