¹⁵ otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they would prostitute themselves with their gods and ^(A)sacrifice to their gods, and someone ^(B)might invite you ^[a]to eat of his sacrifice,

²⁵ “When you father children and have ^[a]grandchildren, and you grow old in the land, and you ^(A)act corruptly, and ^(B)make ^[b]an idol in the form of anything, and ^(C)do what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God to provoke Him to anger, ²⁶ I ^(D)call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today, that you will ^(E)certainly perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to take possession of it. You will not ^[c]live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. ²⁷ The Lord will ^(F)scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord drives you. ^28 (G)There you will serve gods, the work of human hands, ^(H)wood and stone, ^(I)which neither see nor hear, nor eat nor smell anything.

Israel Serves the Baals

¹¹ Then the sons of Israel did ^(A)evil in the sight of the Lord and ^[a]served the ^(B)Baals, ¹² and ^(C)they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed other gods from the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them; so they provoked the Lord to anger.

¹⁷ Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they ^[a]committed infidelity with other gods and bowed down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way ^(A)in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do the same as their fathers.