Deuteronomy 27-30
Bible in Basic English
Deuteronomy 27
Then Moses and the responsible men of Israel gave the people these orders: Keep all the orders which I have given you this day;
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And on the day when you go over Jordan into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, put up great stones, coating them with building-paste,
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And writing on them all the words of this law, after you have gone over; so that you may take the heritage which the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has said.
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And when you have gone over Jordan, you are to put up these stones, as I have said to you today, in Mount Ebal, and have them coated with building-paste.
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There you are to make an altar to the Lord your God, of stones on which no iron instrument has been used.
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You are to make the altar of the Lord your God of uncut stones; offering on it burned offerings to the Lord your God:
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And you are to make your peace-offerings, feasting there with joy before the Lord your God.
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And put on the stones all the words of this law, writing them very clearly.
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Then Moses and the priests, the Levites, said to all Israel, Be quiet and give ear, O Israel; today you have become the people of the Lord your God.
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For this cause you are to give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, and do his orders and his laws which I give you this day.
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That same day Moses said to the people,
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These are to take their places on Mount Gerizim for blessing the people when you have gone over Jordan: Simeon and Levi and Judah and Issachar and Joseph and Benjamin;
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And these are to be on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
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Then the Levites are to say in a loud voice to all the men of Israel,
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Cursed is the man who makes any image of wood or stone or metal, disgusting to the Lord, the work of man’s hands, and puts it up in secret. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who does not give honour to his father or mother. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who takes his neighbour’s landmark from its place. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he by whom the blind are turned out of the way. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who gives a wrong decision in the cause of a man from a strange land, or of one without a father, or of a widow. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who has sex relations with his father’s wife, for he has put shame on his father. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who has sex relations with any sort of beast. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who has sex relations with his sister, the daughter of his father or of his mother. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who has sex relations with his mother-in-law. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who takes his neighbour’s life secretly. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who for a reward puts to death one who has done no wrong. And let all the people say, So be it.
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Cursed is he who does not take this law to heart to do it. And let all the people say, So be it.
Deuteronomy 28
Now if you give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, and keep with care all these orders which I have given you today, then the Lord your God will put you high over all the nations of the earth:
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And all these blessings will come on you and overtake you, if your ears are open to the voice of the Lord your God.
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A blessing will be on you in the town, and a blessing in the field.
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A blessing will be on the fruit of your body, and on the fruit of your land, on the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herd, and the young of your flock.
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A blessing will be on your basket and on your bread-basin.
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A blessing will be on your coming in and on your going out.
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By the power of the Lord, those who take arms against you will be overcome before you: they will come out against you one way, and will go in flight from you seven ways.
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The Lord will send his blessing on your store-houses and on everything to which you put your hand: his blessing will be on you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
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The Lord will keep you as a people holy to himself, as he has said to you in his oath, if you keep the orders of the Lord your God and go on walking in his ways.
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And all the peoples of the earth will see that the name of the Lord is on you, and they will go in fear of you.
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And the Lord will make you fertile in every good thing, in the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your cattle, and the fruit of your fields, in the land which the Lord, by his oath to your fathers, said he would give you.
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Opening his store-house in heaven, the Lord will send rain on your land at the right time, blessing all the work of your hands: other nations will make use of your wealth, and you will have no need of theirs.
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The Lord will make you the head and not the tail; and you will ever have the highest place, if you give ear to the orders of the Lord your God which I give you today, to keep and to do them;
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Not turning away from any of the orders which I give you today, to the right hand or to the left, or going after any other gods to give them worship.
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But if you do not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, and take care to do all his orders and his laws which I give you today, then all these curses will come on you and overtake you:
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You will be cursed in the town and cursed in the field.
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A curse will be on your basket and on your bread-basin.
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A curse will be on the fruit of your body, and on the fruit of your land, on the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock.
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You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
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The Lord will send on you cursing and trouble and punishment in everything to which you put your hand, till sudden destruction overtakes you; because of your evil ways in which you have been false to me.
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The Lord will send disease after disease on you, till you have been cut off by death from the land to which you are going.
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The Lord will send wasting disease, and burning pain, and flaming heat against you, keeping back the rain till your land is waste and dead; so will it be till your destruction is complete.
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And the heaven over your heads will be brass, and the earth under you hard as iron.
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The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust, sending it down on you from heaven till your destruction is complete.
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The Lord will let you be overcome by your haters: you will go out against them one way, and you will go in flight before them seven ways: you will be the cause of fear among all the kingdoms of the earth.
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Your bodies will be meat for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth; there will be no one to send them away.
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The Lord will send on you the disease of Egypt, and other sorts of skin diseases which nothing will make well.
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He will make your minds diseased, and your eyes blind, and your hearts wasted with fear:
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You will go feeling your way when the sun is high, like a blind man for whom all is dark, and nothing will go well for you: you will be crushed and made poor for ever, and you will have no saviour.
