12 Assemble the people—men, women and children, as well as the resident aliens who live in your communities—that they may hear and so learn to fear the Lord, your God, and to observe carefully all the words of this law.
13 Their children also, who do not know it yet, shall hear and learn to fear the Lord, your God, as long as you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess.
14 The Lord said to Moses, The time is now approaching for you to die. Summon Joshua, and present yourselves at the tent of meeting that I may commission him. So Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves at the tent of meeting.
15 And the Lord appeared at the tent in a column of cloud; the column of cloud stood at the entrance of the tent.
16 The Lord said to Moses, Soon you will be at rest with your ancestors, and then this people will prostitute themselves by following the foreign gods among whom they will live in the land they are about to enter. They will forsake me and break the covenant which I have made with them.
17 At that time my anger will flare up against them; I will forsake them and hide my face from them; they will become a prey to be devoured, and much evil and distress will befall them. At that time they will indeed say, “Is it not because our God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us?”
18 Yet I will surely hide my face at that time because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods.