Deuteronomy 29:4-14

4 Yet the LORD has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear until today.

5 And I have brought you forty years through the wilderness; your clothes are not waxed old upon you, and neither has thy shoe waxed old upon thy foot.

6 Ye have never eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink that ye might know that I am the LORD your God.

7 And when ye came unto this place, Sihon, the king of Heshbon, and Og, the king of Bashan, came out against us unto battle, and we smote them;

8 and we took their land and gave it for an inheritance unto the Reubenites and unto the Gadites and to the half tribe of Manasseh.

9 Thou shalt keep, therefore, the words of this covenant and do them that ye may understand all that ye do.

10 Ye stand today, all of you, before the LORD your God, your princes of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

11 your little ones, your wives, and thy strangers that dwell within thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water,

12 that thou may enter into covenant with the LORD thy God and into his oath, which the LORD thy God makes with thee today,

13 to confirm thee today as his people and that he may be unto thee as God, as he has said unto thee, and as he has sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

14 Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath,

Deuteronomy 29:4-14 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.