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You will take a wife, but another man will have the use of her: the house which your hands have made will never be your resting-place: you will make a vine-garden, and never take the fruit of it.
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Your ox will be put to death before your eyes, but its flesh will not be your food: your ass will be violently taken away before your face, and will not be given back to you: your sheep will be given to your haters, and there will be no saviour for you.
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Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, and your eyes will be wasted away with looking and weeping for them all the day: and you will have no power to do anything.
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The fruit of your land and all the work of your hands will be food for a nation which is strange to you and to your fathers; you will only be crushed down and kept under for ever:
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So that the things which your eyes have to see will send you out of your minds.
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The Lord will send a skin disease, attacking your knees and your legs, bursting out from your feet to the top of your head, so that nothing will make you well.
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And you, and the king whom you have put over you, will the Lord take away to a nation strange to you and to your fathers; there you will be servants to other gods of wood and stone.
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And you will become a wonder and a name of shame among all the nations where the Lord will take you.
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You will take much seed out into the field, and get little in; for the locust will get it.
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You will put in vines and take care of them, but you will get no wine or grapes from them; for they will be food for worms.
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Your land will be full of olive-trees, but there will be no oil for the comfort of your body; for your olive-tree will give no fruit.
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You will have sons and daughters, but they will not be yours; for they will go away prisoners into a strange land.
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All your trees and the fruit of your land will be the locust’s.
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The man from a strange land who is living among you will be lifted up higher and higher over you, while you go down lower and lower.
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He will let you have his wealth at interest, and will have no need of yours: he will be the head and you the tail.
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And all these curses will come after you and overtake you, till your destruction is complete; because you did not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, or keep his laws and his orders which he gave you:
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These things will come on you and on your seed, to be a sign and a wonder for ever;
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Because you did not give honour to the Lord your God, worshipping him gladly, with joy in your hearts on account of all your wealth of good things;
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For this cause you will become servants to those whom the Lord your God will send against you, without food and drink and clothing, and in need of all things: and he will put a yoke of iron on your neck till he has put an end to you.
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The Lord will send a nation against you from the farthest ends of the earth, coming with the flight of an eagle; a nation whose language is strange to you;
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A hard-faced nation, who will have no respect for the old or mercy for the young:
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He will take the fruit of your cattle and of your land till death puts an end to you: he will let you have nothing of your grain or wine or oil or any of the increase of your cattle or the young of your flock, till he has made your destruction complete.
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Your towns will be shut in by his armies, till your high walls, in which you put your faith, have come down: his armies will be round your towns, through all your land which the Lord your God has given you.
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And your food will be the fruit of your body, the flesh of the sons and daughters which the Lord your God has given you; because of your bitter need and the cruel grip of your haters.
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That man among you who is soft and used to comfort will be hard and cruel to his brother, and to his dear wife, and to of those his children who are still living;
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And will not give to any of them the flesh of his children which will be his food because he has no other; in the cruel grip of your haters on all your towns.
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The most soft and delicate of your women, who would not so much as put her foot on the earth, so delicate is she, will be hard-hearted to her husband and to her son and to her daughter;
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And to her baby newly come to birth, and to the children of her body; for having no other food, she will make a meal of them secretly, because of her bitter need and the cruel grip of your haters on all your towns.
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If you will not take care to do all the words of this law, recorded in this book, honouring that name of glory and of fear, THE LORD YOUR GOD;
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Then the Lord your God will make your punishment, and the punishment of your seed, a thing to be wondered at; great punishments and cruel diseases stretching on through long years.
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He will send on you again all the diseases of Egypt, which were a cause of fear to you, and they will take you in their grip.
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And all the diseases and the pains not recorded in the book of this law will the Lord send on you till your destruction is complete.
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And you will become a very small band, though your numbers were like the stars of heaven; because you did not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God.
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And as the Lord took delight in doing you good and increasing you, so the Lord will take pleasure in cutting you off and causing your destruction, and you will be uprooted from the land which you are about to take as your heritage.
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And the Lord will send you wandering among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other: there you will be servants to other gods, of wood and stone, gods of which you and your fathers had no knowledge.
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And even among these nations there will be no peace for you, and no rest for your feet: but the Lord will give you there a shaking heart and wasting eyes and weariness of soul:
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Your very life will be hanging in doubt before you, and day and night will be dark with fears, and nothing in life will be certain:
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In the morning you will say, If only it was evening! And at evening you will say, If only morning would come! Because of the fear in your hearts and the things which your eyes will see.
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And the Lord will take you back to Egypt again in ships, by the way of which I said to you, You will never see it again: there you will be offering yourselves as men-servants and women-servants to your haters for a price, and no man will take you.
Deuteronomy 29
These are the words of the agreement which Moses was ordered by the Lord to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, in addition to the agreement which he made with them in Horeb.
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And Moses said in the hearing of all Israel, You have seen all the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and to all his servants and all his land;
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The great tests which your eyes saw, and the signs and wonders:
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But even to this day the Lord has not given you a mind open to knowledge, or seeing eyes or hearing ears.
