28:1 “If you indeed 1 obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments I am giving 2 you today, the Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations of the earth. 28:2 All these blessings will come to you in abundance 3 if you obey the Lord your God: 28:3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the field. 4 28:4 Your children 5 will be blessed, as well as the produce of your soil, the offspring of your livestock, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 28:5 Your basket and your mixing bowl will be blessed. 28:6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. 6 28:7 The Lord will cause your enemies who attack 7 you to be struck down before you; they will attack you from one direction 8 but flee from you in seven different directions. 28:8 The Lord will decree blessing for you with respect to your barns and in everything you do – yes, he will bless you in the land he 9 is giving you. 28:9 The Lord will designate you as his holy people just as he promised you, if you keep his commandments 10 and obey him. 11 28:10 Then all the peoples of the earth will see that you belong to the Lord, 12 and they will respect you. 28:11 The Lord will greatly multiply your children, 13 the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your soil in the land which he 14 promised your ancestors 15 he would give you. 28:12 The Lord will open for you his good treasure house, the heavens, to give you rain for the land in its season and to bless all you do; 16 you will lend to many nations but you will not borrow from any. 28:13 The Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always end up at the top and not at the bottom, if you obey his 17 commandments which I am urging 18 you today to be careful to do. 28:14 But you must not turn away from all the commandments I am giving 19 you today, to either the right or left, nor pursue other gods and worship 20 them.
28:15 “But if you ignore 21 the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force: 22 28:16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field. 28:17 Your basket and your mixing bowl will be cursed. 28:18 Your children 23 will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 28:19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. 24
28:20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you 25 in everything you undertake 26 until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. 27 28:21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases 28 until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 28:22 He 29 will afflict you with weakness, 30 fever, inflammation, infection, 31 sword, 32 blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 28:23 The 33 sky 34 above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron. 28:24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.
28:25 “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror 35 to all the kingdoms of the earth. 28:26 Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off. 28:27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, eczema, and scabies, all of which cannot be healed. 28:28 The Lord will also subject you to madness, blindness, and confusion of mind. 36 28:29 You will feel your way along at noon like the blind person does in darkness and you will not succeed in anything you do; 37 you will be constantly oppressed and continually robbed, with no one to save you. 28:30 You will be engaged to a woman and another man will rape 38 her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it. 28:31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you. 28:32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it. 39 28:33 As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives. 28:34 You will go insane from seeing all this. 28:35 The Lord will afflict you in your knees and on your legs with painful, incurable boils – from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. 28:36 The Lord will force you and your king 40 whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there. 28:37 You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you.
28:38 “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. 28:39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. 28:40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe. 41 28:41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 28:42 Whirring locusts 42 will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil. 28:43 The foreigners 43 who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower. 28:44 They will lend to you but you will not lend to them; they will become the head and you will become the tail!
28:45 All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given 44 you. 28:46 These curses 45 will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants. 46
28:47 “Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 28:48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty 47 you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They 48 will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 28:49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth 49 as the eagle flies, 50 a nation whose language you will not understand,
1 tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “indeed.”
2 tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today” (likewise in v. 15).
3 tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”
4 tn Or “in the country” (so NAB, NIV, NLT). This expression also occurs in v. 15.
5 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
6 sn Come in…go out. To “come in” and “go out” is a figure of speech (merism) indicating all of life and its activities.
7 tn Heb “who rise up against” (so NIV).
8 tn Heb “way” (also later in this verse and in v. 25).
9 tn Heb “the
10 tn Heb “the commandments of the
11 tn Heb “and walk in his ways” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
12 tn Heb “the name of the Lord is called over you.” The Hebrew idiom indicates ownership; see 2 Sam 12:28; Isa 4:1, as well as BDB 896 s.v. קָרָא Niph. 2.d.(4).
13 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “will give you a lot of children.”
14 tn Heb “the
15 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 36, 64).
16 tn Heb “all the work of your hands.”
17 tn Heb “the
18 tn Heb “commanding” (so NRSV); NASB “which I charge you today.”
19 tn Heb “from all the words which I am commanding.”
20 tn Heb “in order to serve.”
21 tn Heb “do not hear the voice of.”
22 tn Heb “and overtake you” (so NIV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “and overwhelm you.”
23 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
24 sn See note on the similar expression in v. 6.
25 tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”
26 tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”
27 tc For the MT first person common singular suffix (“me”), the LXX reads either “Lord” (Lucian) or third person masculine singular suffix (“him”; various codices). The MT’s more difficult reading probably represents the original text.
28 tn Heb “will cause pestilence to cling to you.”
29 tn Heb “The
30 tn Or perhaps “consumption” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV). The term is from a verbal root that indicates a weakening of one’s physical strength (cf. NAB “wasting”; NIV, NLT “wasting disease”).
31 tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”
32 tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).
33 tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”
34 tn Or “heavens” (also in the following verse). The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
35 tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (za’avah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zÿva’ah, “terror”).
36 tn Heb “heart” (so KJV, NASB).
37 tn Heb “you will not cause your ways to prosper.”
38 tc For MT reading שָׁגַל (shagal, “ravish; violate”), the Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate presume the less violent שָׁכַב (shakhav, “lie with”). The unexpected counterpart to betrothal here favors the originality of the MT.
39 tn Heb “and there will be no power in your hand”; NCV “there will be nothing you can do.”
40 tc The LXX reads the plural “kings.”
41 tn Heb “your olives will drop off” (נָשַׁל, nashal), referring to the olives dropping off before they ripen.
42 tn The Hebrew term denotes some sort of buzzing or whirring insect; some have understood this to be a type of locust (KJV, NIV, CEV), but other insects have also been suggested: “buzzing insects” (NAB); “the cricket” (NASB); “the cicada” (NRSV).
43 tn Heb “the foreigner.” This is a collective singular and has therefore been translated as plural; this includes the pronouns in the following verse, which are also singular in the Hebrew text.
44 tn Heb “commanded”; NAB, NIV, TEV “he gave you.”
45 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the curses mentioned previously) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
46 tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).
47 tn Heb “lack of everything.”
48 tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the
49 tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”
50 tn Some translations understand this to mean “like an eagle swoops down” (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), comparing the swift attack of an eagle to the attack of the Israelites’ enemies.