The Covenant in Moab

1These are the words of the covenant which Yahweh commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

2Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, You have seen all that Yahweh did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land; 3the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders: 4but Yahweh has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day. 5I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not grown old on you, and your shoes have not grown old on your feet. 6You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink; that you may know that I am Yahweh your God. 7When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we struck them: 8and we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of the Manassites. 9Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

10You stand this day all of you before Yahweh your God; your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, 11your little ones, your wives, and your foreigner who is in the midst of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water; 12that you may enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God, and into his oath, which Yahweh your God makes with you this day; 13that he may establish you this day to himself for a people, and that he may be to you a God, as he spoke to you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

14Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath, 15but with him who stands here with us this day before Yahweh our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day 16(for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed; 17and you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them); 18lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from Yahweh our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood; 19and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to destroy the moist with the dry." 20Yahweh will not pardon him, but then the anger of Yahweh and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under the sky. 21Yahweh will set him apart to evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.

22The generation to come, your children who shall rise up after you, and the foreigner who shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which Yahweh has made it sick; 23[and that] the whole land of it is sulfur, and salt, [and] a burning, [that] it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath: 24even all the nations shall say, "Why has Yahweh done thus to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?" 25Then men shall say, "Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, 26and went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods that they didn't know, and that he had not given to them: 27therefore the anger of Yahweh was kindled against this land, to bring on it all the curse that is written in this book; 28and Yahweh rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as at this day."

29The secret things belong to Yahweh our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.