Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 31:16
And the LORD said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers, and these people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant I have made with them.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Yahweh speaks to Moses at the tent entrance, in a pillar of cloud, announcing his imminent death and the people's coming apostasy.
The words — זנה (zānâ, "to prostitute oneself") is the same verb used for human sexual immorality; applied here to the people's relationship with Yahweh, it frames covenant-breaking as adultery rather than mere policy error.
The thread — The prediction plays out in Judges: the Israelites forsake Yahweh and serve Baals and Ashtoreths (Judges 2:12; 10:6), and Yahweh's response matches the warning — "I will no longer save you" (Judges 10:13).
Why it lands — The verse refuses to let idolatry remain an abstract theological category; by using the language of prostitution, it demands the reader treat covenant unfaithfulness as a relational betrayal with a named partner, not a distant policy violation.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.
Cross-references
- Judges 10:6 And again the Israelites did evil in the sight of the LORD. They served the Baals, the Ashtoreths, the gods of Aram, Sidon, and Moab, and the gods of the Ammonites and Philistines. Thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.
- Judges 2:12 Thus they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed after various gods of the peoples around them. They bowed down to them and provoked the LORD to anger,
- Judges 10:13 But you have forsaken Me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you.
- Exodus 34:15 Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices.
- Ezekiel 16:15 But because of your fame, you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot. You lavished your favors on everyone who passed by, and your beauty was theirs for the asking.
- Revelation 19:2 For His judgments are true and just. He has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality. He has avenged the blood of His servants that was poured out by her hand.”
- Deuteronomy 32:15 But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—becoming fat, bloated, and gorged. He abandoned the God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation.
- Jeremiah 2:11 Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But My people have exchanged their Glory for useless idols.
- Hosea 2:2 Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
- 2 Samuel 7:12 And when your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.