Deuteronomy 29:22-28

29:22 The generation to come – your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places – will see ¹  the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it. 29:23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. ²  29:24 Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger ³  all about?” 29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 29:26 They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they did not know and that he did not permit them to worship. ⁴  29:27 That is why the Lord’s anger erupted against this land, bringing on it all the curses ⁵  written in this scroll. 29:28 So the Lord has uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great rage and has deported them to another land, as is clear today.”

Deuteronomy 29:1

Narrative Interlude

29:1 (28:69) ⁶  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 he had made with them at Horeb. ⁷ 

Deuteronomy 9:7-9

The History of Israel’s Stubbornness

9:7 Remember – don’t ever forget ⁸  – how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him. ⁹  9:8 At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you. 9:9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there ¹⁰  forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing.

Deuteronomy 9:2

9:2 They include the Anakites, ¹¹  a numerous ¹²  and tall people whom you know about and of whom it is said, “Who is able to resist the Anakites?”

Deuteronomy 7:21

7:21 You must not tremble in their presence, for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a great and awesome God.

Jeremiah 18:16

18:16 So their land will become an object of horror. ¹³ 

People will forever hiss out their scorn over it.

All who pass that way will be filled with horror

and will shake their heads in derision. ¹⁴ 

¹ tn Heb “will say and see.” One expects a quotation to appear, but it seems to be omitted. To avoid confusion in the translation, the verb “will say” is omitted.

² tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” This construction is a hendiadys intended to intensify the emotion.

³ tn Heb “this great burning of anger”; KJV “the heat of this great anger.”

⁴ tn Heb “did not assign to them”; NASB, NRSV “had not allotted to them.”

⁵ tn Heb “the entire curse.”

⁶ sn Beginning with 29:1, the verse numbers through 29:29 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 29:1 ET = 28:69 HT, 29:2 ET = 29:1 HT, 29:3 ET = 29:2 HT, etc., through 29:29 ET = 29:28 HT. With 30:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

⁷ sn Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai (which some English versions substitute here for clarity, cf. NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

⁸ tn By juxtaposing the positive זְכֹר (zekhor, “remember”) with the negative אַל־תִּשְׁכַּח (’al-tishÿkakh, “do not forget”), Moses makes a most emphatic plea.

⁹ tn Heb “the Lord” (likewise in the following verse with both “him” and “he”). See note on “he” in 9:3.

¹⁰ tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

¹¹ sn Anakites. See note on this term in Deut 1:28.

¹² tn Heb “great and tall.” Many English versions understand this to refer to physical size or strength rather than numbers (cf. “strong,” NIV, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

¹³ tn There may be a deliberate double meaning involved here. The word translated here “an object of horror” refers both to destruction (cf. 2:15; 4:17) and the horror or dismay that accompanies it (cf. 5:30; 8:21). The fact that there is no conjunction or preposition in front of the noun “hissing” that follows this suggests that the reaction is in view here, not the cause.

¹⁴ tn Heb “an object of lasting hissing. All who pass that way will be appalled and shake their head.”