The accusations and denunciations in verses 16-21 reveal that that very same generation, the very people Moses will teach the song to (verse 19), will forsake Yahweh, break the covenant, and will be punished by Yahweh as soon as they cross the Jordan and settle in Canaan.

You are about to sleep with your fathers: this is a Hebrew idiom for dying, the thought being that the dead person will join his or her ancestors in Sheol. There may be some languages in which this idea will sound natural, but English is not one of them. Revised English Bible is probably the best attempt in English: “you are about to die and join your forefathers.” But even this will not sound natural to many readers. BÍBLIA para todos Edição Comum does the same: “You are going to die, you are going to join your ancestors.” In many languages the best translation will be one in which the normal term or expression for dying is used. Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version have done a good job of restructuring, with all the information included: “You will soon die….”

Will rise and play the harlot after strange gods: again the idiom play the harlot is not a natural one; the meaning is to forsake God, likening this act to a married person who leaves his or her spouse and goes off after lovers (see 4.25-28; Exo 34.15-16). So Good News Translation has “the people will become unfaithful to me,” and Contemporary English Version translates “the people will reject me.”

Strange gods of the land, where they go to be among them: strange gods are foreign gods, the gods of pagans. The Canaanites had their own gods, and for the Israelites to live in Canaan meant to live with the Canaanite gods. For gods see 4.28.

Forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them: see verse 6 for forsake.

It will be helpful for many translators to restructure this verse. The following is a possible alternative model:

• The LORD said to Moses, “You will soon die, and the Israelites will be going into a land where the inhabitants worship other gods. So after you die they will reject [or, be unfaithful to] me and will start worshiping these false gods. In this way they will break the agreement I made with them.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .