Deuteronomy 28; Deuteronomy 29; Deuteronomy 30; Deuteronomy 31; Deuteronomy 32

Deuteronomy 28

1 "If you obey the Lord your God and faithfully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, he will make you greater than any other nation on earth.

2 Obey the Lord your God and all these blessings will be yours:

3 "The Lord will bless your towns and your fields.

4 "The Lord will bless you with many children, with abundant crops, and with many cattle and sheep.

5 "The Lord will bless your grain crops and the food you prepare from them.

6 "The Lord will bless everything you do.

7 "The Lord will defeat your enemies when they attack you. They will attack from one direction, but they will run from you in all directions.

8 "The Lord your God will bless your work and fill your barns with grain. He will bless you in the land that he is giving you.

9 "If you obey the Lord your God and do everything he commands, he will make you his own people, as he has promised.

10 Then all the peoples on earth will see that the Lord has chosen you to be his own people, and they will be afraid of you.

11 The Lord will give you many children, many cattle, and abundant crops in the land that he promised your ancestors to give you.

12 He will send rain in season from his rich storehouse in the sky and bless all your work, so that you will lend to many nations, but you will not have to borrow from any.

13 The Lord your God will make you the leader among the nations and not a follower; you will always prosper and never fail if you obey faithfully all his commands that I am giving you today.

14 But you must never disobey them in any way, or worship and serve other gods.

15 "But if you disobey the Lord your God and do not faithfully keep all his commands and laws that I am giving you today, all these evil things will happen to you:

16 "The Lord will curse your towns and your fields.

17 "The Lord will curse your grain crops and the food you prepare from them.

18 "The Lord will curse you by giving you only a few children, poor crops, and few cattle and sheep.

19 "The Lord will curse everything you do.

20 "If you do evil and reject the Lord, he will bring on you disaster, confusion, and trouble in everything you do, until you are quickly and completely destroyed.

21 He will send disease after disease on you until there is not one of you left in the land that you are about to occupy.

22 The Lord will strike you with infectious diseases, with swelling and fever; he will send drought and scorching winds to destroy your crops. These disasters will be with you until you die.

23 No rain will fall, and your ground will become as hard as iron.

24 Instead of rain, the Lord will send down duststorms and sandstorms until you are destroyed.

25 "The Lord will give your enemies victory over you. You will attack them from one direction, but you will run from them in all directions, and all the people on earth will be terrified when they see what happens to you.

26 When you die, birds and wild animals will come and eat your bodies, and there will be no one to scare them off.

27 The Lord will send boils on you, as he did on the Egyptians. He will make your bodies break out with sores. You will be covered with scabs, and you will itch, but there will be no cure.

28 The Lord will make you lose your mind; he will strike you with blindness and confusion.

29 You will grope about in broad daylight like someone blind, and you will not be able to find your way. You will not prosper in anything you do. You will be constantly oppressed and robbed, and there will be no one to help you.

30 "You will be engaged to a young woman - but someone else will marry her. You will build a house - but never live in it. You will plant a vineyard - but never eat its grapes.

31 Your cattle will be butchered before your very eyes, but you will not eat any of the meat. Your donkeys will be dragged away while you look on, and they will not be given back to you. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and there will be no one to help you.

32 Your sons and daughters will be given as slaves to foreigners while you look on. Every day you will strain your eyes, looking in vain for your children to return.

33 A foreign nation will take all the crops that you have worked so hard to grow, while you receive nothing but constant oppression and harsh treatment.

34 Your sufferings will make you lose your mind.

35 The Lord will cover your legs with incurable, painful sores; boils will cover you from head to foot.

36 "The Lord will take you and your king away to a foreign land, where neither you nor your ancestors ever lived before; there you will serve gods made of wood and stone.

37 In the countries to which the Lord will scatter you, the people will be shocked at what has happened to you; they will make fun of you and ridicule you.

38 "You will plant plenty of seed, but reap only a small harvest, because the locusts will eat your crops.

39 You will plant vineyards and take care of them, but you will not gather their grapes or drink wine from them, because worms will eat the vines.

40 Olive trees will grow everywhere in your land, but you will not have any olive oil, because the olives will drop off.

41 You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, because they will be taken away as prisoners of war.

42 All your trees and crops will be devoured by insects.

43 "Foreigners who live in your land will gain more and more power, while you gradually lose yours.

44 They will have money to lend you, but you will have none to lend them. In the end they will be your rulers.

45 "All these disasters will come on you, and they will be with you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and keep all the laws that he gave you.

46 They will be the evidence of God's judgment on you and your descendants forever.

47 The Lord blessed you in every way, but you would not serve him with glad and joyful hearts.

48 So then, you will serve the enemies that the Lord is going to send against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, and naked - in need of everything. The Lord will oppress you harshly until you are destroyed.

49 The Lord will bring against you a nation from the ends of the earth, a nation whose language you do not know. They will swoop down on you like an eagle.

50 They will be ruthless and show no mercy to anyone, young or old.

51 They will eat your livestock and your crops, and you will starve to death. They will not leave you any grain, wine, olive oil, cattle, or sheep; and you will die.

52 They will attack every town in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and the high, fortified walls in which you trust will fall.

53 "When your enemies are besieging your towns, you will become so desperate for food that you will even eat the children that the Lord your God has given you.

54 Even the most refined man of noble birth will become so desperate during the siege that he will eat some of his own children because he has no other food. He will not even give any to his brother or to the wife he loves or to any of his children who are left.

56 Even the most refined woman of noble birth, so rich that she has never had to walk anywhere, will behave in the same way. When the enemy besieges her town, she will become so desperate for food that she will secretly eat her newborn child and the afterbirth as well. She will not share them with the husband she loves or with any of her children.

58 "If you do not obey faithfully all of God's teachings that are written in this book and if you do not honor the wonderful and awesome name of the Lord your God,

59 he will send on you and on your descendants incurable diseases and horrible epidemics that can never be stopped.

60 He will bring on you once again all the dreadful diseases you experienced in Egypt, and you will never recover.

61 He will also send all kinds of diseases and epidemics that are not mentioned in this book of God's laws and teachings, and you will be destroyed.

62 Although you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, only a few of you will survive, because you did not obey the Lord your God.

63 Just as the Lord took delight in making you prosper and in making you increase in number, so he will take delight in destroying you and in bringing ruin on you. You will be uprooted from the land that you are about to occupy.

64 "The Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve gods made of wood and stone, gods that neither you nor your ancestors have ever worshiped before.

65 You will find no peace anywhere, no place to call your own; the Lord will overwhelm you with anxiety, hopelessness, and despair.

66 Your life will always be in danger. Day and night you will be filled with terror, and you will live in constant fear of death.

67 Your hearts will pound with fear at everything you see. Every morning you will wish for evening; every evening you will wish for morning.

68 The Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, even though he said that you would never have to go there again. There you will try to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will want to buy you."

Deuteronomy 29

1 These are the terms of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab; all this was in addition to the covenant which the Lord had made with them at Mount Sinai.

2 Moses called together all the people of Israel and said to them, "You saw for yourselves what the Lord did to the king of Egypt, to his officials, and to his entire country.

3 You saw the terrible plagues, the miracles, and the great wonders that the Lord performed.

4 But to this very day he has not let you understand what you have experienced.

5 For forty years the Lord led you through the desert, and your clothes and sandals never wore out.

6 You did not have bread to eat or wine or beer to drink, but the Lord provided for your needs in order to teach you that he is your God.

7 And when we came to this place, King Sihon of Heshbon and King Og of Bashan came out to fight against us. But we defeated them,

8 took their land, and divided it among the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh.

9 Obey faithfully all the terms of this covenant, so that you will be successful in everything you do.

10 "Today you are standing in the presence of the Lord your God, all of you - your leaders and officials, your men,

11 women, and children, and the foreigners who live among you and cut wood and carry water for you.

12 You are here today to enter into this covenant that the Lord your God is making with you and to accept its obligations,

13 so that the Lord may now confirm you as his people and be your God, as he promised you and your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

14 You are not the only ones with whom the Lord is making this covenant with its obligations.

15 He is making it with all of us who stand here in his presence today and also with our descendants who are not yet born.

