Deuteronomy 29:3-13

3 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders:

4 but the LORD has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.

5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not grown old on you, and your shoe has not grown old on your foot.

6 You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink; that you may know that I am the LORD your God.

7 When you came to this place, Sichon the king of Heshbon, and `Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we struck them:

8 and we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Re'uveni, and to the Gadi, and to the half-tribe of the Manashshi.

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 all of you before the LORD your God; your heads, your tribes, your Zakenim, and your officers, even all the men of Yisra'el,

11 your little ones, your wives, and your sojourner who is in the midst of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water;

12 that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you this day;

13 that 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 Avraham, to Yitzchak, and to Ya`akov.

Deuteronomy 29:3-13 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO DEUTERONOMY 29

This chapter begins with an intimation of another covenant the Lord was about to make with the people of Israel, De 29:1; and, to prepare their minds to an attention to it, various things which the Lord had done for them are recited, De 29:2-9; the persons are particularly mentioned with whom the covenant would now be made, the substance of which is, that they should be his people, and he their God, De 29:10-15; and since they had seen the idols in Egypt and other countries, with which they might have been ensnared, they are cautioned against idolatry and idolaters, as being most provoking to the Lord, De 29:16-21; which would bring destruction not only on particular persons, but upon their whole land, to the amazement of posterity; who, inquiring the reason of it, will be told, it was because they forsook the covenant of God, and particularly were guilty of idolatry, which, whether privately or openly committed, would be always punished, De 29:22-29.