¹⁵ otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with their gods and ^(A)sacrifice to their gods, and someone ^(B)might invite you ^[a]to eat of his sacrifice,

²⁵ “When you ^[a]become the father of children and children’s children and have remained long in the land, and ^(A)act corruptly, and ^(B)make an ^[b]idol in the form of anything, and ^(C)do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord your God so as to provoke Him to anger, ²⁶ I ^(D)call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will ^(E)surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not ^[c]live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. ²⁷ The Lord will ^(F)scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord drives you. ^28 (G)There you will serve gods, the work of man’s hands, ^(H)wood and stone, ^(I)which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell.

Israel Serves Baals

¹¹ Then the sons of Israel did ^(A)evil in the sight of the Lord and ^[a]served the ^(B)Baals, ¹² and ^(C)they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger.

¹⁷ Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way ^(A)in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers.