Deuteronomy 29

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

2 Moses called to all Israel, and said to them: Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;

3 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders.

4 But the LORD has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.

5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not grown old on you, and your sandals have not grown old on your feet.

6 You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the LORD your God.

7 When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle, and we struck them.

8 We took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of the Manassites.

9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.

10 All of you stand today in the presence of the LORD your God: your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel,

11 your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners who are in the middle of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water,

12 that you may enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you today,

13 that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he spoke to you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

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

15 but with those who stand here with us today before the LORD our God, and also with those who are not here with us today

16 (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the middle of the nations through which you passed;

17 and you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which were among them);

18 lest there should be among you man, woman, family, or tribe whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that produces bitter poison;

19 and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,” to destroy the moist with the dry.

20 The LORD will not pardon him, but then the LORD’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book will fall on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under the sky.

21 The LORD will set him apart for evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.

22 The generation to come—your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a far land—will say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick,

23 that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn’t produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath.

24 Even all the nations will say, “Why has the LORD done this to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?”

25 Then men will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt,

26 and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods that they didn’t know and that he had not given to them.

27 Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book.

28 The LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, in wrath, and in great indignation, and thrust them into another land, as it is today.”

29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Around Deuteronomy 29

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

Deuteronomy 29 · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this chapter says

Moses gathers everyone in the land of Moab for a covenant, in addition to the one made at Horeb. He calls them to look back at what their eyes have seen, the signs in Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness in which their clothes and sandals did not wear out. And yet the LORD has not given them a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.

The whole community stands there, leaders, little ones, wives and foreigners, from the one who cuts wood to the one who draws water. The covenant is not for them alone, but for those who are not here today.

Then a warning against the secret heart, a root that produces bitter poison, a person who hears the curse and blesses himself, saying, I shall have peace. Moses pictures future generations looking at a ruined land, like Sodom and Gomorrah, and asking why. The chapter ends with a famous line: the secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children.

Background

The mention of foreigners and future generations shows that the covenant is meant to reach beyond the people standing there. Verse 4 is difficult, and readers have long asked how the LORD's gift and Israel's responsibility fit together. Many see the pictures of a ruined land as looking ahead to the exile, which Jeremiah 22 also describes. Verse 29 is often used for the limits of human knowledge and the call to act on what is clear.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 26 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

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World English Bible. Public-domain source and edition notes