Deuteronomy 29:3-23

3 With your own eyes you saw the great troubles, signs, and miracles.

4 But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands; you don't really understand what you see with your eyes or hear with your ears.

5 I led you through the desert for forty years, and during that time neither your clothes nor sandals wore out.

6 You ate no bread and drank no wine or beer. This was so you would understand that I am the Lord your God.

7 When you came to this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to fight us, but we defeated them.

8 We captured their land and gave it to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and East Manasseh to be their own.

9 You must carefully obey everything in this agreement so that you will succeed in everything you do.

10 Today you are all standing here before the Lord your God -- your leaders and important men, your older leaders, officers, and all the other men of Israel,

11 your wives and children and the foreigners who live among you, who chop your wood and carry your water.

12 You are all here to enter into an agreement and a promise with the Lord your God, an agreement the Lord your God is making with you today.

13 This will make you today his own people. He will be your God, as he told you and as he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

14 But I am not just making this agreement and its promises with you

15 who are standing here before the Lord your God today, but also with those who are not here today.

16 You know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries when we came here.

17 You saw their hateful idols made of wood, stone, silver, and gold.

18 Make sure no man, woman, family group, or tribe among you leaves the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. They would be to you like a plant that grows bitter, poisonous fruit.

19 These are the kind of people who hear these curses but bless themselves, thinking, "We will be safe even though we continue doing what we want to do." Those people may destroy all of your land, both wet and dry.

20 The Lord will not forgive them. His anger will be like a burning fire against those people, and all the curses written in this book will come on them. The Lord will destroy any memory of them on the earth.

21 He will separate them from all the tribes of Israel for punishment. All the curses of the Agreement that are written in this Book of the Teachings will happen to them.

22 Your children who will come after you, as well as foreigners from faraway lands, will see the disasters that come to this land and the diseases the Lord will send on it. They will say,

23 "The land is nothing but burning cinders and salt. Nothing is planted, nothing grows, and nothing blooms. It is like Sodom and Gomorrah, and Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed because he was very angry."

Deuteronomy 29:3-23 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.