Deuteronomy 11

1 “So you are to love the Lord your God and keep his charge and his rules and his judgments, always. 2 And you are to know today — for I am not speaking to your children, who have not known and have not seen the discipline of the Lord your God, and his greatness, and his strong hand, and his uplifted arm, 3 and his signs, and his wonders, which he did in the middle of Egypt to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to all his land, 4 and what he did to the army of the Egyptians, to their chariots and their horsemen — how he made the water of the Red Sea flood over their faces as they chased after you, and the Lord destroyed them, and it lasts to this day; 5 and everything he did for you in the wilderness until you came to this place; 6 and everything he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab son of Reuben, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households and their tents and everything of theirs that stood with them, in the middle of all Israel — 7 for it is your own eyes that have seen all the great works of the Lord, which he did among you today.

8 And you are to keep all his commands, all that I am commanding you today, so that you may live, and become many, and go in and take the land you are crossing the Jordan to take; 9 so that you may live long on the land the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants after them — a land flowing with milk and honey.

10 For the land you are going into to take is not like the land of Egypt you came out of, where you sow your seed and water it with your feet, like a vegetable garden. [a] 11 The land you are going into to take is a land of mountains and plains; it drinks water from the rain of heaven. 12 It is a land the Lord your God watches over continually; the eyes of the Lord your God are on it from the start of the year to the end of the year. 13 Now if you will really listen to all the commands I am charging you with today, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with your whole heart and with your whole soul, 14 then he will give your land its rain in season, the early and the late, and you will bring in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your cattle; and you will eat and be full. 16 Watch yourselves, that your heart is not puffed up, and you turn aside and serve other gods and bow down to them — 17 and the Lord becomes angry with you and shuts up the sky, and there is no rain, and the ground does not give its fruit, and you are quickly lost from off the good land the Lord has given you.

18 And you are to store these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and fasten them as a sign on your hand, and they are to be fixed in front of your eyes. 19 And you are to teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in the house, and when you walk on the road, and when you lie down, and when you get up. 20 And you are to write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days may be many, and the days of your children, on the land the Lord swore to your fathers to give them — as many as the days of heaven over the earth.

22 For if you will really keep all these commands I am charging you with, to do them, to love the Lord our God and to walk in all his ways and to hold fast to him, 23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations from in front of you, and you will take over nations greater and stronger than yourselves. 24 Every place where the sole of your foot treads will be yours: from the wilderness and Anti-Lebanon, and from the great river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea — that will be your territory. [b] 25 No one will stand in front of you. The Lord your God will put the fear of you and the dread of you on the face of the whole land you tread on, as he told you.

26 See — I am setting before you today the blessing and the curse: 27 the blessing, if you listen to the commands of the Lord your God, all that I command you today; 28 and the curse, if you do not listen to the commands of the Lord your God, all that I command you today, and you wander from the way I have commanded you and go and serve other gods you have not known. 29 And when the Lord your God brings you into the land you are crossing over to take, then you are to set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. [c] 30 Are these not beyond the Jordan, behind, to the west, in the land of Canaan, lying westward near Gilgal, by the tall oak? 31 For you are crossing the Jordan to go in and take the land the Lord your God is giving you to hold always, and you will live in it. 32 And you are to be careful to do all his rules, and these judgments, all that I set before you today.