Renewal of the Covenant
Deuteronomy 29These are the words of the covenant which YHWH commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.
Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, “Y’all have seen with y’all’s eyes all that YHWH did in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh to all his servants and to all his land. Your eyes have seen the great trials, the signs and great wonders. But to this day YHWH has not given y’all a heart to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear. I have led y’all forty years in the wilderness. Y’all’s clothes have not grown old on y’all, and your sandal has not grown old on your foot. Y’all have not eaten bread, neither have y’all drunk wine or beer, so that y’all may know that I am YHWH y’all’s God. When y’all came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle, and we struck them. We took their land, and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites. Therefore, y’all are to keep the words of this covenant and do them, that y’all may prosper in all that y’all do. All of y’all are standing today in the presence of YHWH y’all’s God: y’all’s leaders, tribes, elders, and officers, and all the men of Israel, together with y’all’s little ones and wives, and the foreigners living in y’all’s camps, from the one who cuts y’all’s wood to the one who draws y’all’s water, so that you may enter into the covenant of YHWH your God, and into his oath, which YHWH your God makes with you today, that he may establish you today as ʜɪꜱ people, and that he may be your God, as ʜᴇ spoke to you and as ʜᴇ swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Its is not wth y’all that I make this covenant and oath, but with those who stand here with us today before YHWH our God, and also with those who are not here with us today. Y’all know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we crossed through the nations as y’all travelled. Y’all have seen their abominations and their idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which they had among them. Beware that there is no man, woman, family, or tribe among y’all whose heart turns away today from YHWH our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations. And beware that there is no root among y’all that produces bitter poison. When such a person hears the words of this curse, he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.” This will destroy the moist and the dry land. YHWH will not pardon him, but then YHWH’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book will fall on him, and YHWH will blot out his name from under the sky. YHWH will set him apart for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.
The generation to come—y’all’s children who will rise up after y’all, and the foreigner who will come from a far land—will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the diseases YHWH has inflicted on it, that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which YHWH overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath. Even all the nations will say, “Why has YHWH done this to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?”
Then men will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of YHWH, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods that they didn’t know and that he had not given to them. Therefore YHWH’s anger burned against this land, to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book. YHWH rooted them out of their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and thrust them into another land, as it is today.”
The secret things belong to YHWH our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.