²⁵ When you father children and children’s children, and you have been long in the land, and then corrupt yourselves, and make a carved image in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in Yahweh your God’s sight to provoke him to anger, ²⁶ I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land which you go over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days on it, but will utterly be destroyed. ²⁷ Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where Yahweh will lead you away. ²⁸ There you will serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. ²⁹ But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God, and you will find him when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. ³⁰ When you are in oppression, and all these things have come on you, in the latter days you shall return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice. ³¹ For Yahweh your God is a merciful God. He will not fail you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which he swore to them.