24. The Lord your God is a raging fire, a God who does not tolerate rivals.
25. Even when you have children and grandchildren and have grown old in that land, don’t become corrupt and make carved idols or statues that represent anything. I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today: If you do this thing that the Lord your God considers evil, making him furious,
26. you will quickly disappear from the land you’re going to possess on the other side of the Jordan River. You won’t live very long there. You’ll be completely wiped out.
27. The Lord will scatter you among the people of the world, and only a few of you will be left among the nations where the Lord will force you to live.
28. There you will worship wooden and stone gods made by human hands. These gods can’t see, hear, eat, or smell.
29. But if you look for the Lord your God when you are among those nations, you will find him whenever you search for him with all your heart and with all your soul.
30. When you’re in distress and all these things happen to you, then you will finally come back to the Lord your God and obey him.
31. The Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not abandon you, destroy you, or forget the promise to your ancestors that he swore he would keep.
32. Search the distant past, long before your time. Start from the very day God created people on earth. Search from one end of heaven to the other. Has anything as great as this ever happened before, or has anything like it ever been heard of?
33. Have any ⌊other⌋ people ever heard God speak from a fire and lived? You did!
34. Or has any god ever tried to come and take one nation away from another for himself? The Lord your God used his mighty hand and powerful arm to do this for you in Egypt. He did this using plagues, miraculous signs, amazing things, and war. He did his great and awe-inspiring deeds in front of you.
35. You were shown these things so that you would know that the Lord is God. There is no other god.
36. He let you hear his voice from heaven so that he could instruct you. He showed you his great fire on earth, and you heard him speak from the column of fire.
37. Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants, he was with you as he brought you out of Egypt by his great power.
38. He forced nations greater and stronger than you out of your way to bring you into their land and give it to you. This land is your own possession today.