16 "You remember what life was like in Egypt and what it was like to travel through the territory of other nations.

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

18 Make sure that no man, woman, family, or tribe standing here today turns from the Lord our God to worship the gods of other nations. This would be like a root that grows to be a bitter and poisonous plant.

19 Make sure that there is no one here today who hears these solemn demands and yet convinces himself that all will be well with him, even if he stubbornly goes his own way. That would destroy all of you, good and evil alike.

20 The Lord will not forgive such a man. Instead, the Lord's burning anger will flame up against him, and all the disasters written in this book will fall on him until the Lord has destroyed him completely.

21 The Lord will make an example of him before all the tribes of Israel and will bring disaster on him in accordance with all the curses listed in the covenant that is written in this book of the Lord's teachings.

22 "In future generations your descendants and foreigners from distant lands will see the disasters and sufferings that the Lord has brought on your land.

23 The fields will be a barren waste, covered with sulfur and salt; nothing will be planted, and not even weeds will grow there. Your land will be like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed when he was furiously angry.

24 Then the whole world will ask, "Why did the Lord do this to their land? What was the reason for his fierce anger?'

25 And the answer will be, "It is because the Lord's people broke the covenant they had made with him, the God of their ancestors, when he brought them out of Egypt.

26 They served other gods that they had never worshiped before, gods that the Lord had forbidden them to worship.

27 And so the Lord became angry with his people and brought on their land all the disasters written in this book.

28 The Lord became furiously angry, and in his great anger he uprooted them from their land and threw them into a foreign land, and there they are today.'

29 "There are some things that the Lord our God has kept secret; but he has revealed his Law, and we and our descendants are to obey it forever.

Deuteronomy 30

1 "I have now given you a choice between a blessing and a curse. When all these things have happened to you, and you are living among the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you, you will remember the choice I gave you.

2 If you and your descendants will turn back to the Lord and with all your heart obey his commands that I am giving you today,

3 then the Lord your God will have mercy on you. He will bring you back from the nations where he has scattered you, and he will make you prosperous again.

4 Even if you are scattered to the farthest corners of the earth, the Lord your God will gather you together and bring you back,

5 so that you may again take possession of the land where your ancestors once lived. And he will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your ancestors ever were.

6 The Lord your God will give you and your descendants obedient hearts, so that you will love him with all your heart, and you will continue to live in that land.

7 He will turn all these curses against your enemies, who hated you and oppressed you,

8 and you will again obey him and keep all his commands that I am giving you today.

9 The Lord will make you prosperous in all that you do; you will have many children and a lot of livestock, and your fields will produce abundant crops. He will be as glad to make you prosperous as he was to make your ancestors prosperous,

10 but you will have to obey him and keep all his laws that are written in this book of his teachings. You will have to turn to him with all your heart.

11 "The command that I am giving you today is not too difficult or beyond your reach.

12 It is not up in the sky. You do not have to ask, "Who will go up and bring it down for us, so that we can hear it and obey it?'

13 Nor is it on the other side of the ocean. You do not have to ask, "Who will go across the ocean and bring it to us, so that we may hear it and obey it?'

14 No, it is here with you. You know it and can quote it, so now obey it.

15 "Today I am giving you a choice between good and evil, between life and death.

16 If you obey the commands of the Lord your God, which I give you today, if you love him, obey him, and keep all his laws, then you will prosper and become a nation of many people. The Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are about to occupy.

17 But if you disobey and refuse to listen, and are led away to worship other gods,

18 you will be destroyed - I warn you here and now. You will not live long in that land across the Jordan that you are about to occupy.

19 I am now giving you the choice between life and death, between God's blessing and God's curse, and I call heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Choose life.

20 Love the Lord your God, obey him and be faithful to him, and then you and your descendants will live long in the land that he promised to give your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

Deuteronomy 31

1 Moses continued speaking to the people of Israel,

2 and said, "I am now a hundred and twenty years old and am no longer able to be your leader. And besides this, the Lord has told me that I will not cross the Jordan.

3 The Lord your God himself will go before you and destroy the nations living there, so that you can occupy their land; and Joshua will be your leader, as the Lord has said.

4 The Lord will destroy those people, just as he defeated Sihon and Og, kings of the Amorites, and destroyed their country.

