54Even the most gentle and refined man among you will scowl at his brother or his own dear wife, or the last of his surviving children. 55He won't want to give them any of his children's flesh that he will be eating because he has no other food due to the desperate and dire circumstances that your enemy has brought on you in all your cities. 56Even the most gentle and refined woman among you, who is so refined and gentle she wouldn't stomp her foot on the ground, will scowl at her own dear husband, her son, or her daughter--57not wanting to give them any of the afterbirth she pushed out or the babies she bore, because she will be eating them secretly while starving due to the desperate and dire circumstances that your enemy will bring on you in your cities.
58If you don't carefully keep all the words of this Instruction that are written in this scroll, by fearing the awesome and glorious name of the LORD your God--59the LORD will overwhelm you and your descendants with severe and chronic afflictions, and with terrible and untreatable sicknesses. 60He'll put on you all the Egyptian diseases about which you were so afraid; they will stick to you! 61What's more, the LORD will bring on you all the other diseases and plagues that aren't written in this Instruction scroll until you are completely wiped out. 62Once as countless as the stars in the night sky, only a few of you will be left alive--all because you didn't obey the LORD your God's voice. 63And just as before, the LORD enjoyed doing good things for you and increasing your numbers, now the LORD will enjoy annihilating and destroying you. You will be torn off the very fertile land you are entering to possess. 64The LORD will scatter you among every nation, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known--gods of wood and stone. 65Among those nations you will have no rest and no place to call your own.q There the LORD will give you an agitated mind, failing eyes, and a depressed spirit. 66Your life will seem to dangle before your very eyes. You will be afraid night and day. You won't be able to count on surviving for long. 67In the morning you will say: "I wish it was nighttime," but at nighttime you will say, "I wish it was morning"--on account of your tortured mind, which will be terrified, and because of the horrible sights that your eyes will see. 68Finally, the LORD will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the route I promised you would never see again. There you will try to sell yourselves as slaves--both male and female--but no one will want to buy you.
The third heading: The new covenant at Moab
Deuteronomy 29r These are the words of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb. 2s Moses summoned all Israel, saying to them:
You've seen with your own eyes everything the LORD did in Egypt, to Pharaoh, his servants, and all his land--3the great trials your eyes witnessed, those awesome signs and wonders! 4But until this very moment, the LORD hasn't given you insight to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear. 5I've led you in the wilderness forty years now; neither the clothes on your back nor the sandals on your feet have worn out. 6Neither have you eaten bread nor drunk wine or beer during this time--so that you would know that I am the LORD your God.t 7When you arrived here, Sihon, Heshbon's king, and Og, Bashan's king, marched out to fight against us, but we defeated them. 8We took possession of their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, Gadites, and half of Manasseh's tribe. 9So then keep the words of this covenant and do them so you can succeed in all you do.
10Right now, all of you are in the presence of the LORD your God--the leaders of your tribes,u your elders, and your officials, all the Israelite males, 11your children, your wives, and the immigrants who live with you in your camp, the ones who chop your wood and those who draw your water--12ready to enter into the LORD your God's covenant and into the agreement that the LORD your God is making with you right now. 13That means the Lord will make you his own people right now--he will be your God just as he promised you and just as he swore to our ancestors: to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 14But I'm not making this covenant and this agreement with you alone 15but also with those standing here with us right now before the LORD our God, and also with those who aren't here with us right now.
16You know firsthand how we used to live in Egypt and how we passed right through the nations that you passed through. 17You saw the horrific things, the filthy idols of wood and stone, silver and gold, that they had with them. 18Make sure there isn't any one among you right now--male or female, clan or tribe--whose mind is turning from being with the LORD our God in favor of going to serve these nations' gods. Make sure there isn't any root among you that is sprouting poison and bitterness. 19When that kind of person hears the words of this agreement, they congratulate themselves, thinking: I'll be fine even though I insist on being stubborn. This would cause something wet to dry up and become like something parched.v 20The LORD won't be willing to forgive that kind of person; instead, the LORD's anger and passion will smolder against that person. Every curse written in this scroll will stretch out over them, and the LORD will wipe out their name from under the heavens. 21Out of all Israel's tribes, the LORD will single them out for disaster in compliance with all the covenant curses that are written in this Instruction scroll.
22Future generations, your children after you, or foreigners from distant lands will say: Lookw at all that land's plagues and the sicknesses that the LORD laid on it! 23Look at all its land burned by sulfur and salt, unsuitable for planting, unable to grow or produce any vegetation, as devastated as Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD devastated in anger and wrath! 24Indeed, all nations will ask: Why did the LORD do this to this land? What led to this terrible display of anger? 25They will deduce: It was because those people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, their ancestors' God, which he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. 26They followed other gods, serving them and worshipping them--other gods that they hadn't experienced before and that the Lord hadn't designated for them. 27Then the LORD's anger burned against that land, and he brought against it every curse written in this scroll. 28The LORD ripped them off their land in anger, wrath, and great fury. He threw them into other lands, and that's how things still stand today.
29The secret things belong to the LORD our God. The revealed things belong to us and to our children forever: to keep all the words of this covenant.
Deuteronomy 30Now, once all these things happen to you, the blessing and the curse that I'm setting before you, you must call them to mind as you sit among the various nations where the LORD your God has driven you; 2and you must return to the LORD your God, obeying his voice, in line with all that I'm commanding you right now--you and your children--with all your mind and with all your being. 3Then the LORD your God will restore you as you were before and will have compassion on you, gathering you up from all the peoples where the LORD your God scattered you. 4Even if he has driven you to the far end of heaven, the LORD your God will gather you up from there; he will take you back from there.