¹⁵ lest you cut a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and ^(A)sacrifice to their gods, and one of them ^(B)invite you ^[a]to eat of his sacrifice,

²⁵ “When you ^[a]become the father of children and children’s children and remain long in the land and ^(A)act corruptly and ^(B)make ^[b]a graven image in the form of anything and ^(C)do that which is evil in the sight of Yahweh your God so as to provoke Him to anger, ²⁶ I ^(D)call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will ^(E)surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not prolong your days on it, but will be utterly destroyed. ²⁷ And Yahweh will ^(F)scatter you among the peoples, and you will remain few in number among the nations where Yahweh drives you. ^28 (G)And there you will serve gods, the work of man’s hands, ^(H)wood and stone, ^(I)which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell.

Israel Serves Baals

¹¹ Then the sons of Israel did ^(A)what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh and ^[a]served the ^(B)Baals, ¹² and ^(C)they forsook Yahweh, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked Yahweh to anger.

¹⁷ Yet they did not listen to their judges either, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way ^(A)in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of Yahweh; they did not do as their fathers.