5 The Lord will give you victory over them, and you are to treat them exactly as I have told you.

6 Be determined and confident. Do not be afraid of them. Your God, the Lord himself, will be with you. He will not fail you or abandon you."

7 Then Moses called Joshua and said to him in the presence of all the people of Israel, "Be determined and confident; you are the one who will lead these people to occupy the land that the Lord promised to their ancestors.

8 The Lord himself will lead you and be with you. He will not fail you or abandon you, so do not lose courage or be afraid."

9 So Moses wrote down God's Law and gave it to the levitical priests, who were in charge of the Lord's Covenant Box, and to the leaders of Israel.

10 He commanded them, "At the end of every seven years, when the year that debts are canceled comes around, read this aloud at the Festival of Shelters.

11 Read it to the people of Israel when they come to worship the Lord your God at the one place of worship.

12 Call together all the men, women, and children, and the foreigners who live in your towns, so that everyone may hear it and learn to honor the Lord your God and to obey his teachings faithfully.

13 In this way your descendants who have never heard the Law of the Lord your God will hear it. And so they will learn to obey him as long as they live in the land that you are about to occupy across the Jordan."

14 Then the Lord said to Moses, "You do not have much longer to live. Call Joshua and bring him to the Tent, so that I may give him his instructions." Moses and Joshua went to the Tent,

15 and the Lord appeared to them there in a pillar of cloud that stood by the door of the Tent.

16 The Lord said to Moses, "You will soon die, and after your death the people will become unfaithful to me and break the covenant that I made with them. They will abandon me and worship the pagan gods of the land they are about to enter.

17 When that happens, I will become angry with them; I will abandon them, and they will be destroyed. Many terrible disasters will come upon them, and then they will realize that these things are happening to them because I, their God, am no longer with them.

18 And I will refuse to help them then, because they have done evil and worshiped other gods.

19 "Now, write down this song. Teach it to the people of Israel, so that it will stand as evidence against them.

20 I will take them into this rich and fertile land, as I promised their ancestors. There they will have all the food they want, and they will live comfortably. But they will turn away and worship other gods. They will reject me and break my covenant,

21 and many terrible disasters will come on them. But this song will still be sung, and it will stand as evidence against them. Even now, before I take them into the land that I promised to give them, I know what they are thinking."

22 That same day Moses wrote down the song and taught it to the people of Israel.

23 Then the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun and told him, "Be confident and determined. You will lead the people of Israel into the land that I promised them, and I will be with you."

24 Moses wrote God's Law in a book, taking care not to leave out anything.

25 When he finished, he said to the levitical priests, who were in charge of the Lord's Covenant Box,

26 "Take this book of God's Law and place it beside the Covenant Box of the Lord your God, so that it will remain there as a witness against his people.

27 I know how stubborn and rebellious they are. They have rebelled against the Lord during my lifetime, and they will rebel even more after I am dead.

28 Assemble all your tribal leaders and officials before me, so that I can tell them these things; I will call heaven and earth to be my witnesses against them.

29 I know that after my death the people will become wicked and reject what I have taught them. And in time to come they will meet with disaster, because they will have made the Lord angry by doing what he has forbidden."

30 Then Moses recited the entire song while all the people of Israel listened.

Deuteronomy 32

1 "Earth and sky, hear my words, listen closely to what I say.

2 My teaching will fall like drops of rain and form on the earth like dew. My words will fall like showers on young plants, like gentle rain on tender grass.

3 I will praise the name of the Lord, and his people will tell of his greatness.

4 "The Lord is your mighty defender, perfect and just in all his ways; Your God is faithful and true; he does what is right and fair.

5 But you are unfaithful, unworthy to be his people, a sinful and deceitful nation.

6 Is this the way you should treat the Lord, you foolish, senseless people? He is your father, your Creator, he made you into a nation.

7 "Think of the past, of the time long ago; ask your parents to tell you what happened, ask the old people to tell of the past.

8 The Most High assigned nations their lands; he determined where peoples should live. He assigned to each nation a heavenly being,

9 but Jacob's descendants he chose for himself.

