Deuteronomy 29

These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab. It was in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.

1These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

NoteA covenant was a formal, binding agreement between two parties, sworn with oaths and witnesses, the same word used for treaties between kings and their subject peoples. Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai, where Israel had made the earlier agreement a generation before. Moab was the territory east of the Dead Sea, across the Jordan River from Canaan. In Hebrew Bibles this sentence is numbered as the last verse of chapter 28 rather than the first of chapter 29.

2Moses called all Israel together and said to them, "You have seen with your own eyes everything the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all his land.

2And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Ye have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land;

3You saw the great tests, and those signs and great wonders.

3The great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:

Note"Tests" here translates a word for ordeals or trials; along with "signs" and "wonders" it is standard shorthand in these books for the plagues on Egypt and the escape that followed.

4Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a mind that understands, eyes that really see, or ears that really hear.

4Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.

NoteIn Hebrew, the "heart" is the seat of thinking and deciding, not of feeling, closer to what English calls the mind. "Eyes to see" and "ears to hear" are idioms for grasping the meaning of what one has literally seen and heard.

5I led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes did not wear out on you, and your sandals did not wear out on your feet.

5And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot.

6You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, so that you would know that I am the LORD your God.

6Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink: that ye might know that I am the LORD your God.

Note"No ordinary bread" points to the manna, the food described as appearing on the ground each morning during the wilderness years. "Strong drink" translates a Hebrew word for fermented drink made from something other than grapes, beer or date or grain liquor, as opposed to wine.

7When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out to fight us, and we defeated them.

7And when ye came unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us unto battle, and we smote them:

NoteSihon and Og ruled small kingdoms east of the Jordan River. Heshbon was Sihon's capital; Bashan was the fertile upland region in the northeast. Their defeat, described earlier in this book, gave Israel its first territory.

8We took their land and gave it as a permanent possession to the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh.

8And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.

NoteA "permanent possession" (traditionally "inheritance") is land held by a family or tribe in perpetuity, passed down rather than bought and sold. The tribe of Manasseh was split: half settled east of the Jordan on this captured land, half west of it.

9So keep the words of this covenant and do them, so that you will succeed in everything you do.

9Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.

10Today all of you are standing in front of the LORD your God: the leaders of your tribes, your elders, and your officials, along with all the men of Israel,

10Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

Note"Officials" translates a term for record-keepers or marshals, men who kept lists and passed on orders, distinct from the elders, who were the senior heads of families.

11your children, your wives, and the foreigners living in your camp, from the ones who chop your wood to the ones who carry your water.

11Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water:

Note"Foreigners living in your camp" translates a word for a resident outsider: someone settled among Israel long-term without belonging to any of its tribes, with limited rights and obligations. Chopping wood and carrying water was the lowest and most menial labor, so the phrase names the whole community from top to bottom.

12You are here so that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into the sworn promise that the LORD your God is making with you today.

12That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy God, and into his oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee this day:

NoteThe Hebrew literally says to "pass into" the covenant, language associated with a ceremony in which the parties walked between the halves of slaughtered animals. The "sworn promise" is an oath that calls down curses on whoever breaks it, which is why the curses follow.

13He is doing this so that today he may make you his own people, and so that he may be your God, just as he told you and just as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

13That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

14I am not making this covenant and this sworn promise with you alone.

14Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;

15I am making it with everyone standing here with us today in front of the LORD our God, and also with everyone who is not here with us today.

15But with him that standeth here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

16You yourselves know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the nations on our way here.

16(For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;

17You saw the disgusting things they did and the idols they had among them, made of wood and stone, of silver and gold.

17And ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)

Note"Disgusting things" translates a word used for whatever is ritually repellent. The word rendered "idols" is a contemptuous Hebrew term whose root suggests dung or pellets, an insult built into the noun.

18Be sure there is no man or woman, family or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Be sure there is no root among you that grows bitter, poisonous fruit.

18Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;

NoteA "root that grows bitter, poisonous fruit" is a farming image for something small and hidden that spreads. The two Hebrew plants named are gall (a bitter or poisonous herb) and wormwood (a shrub proverbially bitter to the taste).

19Watch out for the person who hears the words of this curse and still congratulates himself, thinking, "I will be safe, even though I keep following my own stubborn heart." The result is that everything is swept away, the watered land along with the dry.

19And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

Note"Congratulates himself" translates an idiom for pronouncing a blessing over oneself, here in defiance of the curse just heard. The last clause is obscure in Hebrew and disputed; it reads roughly "to sweep away the watered along with the dry," which may mean that the guilty man's defiance destroys everything indiscriminately, or may be an idiom of unknown force, sometimes taken as "adding drunkenness to thirst."

20The LORD will not be willing to forgive that man. Instead the LORD's anger and jealousy will burn against him, every curse written in this book will settle on him, and the LORD will wipe his name off the earth.

20The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.

Note"Jealousy" here translates a word for the fierce protectiveness of an injured party in an exclusive relationship, not petty envy. The Hebrew for burning anger uses the image of smoking. To "wipe out a name" meant to leave a man without descendants or memory, which in this culture was the completest possible erasure.

21The LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, in keeping with all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.

21And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:

Note"This book of the law" refers to the written document of instruction being set down here, not to the Bible as a whole.

22Then the next generation, your children who come after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, will see the disasters that struck that land and the diseases the LORD brought on it.

22So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;

Note"Disasters" translates the same word usually rendered "plagues": blows or strokes inflicted as punishment. Here they fall on the land itself rather than on people.

23They will see that the whole land is sulfur and salt, a burned waste where nothing is planted, nothing sprouts, and no plant grows. It will be like the ruin of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD destroyed in his fierce anger.

23And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

Note"Sulfur" is the substance the King James calls brimstone; burning sulfur and salt-crusted ground both mark land permanently ruined for farming, and scattering salt on a conquered site was a known act of cursing it. Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim were four neighboring cities of the Jordan plain destroyed in the story told in Genesis; they had become a standing byword for total, irreversible ruin.

24All the nations will ask, "Why has the LORD done this to this land? What does this burst of great anger mean?"

24Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

25And people will answer, "It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

25Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:

26They went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods they had never known, gods the LORD had not assigned to them.

26For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:

Note"Gods the LORD had not assigned to them" uses the vocabulary of dividing up an allotment, as land was allotted to tribes, the idea elsewhere in this book being that other peoples were apportioned other objects of worship, but Israel was not.

27So the LORD's anger burned against this land, and he brought on it every curse written in this book.

27And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

28The LORD pulled them out of their land in anger, rage, and great fury, and threw them into another land, where they are today."

28And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

Note"Pulled them out" is the language of uprooting a plant, continuing the farming image. Being thrown "into another land" describes deportation: the standard practice of ancient empires, who moved conquered populations far from home.

29The hidden things belong to the LORD our God, but the things he has made known belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may do everything this law says.

29The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.