The Moab Covenant
29 1 These are the words of the covenant that our Father commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
What Your Eyes Have Seen
2 Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that our Father did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land—
Standing Before Your Father
3 the great tests you saw with your own eyes, those mighty signs and wonders. 4 But to this day our Father has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.
5 I 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. 6 You ate no bread and drank no wine or strong drink, that you might know that I am your Father.
7 When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us in battle, but we struck them down. 8 We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. 9 So keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
10 You are standing today, all of you, before your Father: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, 11 your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners living in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, 12 so that you may enter into the covenant of your Father, sworn with an oath, which your Father is making with you today, 13 that he may establish you today as his people, and that he himself may be your Father, as he promised you and as he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
14 It is not with you alone that I am making this covenant, sworn with an oath, 15 but with whoever is standing here with us today before our Father, and with whoever is not here with us today.
16 You yourselves know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the midst of the nations through which you traveled. 17 You saw their detestable things and their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them.
18 Make sure there is no man or woman among you, no clan or tribe, whose heart turns away today from our Father to go and serve the gods of those nations — and no root among you bearing poison and bitter fruit, 19 one who, on hearing the words of this oath, congratulates himself inwardly, saying, I will be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart — and so sweeps away the watered land with the dry. 1 1 v19 "Sweeps away the watered land with the dry" — a Hebrew idiom for total, sweeping ruin: everything destroyed, lush and parched alike.
20 Our Father will not be willing to forgive him; rather, his anger and his jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse written in this book will come down on him, and our Father will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 Our Father 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.
22 Then the next generation, your children who come after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, will see the afflictions of that land and the diseases our Father has brought on it— 23 the whole land a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown, sprouting nothing, with no plant growing on it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which our Father overthrew in his anger and wrath— 24 all the nations will ask, Why has the Sovereign Father done this to this land? Why this great burning anger? 2 2 v24 The surrounding nations name Israel's God by his covenant authority—'the Sovereign One'—rather than as Father, because they stand outside the family relationship the word 'Father' carries.
25 And they will answer, It is because they abandoned the covenant of their Father, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26 and went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods they had not known and that he had not allotted to them. 27 So the anger of the Sovereign Father burned against this land, bringing on it every curse written in this book. 28 And the Sovereign Father uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and drove them to another land, as it is today.
29 The secret things belong to our Father, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may obey all the words of this law.