in lack of all things. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flies: a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of fierce facial expressions, that doesn’t respect the elderly, nor show favour to the young. 51 They will eat the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed. They also won’t leave you grain, new wine, oil, the increase of your livestock, or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. 52 They will besiege you in all your gates until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout all your land. They will besiege you in all your gates throughout all your land which the LORD your God has given you. 53 You will eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies will distress you. 54 The man who is tender amongst you, and very delicate, his eye will be evil towards his brother, towards the wife whom he loves, and towards the remnant of his children whom he has remaining, 55 so that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left to him, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy will distress you in all your gates. 56 The tender and delicate woman amongst you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye will be evil towards the husband that she loves, towards her son, towards her daughter, 57 towards her young one who comes out from between her feet, and towards her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of all things in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy will distress you in your gates. 58 If you will not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD† your God, 59 then the LORD will make your plagues and the plagues of your offspring fearful, even great plagues, and of long duration, and severe sicknesses, and of long duration. 60 He will bring on you again all the diseases of Egypt, which you were afraid of; and they will cling to you. 61 Also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this law, the LORD will bring them on you until you are destroyed. 62 You will be left few in number, even though you were as the stars of the sky for multitude, because you didn’t listen to the LORD your God’s voice. 63 It will happen that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you, so the LORD will rejoice over you to cause you to perish and to destroy you. You will be plucked from the land that you are going in to possess. 64 The LORD will scatter you amongst all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. There you will serve other gods which you have not known, you nor your fathers, even wood and stone. 65 Amongst these nations you will find no ease, and there will be no rest for the sole of your foot; but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and pining of soul. 66 Your life will hang in doubt before you. You will be afraid night and day, and will have no assurance of your life. 67 In the morning you will say, “I wish it were evening!” and at evening you will say, “I wish it were morning!” for the fear of your heart which you will fear, and for the sights which your eyes will see. 68 The LORD will bring you into Egypt again with ships, by the way of which I told you that you would never see it again. There you will offer yourselves to your enemies for male and female slaves, and nobody will buy you.
29
1 These are the words of the covenant which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. 2 Moses called to all Israel, and said to them:
Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land; 3 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 But the LORD has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day. 5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not grown old on you, and your sandals have not grown old on your feet. 6 You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the LORD your God. 7 When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle, and we struck them. 8 We took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of the Manassites. 9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do. 10 All of you stand today in the presence of the LORD your God: your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, 11 your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners who are in the middle of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water, 12 that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you today, 13 that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he spoke to you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 14 Neither do I make this covenant and this oath with you only, 15 but with those who stand here with us today before the LORD our God, and also with those who are not here with us today 16 (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the middle of the nations through which you passed; 17 and you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which were amongst them); 18 lest there should be amongst you man, woman, family, or tribe whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be amongst you a root that produces bitter poison; 19 and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,” to destroy the moist with the dry. 20 The LORD will not pardon him, but then the LORD’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book will fall on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under the sky. 21 The LORD will set him apart for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.
22 The generation to come—your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a far land—will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick, 23 that all of its land is sulphur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath. 24 Even all the nations will say, “Why has the LORD done this to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?”
25 Then men will say, “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 and went and served other gods and worshipped them, gods that they didn’t know and that he had not given to them. 27 Therefore the LORD’s anger burnt against this land, to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book. 28 The LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and thrust them into another land, as it is today.”
29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
30
1