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¹ THESE are the words of the covenant which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.² And Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, You have seen all that the LORD did to Pharaoh before your eyes in the land of Egypt and to all his servants and to all his army and to all his land;³ The great trials which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great marvels which you saw;⁴ Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear.⁵ And I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes are not worn out upon you and your shoes are not worn out upon your feet.⁶ You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink, that you might know that I am the LORD your God.⁷ And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Mathnin came out against us to battle, and we slew them;⁸ And we took their land and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites and to the Gadites and to the half tribe of Manasseh.⁹ Keep therefore the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

¹⁰ You stand this day before the LORD your God, all the heads of your tribes, your elders and your scribes, all the men of Israel,¹¹ Your little ones, your wives, and the stranger who is in your camp, from the gatherer of your wood to the drawer of your water;¹² That you may not transgress the covenant of the LORD your God, and the oath of the LORD your God, which he made with you this day;¹³ Because he will establish you this day a people to himself, and he will be to you the God, as he has promised you, and as he has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.¹⁴ Neither is it with you only that I do make this covenant and this oath;¹⁵ But with all who stand here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day¹⁶ (For you know how we have sojourned 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, overlaid with silver and gold).¹⁸ Perhaps there is among you a man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; or perhaps there is among you a root that springs up and bears poison and wormwood;¹⁹ And when he hears the words of this oath, he shall reason in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst;²⁰ The LORD would not forgive him, but then the anger of the LORD and his zealousness would be grievous against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under the heaven.²¹ And the LORD shall single him out to misfortune from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law.²² So that the generation to come, your children that shall rise up after you and the strangers that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses which the LORD has brought upon it;²³ Laying it waste with brimstone and with scorched salt, that the whole land is not sown, nor any grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and in his wrath;²⁴ And all the nations shall say, Why has the LORD done thus to this land? And why has his anger kindled so much?²⁵ Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:²⁶ And they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they had not known, nor had they divided spoils among them;²⁷ Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book;²⁸ And the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and in wrath and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.²⁹ The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may keep and do all the words of this law.