Deuteronomy 29: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses gathers all Israel in Moab and reviews what they saw God do in Egypt and in the wilderness, and their victories over Sihon and Og. He then brings the whole assembly (leaders, men, women, children, and the foreigners among them) into the covenant God is making with them there, a covenant binding on those present and on those not present. He warns that anyone who secretly turns to other gods and still assumes he is safe will fall under the curses written in the book, and that a later generation will see the land ruined and understand why. The chapter closes by saying hidden things belong to God, while revealed things belong to the people, so they can obey this law.

Claim by Claim

1. 29:1
   • These are the words of the covenant.
   • The LORD commanded Moses to make this covenant with the children of Israel.
   • The covenant was made in the land of Moab.
   • This covenant is in addition to the covenant the LORD made with them at Horeb.
2. 29:2
   • Moses called all Israel together.
   • Moses said to them that they had seen everything the LORD did before their eyes in the land of Egypt.
   • What the LORD did was done to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to all his land.
3. 29:3
   • Moses said their eyes had seen the great trials.
   • Moses said they had seen the signs and those great wonders.
4. 29:4
   • The LORD had not given them a heart to understand.
   • The LORD had not given them eyes to see.
   • The LORD had not given them ears to hear.
   • This lack continued up to that day.
5. 29:5
   • Moses said he had led them forty years in the wilderness.
   • Their clothes had not worn out on them.
   • Their sandals had not worn out on their feet.
6. 29:6
   • They had not eaten bread.
   • They had not drunk wine or fermented drink.
   • The purpose was that they might know that he is the LORD their God.
7. 29:7
   • They came to this place.
   • Sihon the king of Heshbon came out against them to battle.
   • Og the king of Bashan came out against them to battle.
   • They defeated Sihon and Og.
8. 29:8
   • They took the land of Sihon and Og.
   • They gave that land as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh.
9. 29:9
   • Moses commanded them to keep the words of this covenant and do them.
   • Keeping the covenant is so that they may succeed in all that they do.
10. 29:10
    • They were all standing that day before the LORD their God.
    • Those standing included the heads of their tribes, their elders, and their officers.
    • Those standing included all the men of Israel.
11. 29:11
    • Those standing included their little ones and their wives.
    • Those standing included the foreigner in their camp.
    • The foreigners ranged from the one who cuts their wood to the one who draws their water.
12. 29:12
    • The purpose of their standing was that they should enter into covenant with the LORD their God.
    • The purpose was also that they should enter into his oath.
    • The LORD their God was making this covenant with them that day.
13. 29:13
    • The purpose was that the LORD might establish them that day as a people for himself.
    • The purpose was that he might be God to them.
    • This was as he had said to them.
    • This was as he had sworn to their fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
14. 29:14
    • Moses said he was not making this covenant and this oath with them only.
15. 29:15
    • The covenant was made with the one standing there with them that day before the LORD their God.
    • The covenant was also made with the one not there with them that day.
16. 29:16
    • Moses said they knew how they had lived in the land of Egypt.
    • Moses said they knew how they came through the nations they passed by.
17. 29:17
    • They had seen the detestable things of those nations.
    • They had seen the idols of those nations, made of wood and stone, silver and gold.
    • Those idols were among those nations.
18. 29:18
    • The warning is that there should not be among them a man, a woman, a family, or a tribe whose heart turns away that day from the LORD our God.
    • Such a heart turns away to go and serve the gods of those nations.
    • The warning is that there should not be among them a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit.
19. 29:19
    • Such a person hears the words of this curse.
    • Such a person blesses himself in his heart.
    • He says he will have peace.
    • He says this even though he walks in the stubbornness of his own heart.
    • The stated result is expressed ambiguously: to add drunkenness to thirst, that is, to sweep away the watered along with the dry.
20. 29:20
    • The LORD will not be willing to spare him.
    • The anger of the LORD and his jealousy will smoke against that man.
    • All the curses written in this book will lie upon him.
    • The LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
21. 29:21
    • The LORD will single him out for disaster from all the tribes of Israel.
    • This will be according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.
22. 29:22
    • The coming generation of their children who rise up after them will speak.
    • The foreigner who comes from a distant land will speak.
    • They will speak when they see the plagues of that land.
    • They will see the sicknesses the LORD has laid upon that land.
23. 29:23
    • The whole land will be sulfur, salt, and burning.
    • The land will not be sown.
    • The land will not produce.
    • No grass will grow in it.
    • This will be like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim.
    • The LORD overthrew those cities in his anger and wrath.
24. 29:24
    • All nations will ask why the LORD has done this to this land.
    • All nations will ask what the heat of this great anger means.
25. 29:25
    • Men will answer that it is because they forsook the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers.
    • The LORD made that covenant with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.
26. 29:26
    • They went and served other gods.
    • They worshiped those gods.
    • They did not know those gods.
    • He had not allotted those gods to them.
27. 29:27
    • The anger of the LORD was kindled against this land.
    • The LORD brought upon the land all the curses written in this book.
28. 29:28
    • The LORD uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great indignation.
    • The LORD cast them into another land.
    • That condition remains as it is this day.
29. 29:29
    • The secret things belong to the LORD our God.
    • The things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.
    • The purpose is that we may do all the words of this law.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

29:1

A 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.

29:2

Where the King James prints "LORD" in capital letters, the Hebrew has God's personal name, four consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers said "Lord" aloud instead of pronouncing it, and English translations have followed that custom ever since by using the capitalized form.

29:3

"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.

29:4

In 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.

29:5

"Waxen old" is old English for "grown old" or "worn out." The verb "wax" meaning to grow survives today mostly in the phrase "the moon waxes."

29:6

"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.

29:7

Sihon 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.

29:8

A "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.

29:10

"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.

29:11

"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.

29:12

The 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.

29:13

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the founding ancestors of Israel three generations back at the start of the nation's story, in Genesis. The promise sworn to them, of descendants and a land, is what this ceremony claims to be carrying out.

29:15

The people "not here" are the children and grandchildren not yet born. The agreement was meant to hold for them too.

29:17

"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.

29:18

A "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).

29:19

"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."

29:20

"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.

29:21

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

29:22

"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.

29:23

"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.

29:24

"Wherefore" is old English for why.

29:26

"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.

29:27

"Anger was kindled" means anger was lit, like a fire catching. The King James often pictures anger as something that burns.

29:28

"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.

29:29

"Revealed" means made known, uncovered so people can see it. It is the opposite of the secret things in the first half of the verse.