1   You must carefully observe everything that I command you this day so that you may live and increase and may enter and occupy the land which the Lord promised to your forefathers upon oath. 2   You must remember all that road by which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness to humble you, to test you and to discover whether or no it was in your heart to keep his commandments. 3   He humbled you and made you hungry; then he fed you on manna which neither you nor your fathers had known before, to teach you that man cannot live on bread alone but lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4   The clothes on your backs did not wear out nor did your feet swell all these forty years. 5   Take this lesson to heart: that the Lord your God was disciplining you as a father disciplines his son; 6   and keep the commandments of the Lord your God, conforming to his ways and fearing him. 7   For the Lord your God is bringing you to a rich land, a land of streams, of springs and underground waters gushing out in hill and valley, 8   a land of wheat and barley, of vines, fig-trees, and pomegranates, a land of olives, oil, and honey. 9   It is a land where you will never live in poverty nor want for anything, a land whose stones are iron-ore and from whose hills you will dig copper. 10   You will have plenty to eat and will bless the Lord your God for the rich land that he has given you.

11   Take care not to forget the Lord your God and do not fail to keep his commandments, laws, and statutes which I give you this day. 12   When you have plenty to eat and live in fine houses of your own building, when your herds and flocks increase, 13   and your silver and gold and all your possessions increase too, 14   do not become proud and forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of

Primary charge of Moses to the people slavery; 15   he led you through the vast and terrible wilderness infested with poisonous snakes and scorpions, a thirsty, waterless land, where he caused water to flow from the hard rock; 16   he fed you in the wilderness on manna which your fathers did not know, to humble you and test you, and in the end to make you prosper. 17   Nor must you say to yourselves, ‘My own strength and energy have gained me this wealth’, but remember the Lord your God; 18   it is he that gives you strength to become prosperous, so fulfilling the covenant guaranteed by oath with your forefathers, as he is doing now.

19   If you forget the Lord your God and adhere to other gods, worshipping them and bowing down to them, I give you a solemn warning this day that you will certainly be destroyed. 20   You will be destroyed because of your disobedience to the Lord your God, as surely as were the nations whom the Lord destroyed at your coming.

Previous section

Next section