10 "He found them wandering through the desert, a desolate, wind-swept wilderness. He protected them and cared for them, as he would protect himself.

11 Like an eagle teaching its young to fly, catching them safely on its spreading wings, the Lord kept Israel from falling.

12 The Lord alone led his people without the help of a foreign god.

13 "He let them rule the highlands, and they ate what grew in the fields. They found wild honey among the rocks; their olive trees flourished in stony ground.

14 Their cows and goats gave plenty of milk; they had the best sheep, goats, and cattle, the finest wheat, and the choicest wine.

15 "The Lord's people grew rich, but rebellious; they were fat and stuffed with food. They abandoned God their Creator and rejected their mighty savior.

16 Their idolatry made the Lord jealous; the evil they did made him angry.

17 They sacrificed to gods that are not real, new gods their ancestors had never known, gods that Israel had never obeyed.

18 They forgot their God, their mighty savior, the one who had given them life.

19 "When the Lord saw this, he was angry and rejected his sons and daughters.

20 "I will no longer help them,' he said; "then I will see what happens to them, those stubborn, unfaithful people.

21 With their idols they have made me angry, jealous with their so-called gods, gods that are really not gods. So I will use a so-called nation to make them angry; I will make them jealous with a nation of fools.

22 My anger will flame up like fire and burn everything on earth. It will reach to the world below and consume the roots of the mountains.

23 " "I will bring on them endless disasters and use all my arrows against them.

24 They will die from hunger and fever; they will die from terrible diseases. I will send wild animals to attack them, and poisonous snakes to bite them.

25 War will bring death in the streets; terrors will strike in the homes. Young men and young women will die; neither babies nor old people will be spared.

26 I would have destroyed them completely, so that no one would remember them.

27 But I could not let their enemies boast that they had defeated my people, when it was I myself who had crushed them.'

28 "Israel is a nation without sense; they have no wisdom at all.

29 They fail to see why they were defeated; they cannot understand what happened.

30 Why were a thousand defeated by one, and ten thousand by only two? The Lord, their God, had abandoned them; their mighty God had given them up.

31 Their enemies know that their own gods are weak, not mighty like Israel's God.

32 Their enemies, corrupt as Sodom and Gomorrah, are like vines that bear bitter and poisonous grapes,

33 like wine made from the venom of snakes.

34 "The Lord remembers what their enemies have done; he waits for the right time to punish them.

35 The Lord will take revenge and punish them; the time will come when they will fall; the day of their doom is near.

36 The Lord will rescue his people when he sees that their strength is gone. He will have mercy on those who serve him, when he sees how helpless they are.

37 Then the Lord will ask his people, "Where are those mighty gods you trusted?

38 You fed them the fat of your sacrifices and offered them wine to drink. Let them come and help you now; let them run to your rescue.

39 " "I, and I alone, am God; no other god is real. I kill and I give life, I wound and I heal, and no one can oppose what I do.

40 As surely as I am the living God, I raise my hand and I vow

41 that I will sharpen my flashing sword and see that justice is done. I will take revenge on my enemies and punish those who hate me.

42 My arrows will drip with their blood, and my sword will kill all who oppose me. I will spare no one who fights against me; even the wounded and prisoners will die.'

43 "Nations, you must praise the Lord's people - he punishes all who kill them. He takes revenge on his enemies and forgives the sins of his people."

44 Moses and Joshua son of Nun recited this song, so that the people of Israel could hear it.

45 When Moses had finished giving God's teachings to the people,

46 he said, "Be sure to obey all these commands that I have given you today. Repeat them to your children, so that they may faithfully obey all of God's teachings.

47 These teachings are not empty words; they are your very life. Obey them and you will live long in that land across the Jordan that you are about to occupy."

48 That same day the Lord said to Moses,

49 "Go to the Abarim Mountains in the land of Moab opposite the city of Jericho; climb Mount Nebo and look at the land of Canaan that I am about to give the people of Israel.

50 You will die on that mountain as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor,

51 because both of you were unfaithful to me in the presence of the people of Israel. When you were at the waters of Meribah, near the town of Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, you dishonored me in the presence of the people.

52 You will look at the land from a distance, but you will not enter the land that I am giving the people of Israel."