Deuteronomy 29

God’s Sustaining Presence Deuteronomy 29:5–9

⁵Verse 5. I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not grown old on you, and your shoes have not grown old on your feet. ⁶Verse 6. You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink; that you may know that I am Yahweh your God. ⁷Verse 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. ⁸Verse 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.

⁹Verse 9. Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

Inclusivity of the Covenant Deuteronomy 29:10–15

¹⁰Verse 10. All of you stand today in the presence of Yahweh your God; your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel, ¹¹Verse 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; ¹²Verse 12. that you may enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God, and into his oath, which Yahweh your God makes with you today; ¹³Verse 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.

¹⁴Verse 14. Neither do I make this covenant and this oath with you only, ¹⁵Verse 15. but with those who stand here with us today before Yahweh our God, and also with those who are not here with us today

Warning Against Idolatry Deuteronomy 29:16–21

¹⁶Verse 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; ¹⁷Verse 17. and you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them); ¹⁸Verse 18. lest there should be among you man, woman, family, or tribe whose heart turns away today from Yahweh our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that produces bitter poison; ¹⁹Verse 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.”

²⁰Verse 20. Yahweh will not pardon him, but then Yahweh’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 Yahweh will blot out his name from under the sky. ²¹Verse 21. Yahweh will set him apart for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.

Consequences of Disobedience Deuteronomy 29:22–28

²²Verse 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 Yahweh has made it sick; ²³Verse 23. and that all of its land is sulfur, 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 Yahweh overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath; ²⁴Verse 24. even all the nations will say, “Why has Yahweh done thus to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?”

²⁵Verse 25. Then men will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, ²⁶Verse 26. and went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods that they didn’t know, and that he had not given to them. ²⁷Verse 27. Therefore Yahweh’s anger burned against this land, to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book. ²⁸Verse 28. Yahweh rooted them out of their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and thrust them into another land, as it is today.”

Revelation and Obedience Deuteronomy 29:29

²⁹Verse 29. The secret things belong to Yahweh 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.