The Holy Bible

Renewal of the Covenant

are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant that He made with them at Horeb.

2  Moses summoned all the Israelites and said to them,

“You have seen with your own eyes all that the Lord did in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all his land.  3  With your own eyes you have seen those great trials, those miraculous signs, and those great wonders.  4  Yet to this very day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.

5 “I have led you forty years in the wilderness, yet your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn out on your foot.  6  You have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, so that you might know that I am the Lord your God.

7 “When you came to this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out against us in battle, but we defeated them.  8  We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the the half-tribe of Manasseh.  9  Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, so that you may prosper in all that you do.

10  “All of you are standing today in the presence of the Lord your God—your leaders, your tribes, your elders and officials, and all the men of Israel,  11  together with your children, your wives, and the foreigners in your camps, whether they are the ones who cut your wood or the ones who draw your water,  12  so you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God, that is sealed with an oath, and which the Lord your God is making with you today.  13  So today He will establish you as His people, and that He may be your God as He promised you, and as He has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

14  “I am making this covenant, with its oath, not only with you  15  who are standing here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God, but also with those who are not here with us today.

Abandoning the Covenant

16  “You know yourselves how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the midst of the nations where you travelled.  17  You have seen their detestable things and their idols of wood and stone, and of silver and gold, that they had.  18  Be sure then that among you that there is not a man or woman or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and worship the gods of those nations. Let there not be among you a root bearing such bitter and poisonous fruit.

19  “When such a person hears the words of this oath, he may bless himself, thinking in his heart, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart’. Yet this would bring disaster on the watered land along with the dry.  20  The Lord will never be willing to forgive him, for the anger of the Lord and His jealousy will burn against this man, and every curse that is written in this book will rest on him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven.  21  Then the Lord will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this Book of the Law.

22  “Future generations of your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant country, when they see the plague of the land and the diseases that the Lord has afflicted on it, will say,  23  ‘The whole land is sulphur, salt, and a burning waste—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, without a blade of grass on it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His furious anger’.  24  All the nations will ask, ‘Why has the Lord done this to the land? What caused this outpouring of fierce, burning anger?’

25  “Then men will say, ‘It’s because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.  26  They went and served other gods and worshipped them, gods whom they had not known and whom He had not given to them.  27  Therefore the anger of the Lord burned against this land, bringing upon it all the curses that are written in this book.  28  The Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and threw them into another land, where they are today’.