Deuteronomy 29:24

24 Indeed, all nations will ask: Why did the LORD do this to this land? What led to this terrible display of anger?

Deuteronomy 29:24 Meaning and Commentary

Deuteronomy 29:24

Even all nations shall say
For the destruction of this land, and the people of it, would be, as it has been, so very great and awful, and so very remarkable and surprising, that the fame of it would be heard among all the nations of the world, as it has been; who, upon hearing the sad report of it, would ask the following questions:

wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land?
so distinguished from all others for the fruitfulness and pleasantness of it; the people, the inhabitants of which, he chose, above all others, to be a special and peculiar people; and where he had a temple built for him, and where he had his residence, and worship used to be given unto him:

what [meaneth] the heat of this great anger?
what is the reason of his stirring up his fierce wrath, and causing it to burn in so furious a manner? surely it must be something very horrible and provoking indeed!

Deuteronomy 29:24 In-Context

22 Future generations, your children after you, or foreigners from distant lands will say: Look at all that land's plagues and the sicknesses that the LORD laid on it!

23 Look at all its land burned by sulfur and salt, unsuitable for planting, unable to grow or produce any vegetation, as devastated as Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD devastated in anger and wrath!

24 Indeed, all nations will ask: Why did the LORD do this to this land? What led to this terrible display of anger?

25 They will deduce: It was because those people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, their ancestors' God, which he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt.

26 They followed other gods, serving them and worshipping them—other gods that they hadn't experienced before and that the Lord hadn't designated for them.