Love Your Father and Remember
11 1 So love your Father, and keep his requirements, his statutes, his decrees, and his commandments always.
2 Understand this today — for I am not speaking to your children, who have never experienced and never seen the discipline of your Father, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his outstretched arm, 3 his signs and his deeds that he did throughout Egypt to Pharaoh king of Egypt and throughout his land, 4 what he did to the army of Egypt, to its horses and its chariots, when he swept the waters of the Sea of Reeds over them as they pursued you, and our Father destroyed them to this very day; 5 what he did for you in the wilderness until you came to this place; 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab son of Reuben, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, before all Israel.
7 For your own eyes have seen every great work our Father has done.
The Father's Good Land Awaits
8 So keep the whole commandment that I am commanding you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are crossing over to possess, 9 and that you may live long in the land that our Father swore to your ancestors to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.
10 For the land that you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt, from which you came, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot, like a vegetable garden. 1 1 v10 Egyptian farmers used foot-operated channels to direct Nile floodwater across flat fields — nothing like Canaan's rain-fed hills. 11 But the land that you are crossing over to possess is a land of hills and valleys that drinks water from the rain of heaven, 12 a land that your Father cares for; the eyes of your Father are continually upon it, from the beginning of the year to its end.
13 And if you will faithfully obey my commandments that I am commanding you today, to love your Father and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 then I will give the rain of your land in its season, the early rain and the late rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. 2 2 v14 The early rains fall in autumn to soften the ground for planting; the late rains come in spring just before harvest. 15 And I will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied.
16 Take care that your heart is not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and bow down to them, 17 and our Father's anger burns against you, and he closes the heavens so that there is no rain, and the ground does not yield its harvest, and you perish quickly from the good land that our Father is giving you.
Carry These Words Always
18 So fix these words of mine in your heart and in your soul; bind them as a sign on your hand, and let them be as reminders on your forehead. 3 3 v18 "Frontlets" were small cases holding written portions of Scripture, bound to the forehead — the practice later called wearing tefillin (phylacteries). The command pictures keeping our Father's words constantly before your eyes. 19 Teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. 20 And write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 so that you and your children may live long in the land that our Father swore to your ancestors to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.
22 For if you carefully obey all these commands I am giving you — to love your Father, to walk in all his ways, and to hold fast to him — 23 then our Father will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves. 24 Every place where you set foot will be yours; your territory will reach from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the River — the Euphrates — to the western sea. 4 4 v24 The "western sea" is the Mediterranean Sea, which lay on Israel's western edge. 25 No one will be able to stand against you; your Father will spread fear and dread of you over all the land where you set foot, just as he promised you.
A Blessing and a Curse
26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of your Father that I am commanding you today; 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of your Father, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.
29 And when your Father brings you into the land that you are entering to possess, you shall proclaim the blessing at Mount Gerizim and the curse at Mount Ebal. 30 Are they not beyond the Jordan, westward, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh?
31 For you are about to cross the Jordan to go in and take possession of the land that your Father is giving you; you will possess it and live in it. 32 And you shall be careful to obey all the statutes and the decrees that I am giving you today.