Lyrics · Deuteronomy
Choose Life
Deuteronomy 27:1-30:20
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About this song
About this song
This song belongs to the Deuteronomy collection. 2 recordings are available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.
- Bible book
- Deuteronomy
- Collection
- Deuteronomy
- Musical styles
- Electronic
Named in this songGerizim
About the passage
Deuteronomy 27: The law is written where the people must answer
Deuteronomy 27 turns the entrance into the land into a public act of writing, hearing, sacrificing, and answering. Great plastered stones are to carry the law plainly enough to be read. Mount Ebal, associated with the curse in the ceremony that follows, also receives an altar, burnt offerings, peace offerings, eating, and rejoicing. The people are then arranged across Gerizim and Ebal while the Levites speak curses that receive a repeated national answer: “Amen.” Many of the named offences are exactly the sort that can hide from ordinary witnesses, from a secret idol to a shifted landmark, a bribe, or a blow struck in secret. The ceremony drags concealed wrongdoing into public acknowledgment without pretending every secret act will be caught by human eyes. Its final curse widens beyond the individual examples to the failure to uphold the law by doing it. The people’s spoken assent therefore points beyond speech toward performance.
Study Deuteronomy 27 in depthDeuteronomy 28: The life of the land can be turned inside out
Deuteronomy 28 is built like a reversal machine. The blessings begin with city and field, children and livestock, basket and store, coming in and going out, then expand to victory, rain, lending, and national distinction. When the curses arrive, they deliberately revisit the same places and turn each one inside out. The basket empties, the sky closes, enemies reverse the sevenfold flight, houses and vineyards are begun but not enjoyed, children are carried away, and labor continues without its expected fruit. As the chapter darkens, siege enters the household and destroys bonds that ordinary life should protect. Scattering among nations brings no rest, and the final image reverses the exodus itself by sending Israel back toward Egypt and an unwanted bondage. Yet the chapter’s terror is not random. It systematically dismantles the life the covenant had described as blessing. The long list works because the reader has already been shown, in detail, exactly what is being lost.
Study Deuteronomy 28 in depthDeuteronomy 29: Standing inside the covenant does not create a private exemption
Deuteronomy 29 gathers Israel into covenant while refusing every easy assumption about what that membership means. The people have seen Egypt, wilderness preservation, and conquered territory, yet Moses can still speak of eyes that have not truly seen and a heart that has not perceived. The assembly reaches from recognized leaders to ordinary laborers and resident strangers, then beyond those physically present. Against that breadth stands a private danger: someone may hear the covenant curse and quietly promise himself peace anyway. The chapter then imagines ruined land becoming public testimony to abandoned allegiance. It closes by drawing a clean boundary between what belongs to God in secret and what has been revealed to Israel and its children. The revealed word is not given for speculation. It is given “that we may do” it.
Study Deuteronomy 29 in depth