Rewards of Obedience
10 For the land which you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered [1]it with your foot like a garden of vegetables.
11 But the land into which you are about to cross to possess, a land of hills and valleys, drinks water from the rain of heaven,
12 a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
13 “It shall come about, if you listen obediently and pay attention to My commandments which I command you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul [your choices, your thoughts, your whole being]—
14 that [2]He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early [fall] rain and the late [spring] rain, so that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your [olive] oil.
15 And [3]He will give grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.
16 Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away [from the Lord] and serve other gods and worship them,
17 or [else] the Lord’s anger will be kindled and burn against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the land will not yield its fruit; and you will perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.
18 “Therefore, you shall impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul, and tie them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as [4]bands (frontals, frontlets) on your forehead.
19 You shall teach them [diligently] to your [5]children [impressing God’s precepts on their minds and penetrating their hearts with His truths], speaking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.
20 You shall write them on the [6]doorposts of your house and on your gates,
21 so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as [7]long as the heavens are above the earth.
22 For if you are careful to keep all this commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk [that is, to live each and every day] in all His ways and to hold tightly to Him—
23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess nations greater and mightier than you.
24 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall become yours; your territory shall be from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea (the Mediterranean).
25 No man will be able to stand before you; the Lord your God will lay the fear and the dread of you on all the land on which you set foot, just as He has spoken to you.
Deuteronomy 11:10-25 (AMP)
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 11:10 Egyptian crops were watered by irrigation, so this may refer to a simple irrigation device that was operated by the foot, or to the practice of opening and closing small water channels with the foot.
- Deuteronomy 11:14 So some ancient versions; MT reads I.
- Deuteronomy 11:15 So some ancient versions; MT reads I.
- Deuteronomy 11:18 See note 6:8.
- Deuteronomy 11:19 Lit sons, also v 21.
- Deuteronomy 11:20 See note 6:9.
- Deuteronomy 11:21 Lit the days of.
Unapologetically Marcia 