Deuteronomy 11

1Love, therefore, the ETERNAL your God—and always keep God’s charge, laws, rules, and commandments.

2Take thought this day that it was not your children, who neither experienced nor witnessed the lesson of the ETERNAL your God—the majesty, mighty hand, and outstretched arm;

3the signs and the deeds that were performed in Egypt against Pharaoh king of Egypt and all his land;

4what was done to Egypt’s army, its horses and chariots; how GOD rolled back upon them the waters of the Sea of Reeds when they were pursuing you, thus destroying them once and for all;

5what was done for you in the wilderness before you arrived in this place;

6and what was done to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab son of Reuben, when the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them, along with their households, their tents, and every living thing in their train, from amidst all Israel—

7but that it was you who saw with your own eyes all the marvelous deeds that GOD performed.

8Keep, therefore, all the Instruction that I enjoin upon you today, so that you may have the strength to enter and take possession of the land that you are about to cross into and possess,

9and that you may long endure upon the soil that GOD swore to your fathers to assign to them and to their heirs, a land flowing with milk and honey.

10For the land that you are about to enter and possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come. There the grain you sowed had to be watered by your own labors, like a vegetable garden;

11but the land you are about to cross into and possess, a land of hills and valleys, soaks up its water from the rains of heaven.

12It is a land that the ETERNAL your God looks after, on which the ETERNAL your God always keeps an eye, from year’s beginning to year’s end.

13If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the ETERNAL your God and rendering service with all your heart and soul,

14I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late. You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil—

15I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle—and thus you shall eat your fill.

16Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them.

17For GOD’s anger will flare up against you, shutting up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that GOD is assigning to you.

18Therefore impress these My words upon your very heart: bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead,

19and teach them to your children—reciting them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up;

20and inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates—

21to the end that you and your children may endure, in the land that GOD swore to your fathers to assign to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth.

22If, then, you faithfully keep all this Instruction that I command you—by loving the ETERNAL your God, by walking in all God’s ways, and by holding fast to [God]—

23the ETERNAL will dislodge before you all these nations: you will dispossess nations greater and more numerous than you.

24Every spot on which your foot treads shall be yours; your territory shall extend from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River—the Euphrates—to the Western Sea.

25No one shall stand up to you: the ETERNAL your God will put the dread and the fear of you over the whole land in which you set foot, as promised.

26See, this day I set before you blessing and curse:

27blessing, if you obey the commandments of the ETERNAL your God that I enjoin upon you this day;

28and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the ETERNAL your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.

29When the ETERNAL your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and possess, you shall pronounce the blessing at Mount Gerizim and the curse at Mount Ebal.—

30Both are on the other side of the Jordan, beyond the west road that is in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the Arabah—near Gilgal, by the terebinths of Moreh.

31For you are about to cross the Jordan to enter and possess the land that the ETERNAL your God is assigning to you. When you have occupied it and are settled in it,

32take care to observe all the laws and rules that I have set before you this day.