Deuteronomy 29
Open in the reader1Drawn-Out summoned all Strives-with-God and proclaimed to them, “You have seen with your own eyes everything He-Who-Is did in Two-Straits to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all his land.
2You saw with your own eyes the great trials, and those miraculous signs and wonders.
3Yet to this day He-Who-Is has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear.
4For forty years I led you in the wilderness, yet your clothes and sandals did not wear out.
5You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you might know that I am He-Who-Is your God.
6When you reached this place, Tempestuous king of Reckoning and Og king of Fertile-Plain came out against us in battle, but we defeated them.
7We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the See-a-Son-One, the Fortune-One, and the half-tribe of Causing-to-Forget.
8So keep and follow the words of this covenant, that you may prosper in all you do.
9All of you are standing today before He-Who-Is your God—you leaders of tribes, elders, officials, and all the men of Strives-with-God,
10your children and wives, and the foreigners in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water—
11so that you may enter into the covenant of He-Who-Is your God, which He-Who-Is is making with you today, and into His oath,
12and so that He may establish you today as His people, and He may be your God as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, to Father-of-a-Multitude, He-Laughs, and Heel-Grabber.
13I am making this covenant and this oath not only with you,
14but also with those who are standing here with us today in the presence of He-Who-Is our God, as well as with those who are not here today.
15For you yourselves know how we lived in the land of Two-Straits and how we passed through the nations on the way here.
16You saw the abominations and idols among them made of wood and stone, of silver and gold.
17Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from He-Who-Is our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit,
18because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.’ This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.
19He-Who-Is will never be willing to forgive him. Instead, His anger and jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse written in this book will fall upon him. He-Who-Is will blot out his name from under heaven
20and single him out from all the tribes of Strives-with-God for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Teaching.
21Then the generation to come—your sons who follow you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land—will see the plagues of the land and the sicknesses He-Who-Is has inflicted on it.
22All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and Salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Heap-of-Ruins, Red-Earth and Gazelles, which He-Who-Is overthrew in His fierce anger.
23So all the nations will ask, ‘Why has He-Who-Is done such a thing to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’
24And the people will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of He-Who-Is, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Two-Straits.
25They went and served other gods, and they worshiped gods they had not known—gods that He-Who-Is had not given to them.
26Therefore the anger of He-Who-Is burned against this land, and He brought upon it every curse written in this book.
27He-Who-Is uprooted them from their land in His anger, rage, and great wrath, and He cast them into another land, where they are today.’
28The secret things belong to He-Who-Is our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this teaching.