Deuteronomy 29
The Secret Things Belong to the Lord
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Recalling God’s Acts
29:1Moses summoned all Israel’s sons and said: You saw everything the Lord did in the land of Egypt before you to Pharaoh, his attendants, and all his land—
29:2the great trials your eyes saw, those great signs and wonders.
29:3Yet to this day the Lord God has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear.
29:4He led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes did not grow old, and your sandals did not wear away from your feet.
29:5You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you might know that He is the Lord your God.
29:6When you reached this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to meet us in battle, and we struck them down.
29:7We took their land, and I gave it as an allotment to Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh.
The Assembly and Scope
29:8Keep and perform all the words of this covenant, so that you may understand everything you do.
29:9All of you stand today before the Lord your God: your tribal leaders, your council of elders, your judges, your court scribes, every man of Israel,
29:10your wives, your offspring, and the resident foreigner within your camp, from your woodcutter to your water carrier,
29:11to enter the Lord your God’s covenant and His curses, which the Lord your God establishes with you today,
29:12so that He may establish you as His people and He will be your God, as He told you and as He swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
29:13I make this covenant and this curse not with you alone,
29:14but also with those here with us today before the Lord your God and those not here with us today.
Warnings Against Disobedience
29:15You know how we lived in the land of Egypt and passed through the nations through which you passed.
29:16You saw their abominations and idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold that were among them.
29:17Is there any man, woman, family, or tribe among you whose mind has turned from the Lord your God to worship those nations’ gods? Is there any root among you growing up in gall and bitterness?
29:18When he hears this curse, he may pronounce a blessing in his heart, saying, May favorable things be mine, though I follow my heart’s wandering—so that the sinner may not destroy the guiltless along with him.
29:19God will certainly not be willing to be propitious to him. Then the Lord’s anger and jealousy will blaze against that man, all this covenant’s curses written in this book of the law will cling to him, and the Lord will erase his name from under heaven.
29:20The Lord will single him out for calamities from all Israel’s sons, according to all the covenant’s curses written in this book of the law.
29:21The next
generation, your children who arise after you, and the foreigner from a distant land will speak when they see that land’s plagues and the diseases the Lord sent upon it—
29:22sulfur and salt, burned over, its whole land neither sown nor sprouting, with nothing green growing, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overturned in wrath and anger.
29:23All the nations will ask: Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this great burning anger?
29:24They will answer: Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, their fathers’ God, which He made with their fathers when He brought them out of Egypt.
29:25They went and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them—gods they did not know and He had not allotted to them.
29:26The Lord burned with anger against that land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book of the law.
29:27The Lord removed them from their land in wrath, anger, and exceedingly great indignation, and cast them into another land, as now.
Secret and Revealed Things
29:28Hidden things belong to the Lord our God; revealed things belong to us and our children forever, to perform all the words of this law.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.