Through My Bible Yr 01 – May 10

Renewing the Covenant

Deuteronomy 29

¹ These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb. ^[1]2 Moses summoned all Israel and spoke to them as follows:

You have seen everything that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to his whole land: ³ the great trials that your eyes saw, those great signs and wonders. ⁴ Yet the Lord to this very day has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.

⁵ “I led you through the wilderness for forty years. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did the sandals on your feet. ⁶ You did not eat bread, and you did not drink wine and beer. I did all this so you would know that I am the Lord your God.”

⁷ When you came to this place, and Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to meet us in battle, we struck them down. ⁸ We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and half of the tribe of Manasseh.

⁹ Therefore you are to keep the words of this covenant and carry them out so that you may succeed in all that you do.

¹⁰ You are standing today before the Lord your God, all of you—your tribal heads, your elders, your officers, and men of every rank in Israel, ¹¹ your children, your wives, and the aliens who reside in your camp, whether as wood cutters or water carriers. ¹² You are standing here so that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, which is sealed by the oath that the Lord your God is making with you today, ¹³ in order to establish you today as his people and himself as your God, just as he promised you and just as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

¹⁴ Today I am not making this covenant and its oath only with you, ¹⁵ but also with everyone who is standing here with us before the Lord our God, and also with those who are 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 various nations we encountered. ¹⁷ You saw their detestable things and their filthy idols of wood and stone and silver and gold that were with them.

¹⁸ Make sure that there is not among you a man, a woman, a family, or a tribe whose heart today is turning away from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Make sure that there is among you no root that is producing a poison plant and bitter wormwood. ¹⁹ When such a person hears the words of this oath, he might congratulate himself in his heart and say, “I’ll be safe, even though I’m proceeding in my stubborn way.” By acting this way he will destroy the watered ground as well as the parched.

²⁰ The Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger and jealousy of the Lord will smoke against that man, and all the curses written in this document will come to rest on him, and the Lord will wipe away his name from under the heavens. ²¹ The Lord will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, in keeping with all the curses of the covenant that are written in this Book of the Law.

²² And when the next generation, your children who will come after your time, and the foreigner who will come from a distant land have seen the plagues on that land and the sicknesses with which the Lord struck it, they will say, ²³ “Sulfur and salt, conflagration for all of its land! No planting, no sprouting, no maturing crop in it! It will be like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in his fierce anger!”

²⁴ Then all the nations will say, “Why did the Lord do something like that to this land? What is the reason for this burning, this fierce anger?”

²⁵ Then they will say, “It is because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. ²⁶ They went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods that they had not known and that he had not allotted to them. ²⁷ So the anger of the Lord burned against that land to bring on it the entire curse written in this book. ²⁸ The Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, in rage, and in his great wrath, and he hurled them into another land, as it is to this day.”

²⁹ The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, so that we carry out all the words of this law.

Prosperity Will Follow Repentance

Deuteronomy 30

¹ When all these things come upon you, both the blessing and the curse that I have given you, and you take them to heart while you are among all the nations to which the Lord your God has banished you, ² and when you return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice with all your heart and soul, in every way that I am commanding you today, you and your children, ³ then the Lord your God will restore you from your captivity. He will have compassion on you, and he will gather you together again out of all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. ⁴ Even if your banished people are at the end of the heavens, the Lord your God will gather you together there and take you away from there. ⁵ The Lord your God will bring you back to the land that your fathers possessed, and then you will possess it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers.

⁶ The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with the result that you will live.

⁷ Then the Lord your God will place all these curses on your enemies and on those who hated you and persecuted you. ⁸ Once again you will listen to the voice of the Lord, and you will carry out all of his commands that I am giving you today.

⁹ The Lord your God will cause you to be overflowing with good things from all the work of your hands, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your animals, and in the fruit of your soil. Once again he will rejoice over your prosperity, just as he rejoiced over your fathers, ¹⁰ when you obey the voice of the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and his statutes written in this Book of the Law, when you return to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

¹¹ Certainly, this commandment that I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not far away. ¹² It is not up in the heavens, so that you have to say, “Which one of us will go up to the heavens and get it for us so we can listen to it and carry it out?” ¹³ It is not across the sea, so that you have to say, “Which one of us will cross over to the other side of the sea and get it for us so we can listen to it and carry it out?” ¹⁴ Instead, the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so you can obey it.

Life or Death

¹⁵ See now, today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster. ¹⁶ This is what I am commanding you today: Love the Lord your God, walk in his ways, and keep his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and increase in number, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are going to possess.

¹⁷ But if your heart turns away, and you do not listen, and you are lured away, and you bow down to other gods and serve them, ¹⁸ then I declare to you today that you will most certainly perish. You will not live a long life on the land that you are about to enter and possess by crossing over the Jordan.

¹⁹ I call the heavens and the earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, a blessing and a curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live ²⁰ by loving the Lord your God, by listening to his voice, and by clinging to him, because that means life for you, and you will live a long life on your land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.