The Wilderness Years

These are the words of the covenant which ADONAI ordered Moshe to make with the people of Isra'el in the land of Mo'av, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horev.

Then Moshe summoned all Isra'el and said to them, "You saw everything ADONAI did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his servants and to all his land;

the great testings which you saw with your own eyes, and the signs and those great wonders.

Nevertheless, to this day ADONAI has not given you a heart to understand, eyes to see or ears to hear!

I led you forty years in the desert. Neither the clothes on your body nor the shoes on your feet wore out.

You didn't eat bread, and you didn't drink wine or other intoxicating liquor; this was so that you would know that 'I am ADONAI your God.'

When you arrived at this place, Sichon the king of Heshbon and 'Og the king of Bashan advanced against us in battle, and we defeated them,

took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Re'uveni, the Gadi and the M'nashi.

Therefore, observe the words of this covenant and obey them; so that you can make everything you do prosper.

"Today you are standing, all of you, before ADONAI your God - your heads, your tribes, your leaders and your officers - all the men of Isra'el,

along with your little ones, your wives and your foreigners here with you in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water.

The purpose is that you should enter into the covenant of ADONAI your God and into his oath which ADONAI your God is making with you today,

so that he can establish you today for himself as a people, and so that for you he will be God -as he said to you and as he swore to your ancestors, to Avraham, Yitz'chak and Ya'akov.

"But I am not making this covenant and this oath only with you.

Rather, I am making it both with him who is standing here with us today before ADONAI our God and also with him who is not here with us today.

For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we came directly through the nations you passed through;

and you saw their detestable things and their idols of wood, stone, silver and gold that they had with them.

So let there not be among you a man, woman, family or tribe whose heart turns away today from ADONAI our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Let there not be among you a root bearing such bitter poison and wormwood.

If there is such a person, when he hears the words of this curse, he will bless himself secretly, saying to himself, 'I will be all right, even though I will stubbornly keep doing whatever I feel like doing; so that I, although "dry," [sinful,] will be added to the "watered" [righteous].'

But ADONAI will not forgive him. Rather, the anger and jealousy of ADONAI will blaze up against that person. Every curse written in this book will be upon him. ADONAI will blot out his name from under heaven.

ADONAI will single him out from all the tribes of Isra'el to experience what is bad in all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the Torah.

"When the next generation, your children who will grow up after you, and the foreigner who arrives from a distant land, see the plagues of that land and the diseases with which ADONAI has made it sick,

and that the whole land has become burning sulfur and salt, that it isn't being sown or bearing crops or even producing grass - like the overthrow of S'dom, 'Amora, Admah and Tzvoyim, which ADONAI overthrew in his furious anger -

then all the nations will ask, 'Why did ADONAI do this to this land? What is the meaning of such frenzied, furious anger?'

People will answer, 'It's because they abandoned the covenant of ADONAI, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.