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The Torah · Old Testament

Deuteronomy 29

The covenant in Moab and the danger of self-assurance

General context

The narrator introduces the covenant made in Moab alongside the covenant at Horeb. Moses recalls Egypt, forty years of wilderness provision and victory over Sihon and Og, yet says that even now the Lord has not given the people a heart to understand. The assembled covenant community includes leaders, men, wives, children and the resident stranger, down to woodcutters and water carriers. The oath also reaches those not present. Moses warns against a person, family or tribe turning to other gods while privately claiming to be safe. He then imagines later children and foreign visitors seeing a devastated land and asking why. The answer given is abandonment of the covenant and worship of other gods. The closing distinction assigns secret things to the Lord and revealed things to the people and their children, so they may obey.

Cited passages: Deuteronomy 29:1, Deuteronomy 29:2, Deuteronomy 29:3, Deuteronomy 29:4, Deuteronomy 29:5, Deuteronomy 29:6, Deuteronomy 29:7, Deuteronomy 29:8, Deuteronomy 29:9, Deuteronomy 29:10, Deuteronomy 29:11, Deuteronomy 29:12, Deuteronomy 29:13, Deuteronomy 29:14, Deuteronomy 29:15, Deuteronomy 29:18, Deuteronomy 29:19, Deuteronomy 29:20, Deuteronomy 29:21, Deuteronomy 29:22, Deuteronomy 29:23, Deuteronomy 29:24, Deuteronomy 29:25, Deuteronomy 29:26, Deuteronomy 29:27, Deuteronomy 29:28, Deuteronomy 29:29

Deuteronomy 29 (KJV)

1These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

2And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land;

3The great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:

4Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.

5And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot.

6Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink: that ye might know that I am the Lord your God.

7And when ye came unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us unto battle, and we smote them:

8And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.

9Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.

10Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

11Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water:

12That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day:

13That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

14Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;

15But with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

16(For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;

17And ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)

18Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;

19And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

20The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.

21And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:

22So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it;

23And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

24Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

25Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:

26For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:

27And the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

28And the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

29The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

This page shows the King James Version. In the app, reading opens in the Berean Standard Bible unless you have chosen another translation. The reader includes five translations: the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), the King James Version (KJV), the World English Bible (WEB), the Bible in Basic English (BBE), and the American Standard Version (ASV). Search covers three of them: Berean Standard, King James, and World English. Basic English and American Standard readers search the King James words.

Historical context

Moab and Horeb are the chapter's stated covenant locations. The recalled eastern lands are assigned to Reuben, Gad and half Manasseh. The future observers compare the ruined land to Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim; this is an imagined explanation within Moses' address, not an eyewitness travel report by named visitors. The phrase as it is this day belongs to that explanation and does not by itself identify a date of composition. Verse 19 is rendered differently: KJV adds drunkenness to thirst, ASV destroys the moist with the dry, and BBE describes taking whatever chance may give. All surround the same false confidence in pursuing one's own heart.

Cited passages: Deuteronomy 29:1, Deuteronomy 29:7, Deuteronomy 29:8, Deuteronomy 29:18, Deuteronomy 29:19, Deuteronomy 29:22, Deuteronomy 29:23, Deuteronomy 29:24, Deuteronomy 29:25, Deuteronomy 29:26, Deuteronomy 29:27, Deuteronomy 29:28

Literary context

The address moves from what the listeners have seen to their failure to perceive, then from everyone standing together to the private voice that imagines exemption. A root bearing bitter growth pictures hidden disloyalty spreading within that assembly. A later question and answer make the devastated land itself a prompt for covenant explanation. The final sentence limits speculation about what is secret and directs attention to what has been revealed for action.

Cited passages: Deuteronomy 29:2, Deuteronomy 29:3, Deuteronomy 29:4, Deuteronomy 29:10, Deuteronomy 29:11, Deuteronomy 29:12, Deuteronomy 29:13, Deuteronomy 29:14, Deuteronomy 29:15, Deuteronomy 29:18, Deuteronomy 29:19, Deuteronomy 29:22, Deuteronomy 29:23, Deuteronomy 29:24, Deuteronomy 29:25, Deuteronomy 29:26, Deuteronomy 29:27, Deuteronomy 29:28, Deuteronomy 29:29

Key moments

  1. Seeing without perceiving (Deuteronomy 29:4). Moses distinguishes witnessing the events from receiving a heart that understands them.
  2. The whole assembly stands (Deuteronomy 29:11). Children, wives and the resident stranger are explicitly included in the covenant gathering.
  3. Private assurance against the warning (Deuteronomy 29:19). A listener blesses himself inwardly while planning to follow his own heart.
  4. Revealed for obedience (Deuteronomy 29:29). The chapter closes by linking what is revealed with doing the law.

For reflection

The person in verse 19 hears the warning but privately assumes it will not apply. Where might familiar words pass over you without changing what you are prepared to do?

People in this chapter

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