Love and Obedience Rewarded
1 “Therefore you shall love theLordyour God, and keep His charge, His statutes, His judgments, and His commandments always.
2 Know today thatIdonotspeakwith your children, who have not known and who have not seen the chastening of theLordyour God, His greatness and His mighty hand and His outstretched arm—
3 His signs and His acts which He did in the midst of Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to all his land;
4 what He did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and their chariots:how He made the waters of the Red Sea overflow them as they pursued you, andhowtheLordhas destroyed them to this 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, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, their households, their tents, and all the substance thatwasin their possession, in the midst of all Israel—
7 but your eyes haveseen every great act of theLordwhich He did.
8 “Therefore you shall keep every commandment which I command you today, that you maybe strong, and go in and possess the land which you cross over to possess,
9 andthat you may prolongyourdays in the landwhich theLordswore to give your fathers, to them and their descendants,‘a land flowing with milk and honey.’
10 For the land which you go to possessisnot like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watereditby foot, as a vegetable garden;
11 but the land which you cross over to possessisa land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven,
12 a land for which theLordyour God cares;the eyes of theLordyour Godarealways on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.
13 ‘And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love theLordyour God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul,
14 thenI will giveyouthe rain for your land in its season,the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil.
15 And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you mayeat and be filled.’
16 “Take heed to yourselves,lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside andserve other gods and worship them,
17 lesttheLord’s anger be aroused against you, and Heshut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, andyou perish quickly from the good land which theLordis giving you.
18 “Thereforeyou shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in yoursoul, andbind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
19 You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
20 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,
21 thatyour days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which theLordswore to your fathers to give them, likethe days of the heavens above the earth.
22 “For ifyou carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do—to love theLordyour God, to walk in all His ways, andto hold fast to Him—
23 then theLordwilldrive out all these nations from before you, and you willdispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves.
24 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours:from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, even to the Western Sea, shall be your territory.
25 No man shall be able tostand against you; theLordyour God will put thedread of you and the fear of you upon all the land where you tread, just as He has said to you.
26 “Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse:
27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of theLordyour God which I command you today;
28 and thecurse, if you do not obey the commandments of theLordyour God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known.
29 Now it shall be, when theLordyour God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, that you shall put theblessing on Mount Gerizim and thecurse on Mount Ebal.
30 Arethey not on the other side of the Jordan, toward the setting sun, in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the plain opposite Gilgal,beside the terebinth trees of Moreh?
31 For you will cross over the Jordan and go in to possess the land which theLordyour God is giving you, and you will possess it and dwell in it.
32 And you shall be careful to observe all the statutes and judgments which I set before you today.