Turning away from God

¹⁴ “It is not with you alone that I am making this covenant and this oath, ¹⁵ but with those [future Israelites] who are not here with us today, as well as with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God ¹⁶ (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the nations along the way; ¹⁷ and you have seen their detestable acts and their [repulsive] idols of wood and stone, [lifeless images] of silver and gold, which they had with them), ¹⁸ so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the [false] gods of these nations; so that there will not be among you a root [of idolatry] bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood (bitterness). ¹⁹ It will happen that when he (a renegade) hears the words of this oath, and he ^[a]imagines himself as blessed, saying, ‘I will have peace and safety even though I walk within the stubbornness of my heart [rejecting God and His law], in order that the watered land dwindles away along with the dry [destroying everything],’ ²⁰ the Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but then the anger of the Lord and His ^[b]jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him; the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹ Then the Lord will single him out for disaster from all the tribes of Israel [making an example of him], according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this Book of the Law.