Chapter 11

¹Therefore you shall love Yahweh your God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his ordinances, and his commandments, always. ²Know you this day: for I don’t speak with your children who have not known, and who have not seen the chastisement of Yahweh your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his outstretched arm, ³and his signs, and his works, which he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and to all his land; ⁴and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how Yahweh has destroyed them to this day; ⁵and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place; ⁶and 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, and their households, and their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel: ⁷but your eyes have seen all the great work of Yahweh which he did. ⁸Therefore shall you keep all the commandment which I command you this day, that you may be strong, and go in and possess the land, where you go over to possess it; ⁹and that you may prolong your days in the land, which Yahweh swore to your fathers to give to them and to their seed, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰For the land, where you go in to possess it, isn’t as the land of Egypt, from whence you came out, where you sowed your seed, and watered it with your foot, as a garden of herbs; ¹¹but the land, where you go over to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinks water of the rain of the sky, ¹²a land which Yahweh your God cares for: the eyes of Yahweh your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year. ¹³It shall happen, if you shall listen diligently to my commandments which I command you this day, to love Yahweh your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹⁴that I will give the rain of your land in its season, the former rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, and your new wine, and your oil. ¹⁵I will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. ¹⁶Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; ¹⁷and the anger of Yahweh be kindled against you, and he shut up the sky, so that there shall be no rain, and the land shall not yield its fruit; and you perish quickly from off the good land which Yahweh gives you. ¹⁸Therefore shall you lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul; and you shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for symbols between your eyes. ¹⁹You shall teach them your children, talking of them, when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. ²⁰You shall write them on the door posts of your house, and on your gates; ²¹that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers to give them, as the days of the heavens above the earth. ²²For if you shall diligently keep all this commandment which I command you, to do it, to love Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave to him; ²³then will Yahweh drive out all these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves. ²⁴Every place whereon the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness, and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even to the hinder sea shall be your border. ²⁵There shall no man be able to stand before you: Yahweh your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you shall tread on, as he has spoken to you. ²⁶Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: ²⁷the blessing, if you shall listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, which I command you this day; ²⁸and the curse, if you shall not listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which you have not known. ²⁹It shall happen, when Yahweh your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, that you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim, and the curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰Aren’t they beyond the Jordan, behind the way of the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the Arabah, over against Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh? ³¹For you are to pass over the Jordan to go in to possess the land which Yahweh your God gives you, and you shall possess it, and dwell therein. ³²You shall observe to do all the statutes and the ordinances which I set before you this day.