25. When you have children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, should you then act corruptly by fashioning an idol in the form of anything, and by this evil done in his sight provoke the Lord, your God,
26. I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you, that you shall all quickly perish from the land which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You shall not live in it for any length of time but shall be utterly wiped out.
27. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and there shall remain but a handful of you among the nations to which the Lord will drive you.
28. There you shall serve gods that are works of human hands, of wood and stone, gods which can neither see nor hear, neither eat nor smell.
29. Yet when you seek the Lord, your God, from there, you shall indeed find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul.
30. In your distress, when all these things shall have come upon you, you shall finally return to the Lord, your God, and listen to his voice.
31. Since the Lord, your God, is a merciful God, he will not abandon or destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.
32. Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created humankind upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of?
33. Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
34. Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors, all of which the Lord, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?