²⁵ “When you father children and children’s children and have been in the land a long time, and you act corruptly and make a graven image in the form of anything and do evil in the sight of Adonai your God, provoking Him to anger, ²⁶ I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will certainly be carried off quickly from the land you are crossing over the Jordan to possess. You will not prolong your days on it, for you will certainly be destroyed. ²⁷ Adonai will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where Adonai will drive you. ²⁸ There you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, which do not see or hear or eat or smell. ²⁹ But from there you will seek Adonai your God and you will find Him, when you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

³⁰ “When you are in distress and all these things have come on you, in the latter days you will return to Adonai your God and listen to His voice. ³¹ For Adonai your God is a merciful God. He will not abandon you or destroy you, or forget the covenant with your fathers that He swore to them.

³² “Indeed, ask now about the former days that were before you, from the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of the sky to the other. Has there ever been such a great thing as this, or has anything like it been heard? ³³ Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard—and lived? ³⁴ Or has any god ever tried to come to take for himself a nation from within a nation—by trials, by signs and wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors—like all that Adonai your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? ³⁵ You were shown, so that you might know that Adonai is God—there is no other besides Him. ^{[a] 36} From the heavens He made you hear His voice to instruct you,^[b] and on earth He caused you to see His great fire—you heard His words from the midst of the fire. ³⁷ Because He loved your fathers, He chose their descendants after them. Then He brought you out from Egypt with His presence, by His great power— ³⁸ to drive out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is this day.

³⁹ “So you will know today and take to heart that Adonai, He is God, in the heavens above and on the earth below—there is no other. ⁴⁰ You must keep His statutes and His mitzvot, which I am commanding you today, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and so that you may prolong your days in the land that Adonai your God is giving you for all time.”