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Deuteronomy 27:1-30:20

Choose Life (Official)

Lyrics · Deuteronomy

Choose Life (Official)

Deuteronomy 27:1-30:20

Lyrics

About this song

About this song

This song belongs to the Deuteronomy collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.

Bible book
Deuteronomy
Collection
Deuteronomy
Musical styles
Electronic
[Intro] Two mountains and a valley. Six tribes on either side. [Verse 1] When you cross, he said, stand up great stones and plaster them with lime. Write every word on them plainly. Let the whole hill read the line. Build an altar out of field rock. Let no iron touch the stone. Put half of you on Gerizim and half on Ebal, bare as bone. [Verse 2] The Levites shout it down the valley. The valley says, Amen. Rain on the field in its season, bread in the basket again. Or a sky of bronze above you, the ground turned iron at your feet, dust coming down where the rain should be, and a far nation at the gate eating what you reap. [Pre-Chorus] I was there in Moab. I carry water. The woodcutter stood by me. He said this word is for us all, and the ones we'll never see. [Chorus] Choose life. Choose life. You don't have to climb the sky. You don't have to cross the sea. It's in your mouth, it's in your chest, as near as it can be. Choose life. Choose life. [Verse 3] And if you're scattered past the edge of every sky you know, and there you turn, and there you listen, He won't let you go. He'll gather you from where you are and bring you home to your fathers' land, and cut the hardness off your heart and hold you in His hand. [Chorus] Choose life. Choose life. You don't have to climb the sky. You don't have to cross the sea. It's in your mouth, it's in your chest, as near as it can be. Choose life. Choose life. [Bridge] Here is the good. Here is the dust. Here is the blessing. Here is the curse. The sky is watching. So is the ground. Choose for your children first. Hold on to Him and hear Him. He is the breath you breathe, and every year you'll ever have in the land you'll receive. [Final Chorus] Choose life. Choose life. You don't have to climb the sky. You don't have to cross the sea. It's in your mouth, it's in your chest, as near as it can be. Choose life. Choose life. So you can live. So your children live. [Outro] Two mountains and a valley. Choose.

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.

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Deuteronomy 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.

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Deuteronomy 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.

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