Deuteronomy 29:18-28

18So be very careful that you do not turn away from the Lord our God to worship the gods of those nations. No man, woman, clan or tribe among you must ever want to do that. That would be like the root of a plant that gives fruits which are full of poison.

19Nobody who hears the message of this covenant should think that they can go against it. Someone might say to himself, ‘I do not have to obey this covenant. I will be safe, whatever happens. God will still bless me.’ A person who thinks like that will bring trouble on everyone and on everything.

20The Lord will never forgive that person. He will be very angry with him. The Lord will punish him in all the terrible ways that are written in this book. The Lord will destroy him completely so that his family name comes to an end.

21The Lord will make that person separate from all the Israelite tribes and he will punish him very much. All the troubles that the Lord promises in this covenant will happen to that person, as this book of God's Law says.

22Then, in future years, your descendants will see that many troubles have come to your land. They will see that the Lord has made people very ill. Foreign people who come from countries far away will also see what has happened.

23The whole land will become spoiled with salt and sulphur. No one will plant seed in it, because nothing will grow there. Even grass will not grow on it. The land will be useless, like the cities that the Lord destroyed when he was very angry with them. Those cities were Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim.

24The people of all other nations who see this will ask, ‘Why has the Lord destroyed this land? Why was he so angry with the people who lived there?’

25People will answer, ‘Because these people turned away from the covenant that the Lord had made with them. He is the God that their ancestors worshipped. He made a covenant with them when he brought them out of Egypt.

26But they turned away from him and they worshipped other gods. They served gods that they had not known before. They were gods that the Lord did not give them to worship.

27So the Lord was angry with the people in this land. He punished them with all the terrible troubles that are written in this book.

28That is why the Lord removed them from their land. He was very angry with them. So he threw them out to a foreign country. We see that they are still there today.’