16. You know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries when we came here.
17. You saw their hateful idols made of wood, stone, silver, and gold.
18. Make sure no man, woman, family group, or tribe among you leaves the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. They would be to you like a plant that grows bitter, poisonous fruit.
19. These are the kind of people who hear these curses but bless themselves, thinking, “We will be safe even though we continue doing what we want to do.” Those people may destroy all of your land, both wet and dry.
20. The Lord will not forgive them. His anger will be like a burning fire against those people, and all the curses written in this book will come on them. The Lord will destroy any memory of them on the earth.
21. He will separate them from all the tribes of Israel for punishment. All the curses of the Agreement that are written in this Book of the Teachings will happen to them.
22. Your children who will come after you, as well as foreigners from faraway lands, will see the disasters that come to this land and the diseases the Lord will send on it. They will say,
23. “The land is nothing but burning cinders and salt. Nothing is planted, nothing grows, and nothing blooms. It is like Sodom and Gomorrah, and Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed because he was very angry.”
24. All the other nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done this to the land? Why is he so angry?”
25. And the answer will be, “It is because the people broke the Agreement of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt.
26. They went and served other gods and bowed down to gods they did not even know. The Lord did not allow that,