18. Make sure there isn't a man or woman among your families or tribes who turns away from the Lord our God. No one must worship the gods of those nations. Make sure that kind of worship doesn't spread like bitter poison through your whole community.
19. Some people who worship those gods will hear the oath that seals the covenant I'm making. They think they can escape trouble by saying to themselves, "We'll be safe, even though we're stubborn and go our own way." But trouble will come on them everywhere in the land.
20. The Lord will never be willing to forgive those people. His burning anger will blaze out against them. All of the curses I've written down in this scroll will fall on them. And the Lord will wipe out their names from the earth.
21. He will find those people in all of the tribes of Israel and give them nothing but trouble. That will be in keeping with all of the curses of the covenant. They are written down in this Scroll of the Law.
22. Even your children's children will see the troubles that have fallen on the land. They'll see the sicknesses the Lord has brought on it. People who come from countries far away will also see those things.
23. The whole land will be burned up. Nothing but salt and sulfur will be left. Nothing will be planted there. Nothing will grow there. In fact, nothing will even start to grow there. The land will be like Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim after they were destroyed. The Lord wiped out those cities because he was very angry.
24. All of the nations will ask, "Why has the Lord done this to the land? What could have made him so very angry?"
25. And they will hear the answer, "It's because the people who are living there have broken the covenant of the Lord. He's the God of their parents. He made that covenant with them when he brought them out of Egypt.
26. They went off and worshiped other gods. They bowed down to them. They hadn't known anything about those gods before. The Lord hadn't given those gods to them.
27. "So the Lord's anger burned against the land. He brought on it all of the curses that are written down in this scroll.
28. The Lord's anger blazed out against his people. So he pulled them up out of their land. He threw them into another land. And that's where they are now."