¹ These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

² And Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, Ye have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;

³ The great temptations which thy eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:

⁴ Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.

⁵ And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes did not wear out upon you, and thy shoe did not wear out upon thy foot.

⁶ Ye have not 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 to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we smote them:

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

⁹ Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.

¹⁰ Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

¹¹ Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood to the drawer of thy water:

¹² That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy God, and into his oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee this day:¹

1. enter: Heb. pass

¹³ That he may establish thee to day for a people to himself, and that he may be to thee a God, as he hath said to thee, and as he hath sworn to thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

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

¹⁵ But with him that standeth here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

¹⁶ (For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;

¹⁷ And ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)¹

1. idols: Heb. dungy gods

¹⁸ Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;¹

1. gall: or, a poisonous herb: Heb. rosh

¹⁹ And it should come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he should bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:¹²

1. imagination: or, stubbornness
2. drunkenness...: Heb. the drunken to the thirsty

²⁰ The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.

²¹ And the LORD shall single him out for evil from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:¹

1. are: Heb. is

²² So that the generation to come of your children that shall arise after you, and the stranger that shall come from a distant land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;¹

1. which...: Heb. wherewith the LORD hath made it sick

²³ And that its whole land is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor doth it bear, nor doth any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

²⁴ Even all the nations shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus to this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

²⁵ Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth from the land of Egypt:

²⁶ For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods which they knew not, and which he had not given to them:¹²

1. whom he...: or, who had not given to them any portion
2. given: Heb. divided

²⁷ And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

²⁸ And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

²⁹ The secret things belong to the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.