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For forty years I have been your guide through the waste land: your clothing has not become old on your backs, or your shoes on your feet.
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You have had no bread, or wine, or strong drink: so that you might see that I am the Lord your God.
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When you came to this place, Sihon, king of Heshbon, and Og, king of Bashan, came out to make war against us and we overcame them:
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And we took their land and gave it to the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, for their heritage.
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So keep the words of this agreement and do them, so that it may be well for you in everything you do.
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You have come here today, all of you, before the Lord your God; the heads of your tribes, the overseers, and those who are in authority over you, with all the men of Israel,
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And your little ones, your wives, and the men of other lands who are with you in your tents, down to the wood-cutter and the servant who gets water for you:
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With the purpose of taking part in the agreement of the Lord your God, and his oath which he makes with you today:
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And so that he may make you his people today, and be your God, as he has said to you, and as he made an oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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And not with you only do I make this agreement and this oath;
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But with everyone who is here with us today before the Lord our God, as well as with those who are not here:
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(For you have in mind how we were living in the land of Egypt; and how we came through all the nations which were on your way;
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And you have seen their disgusting doings, and the images of wood and stone and silver and gold which were among them:)
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So that there may not be among you any man or woman or family or tribe whose heart is turned away from the Lord our God today, to go after other gods and give them worship; or any root among you whose fruit is poison and bitter sorrow;
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If such a man, hearing the words of this oath, takes comfort in the thought that he will have peace even if he goes on in the pride of his heart, taking whatever chance may give him:
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The Lord will have no mercy on him, but the wrath of the Lord will be burning against that man, and all the curses recorded in this book will be waiting for him, and the Lord will take away his name completely from the earth.
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He will be marked out by the Lord, from all the tribes of Israel, for an evil fate, in keeping with all the curses of the agreement recorded in this book of the law.
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And future generations, your children coming after you, and travellers from far countries, will say, when they see the punishments of that land and the diseases which the Lord has sent on it;
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And that all the land is a salt and smoking waste, not planted or giving fruit or clothed with grass, but wasted like Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, on which the Lord sent destruction in the heat of his wrath:
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Truly all the nations will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land? what is the reason for this great and burning wrath?
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Then men will say, Because they gave up the agreement of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he took them out of the land of Egypt:
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And they went after other gods and gave them worship, gods who were strange to them, and whom he had not given them:
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And so the wrath of the Lord was moved against this land, to send on it all the curse recorded in this book:
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Rooting them out of their land, in the heat of his wrath and passion, and driving them out into another land, as at this day.
29 The secret things are the Lord our God’s: but the things which have been made clear are ours and our children’s for ever, so that we may do all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 30
Now when all these things have come on you, the blessing and the curse which I have put before you, if the thought of them comes back to your minds, when you are living among the nations where the Lord your God has sent you,
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And your hearts are turned again to the Lord your God, and you give ear to his word which I give you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul:
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Then the Lord will have pity on you, changing your fate, and taking you back again from among all the nations where you have been forced to go.
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Even if those who have been forced out are living in the farthest part of heaven, the Lord your God will go in search of you, and take you back;
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Placing you again in the land of your fathers as your heritage; and he will do you good, increasing you till you are more in number than your fathers were.
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And the Lord your God will give to you and to your seed a circumcision of the heart, so that, loving him with all your heart and all your soul, you may have life.
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And the Lord your God will put all these curses on those who are against you, and on your haters who put a cruel yoke on you.
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And you will again give ear to the voice of the Lord, and do all his orders which I have given you today.
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And the Lord your God will make you fertile in all good things, blessing the work of your hands, and the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your cattle, and the fruit of your land: for the Lord will have joy in you, as he had in your fathers:
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If you give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, keeping his orders and his laws which are recorded in this book of the law, and turning to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
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For these orders which I have given you today are not strange and secret, and are not far away.
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They are not in heaven, for you to say, Who will go up to heaven for us and give us knowledge of them so that we may do them?
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And they are not across the sea, for you to say, Who will go over the sea for us and give us news of them so that we may do them?
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But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it.
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See, I have put before you today, life and good, and death and evil;
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In giving you orders today to have love for the Lord your God, to go in his ways and keep his laws and his orders and his decisions, so that you may have life and be increased, and that the blessing of the Lord your God may be with you in the land where you are going, the land of your heritage.
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But if your heart is turned away and your ear is shut, and you go after those who would make you servants and worshippers of other gods:
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I give witness against you this day that destruction will certainly be your fate, and your days will be cut short in the land where you are going, the land of your heritage on the other side of Jordan.
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Let heaven and earth be my witnesses against you this day that I have put before you life and death, a blessing and a curse: so take life for yourselves and for your seed:
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In loving the Lord your God, hearing his voice and being true to him: for he is your life and by him will your days be long: so that you may go on living in the land which the Lord gave by an oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
– Source Basic English Bible
