Deuteronomy 28:15-68

Curses as Reversal of Blessings

28:15 “But if you ignore ¹  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: ²  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 ³  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. ⁴ 

Curses by Disease and Drought

28:20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you ⁵  in everything you undertake ⁶  until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. ⁷  28:21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases ⁸  until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 28:22 He ⁹  will afflict you with weakness, ¹⁰  fever, inflammation, infection, ¹¹  sword, ¹²  blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 28:23 The ¹³  sky ¹⁴  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.

Curses by Defeat and Deportation

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 ¹⁵  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. ¹⁶  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; ¹⁷  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 ¹⁸  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. ¹⁹  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 ²⁰  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.

The Curse of Reversed Status

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. ²¹  28:41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 28:42 Whirring locusts ²²  will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil. 28:43 The foreigners ²³  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 ²⁴  you. 28:46 These curses ²⁵  will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants. ²⁶ 

The Curse of Military Siege

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 ²⁷  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ²⁸  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 ²⁹  as the eagle flies, ³⁰  a nation whose language you will not understand, 28:50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. 28:51 They ³¹  will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, ³²  or lambs of your flocks ³³  until they have destroyed you. 28:52 They will besiege all of your villages ³⁴  until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. 28:53 You will then eat your own offspring, ³⁵  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ³⁶  by which your enemies will constrict you. 28:54 The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. 28:55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict ³⁷  you in your villages. 28:56 Likewise, the most ³⁸  tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, ³⁹  will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth ⁴⁰  and her newborn children ⁴¹  (since she has nothing else), ⁴²  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

The Curse of Covenant Termination

28:58 “If you refuse to obey ⁴³  all the words of this law, the things written in this scroll, and refuse to fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, 28:59 then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants – great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses. 28:60 He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt ⁴⁴  that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you. ⁴⁵  28:61 Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, ⁴⁶  until you have perished. 28:62 There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, ⁴⁷  because you will have disobeyed ⁴⁸  the Lord your God. 28:63 This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he ⁴⁹  will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess. 28:64 The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. 28:65 Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. 28:66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next. ⁵⁰  28:67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see. 28:68 Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”

Nehemiah 9:26

9:26 “Nonetheless they grew disobedient and rebelled against you; they disregarded your law. ⁵¹  They killed your prophets who had solemnly admonished them in order to cause them to return to you. They committed atrocious blasphemies.

Jeremiah 7:23-28

7:23 I also explicitly commanded them: ⁵²  “Obey me. If you do, I ⁵³  will be your God and you will be my people. Live exactly the way I tell you ⁵⁴  and things will go well with you.” 7:24 But they did not listen to me or pay any attention to me. They followed the stubborn inclinations of their own wicked hearts. They acted worse and worse instead of better. ⁵⁵  7:25 From the time your ancestors departed the land of Egypt until now, ⁵⁶  I sent my servants the prophets to you again and again, ⁵⁷  day after day. ⁵⁸  7:26 But your ancestors ⁵⁹  did not listen to me nor pay attention to me. They became obstinate ⁶⁰  and were more wicked than even their own forefathers.’”

7:27 Then the Lord said to me, ⁶¹  “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you. When you call out to them, they will not respond to you. 7:28 So tell them: ‘This is a nation that has not obeyed the Lord their God and has not accepted correction. Faithfulness is nowhere to be found in it. These people do not even profess it anymore. ⁶² 

Jeremiah 22:21

22:21 While you were feeling secure I gave you warning. ⁶³ 

But you said, “I refuse to listen to you.”

That is the way you have acted from your earliest history onward. ⁶⁴ 

Indeed, you have never paid attention to me.

Zechariah 7:11-14

7:11 “But they refused to pay attention, turning away stubbornly and stopping their ears so they could not hear. 7:12 Indeed, they made their heart as hard as diamond, ⁶⁵  so that they could not obey the Torah and the other words the Lord who rules over all had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore, the Lord who rules over all had poured out great wrath.

7:13 “‘It then came about that just as I ⁶⁶  cried out, but they would not obey, so they will cry out, but I will not listen,’ the Lord Lord who rules over all had said. 7:14 ‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ⁶⁷  land a waste.”

[28:15]  ¹ tn Heb “do not hear the voice of.”

[28:15]  ² tn Heb “and overtake you” (so NIV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “and overwhelm you.”

[28:18]  ³ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[28:19]  ⁴ sn See note on the similar expression in v. 6.

[28:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”

[28:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”

[28:20]  ⁷ 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.

[28:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “will cause pestilence to cling to you.”

[28:22]  ⁹ tn Heb “The Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:22]  ¹⁰ 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”).

[28:22]  ¹¹ tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”

[28:22]  ¹² tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[28:23]  ¹³ tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”

[28:23]  ¹⁴ tn Or “heavens” (also in the following verse). The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[28:25]  ¹⁵ tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (za’avah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zÿva’ah, “terror”).

[28:28]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “heart” (so KJV, NASB).

[28:29]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “you will not cause your ways to prosper.”

[28:30]  ¹⁸ 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.

[28:32]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and there will be no power in your hand”; NCV “there will be nothing you can do.”

[28:36]  ²⁰ tc The LXX reads the plural “kings.”

[28:40]  ²¹ tn Heb “your olives will drop off” (נָשַׁל, nashal), referring to the olives dropping off before they ripen.

[28:42]  ²² 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).

[28:43]  ²³ 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.

[28:45]  ²⁴ tn Heb “commanded”; NAB, NIV, TEV “he gave you.”

[28:46]  ²⁵ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the curses mentioned previously) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[28:46]  ²⁶ tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).

[28:48]  ²⁷ tn Heb “lack of everything.”

[28:48]  ²⁸ 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 Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).

[28:49]  ²⁹ tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”

[28:49]  ³⁰ 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.

[28:51]  ³¹ tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).

[28:51]  ³² tn Heb “increase of herds.”

[28:51]  ³³ tn Heb “growth of flocks.”

[28:52]  ³⁴ tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.

[28:53]  ³⁵ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”

[28:53]  ³⁶ tn Heb “siege and stress.”

[28:55]  ³⁷ tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

[28:56]  ³⁸ tc The LXX adds σφόδρα (sfodra, “very”) to bring the description into line with v. 54.

[28:56]  ³⁹ tn Heb “delicateness and tenderness.”

[28:57]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”

[28:57]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”

[28:57]  ⁴² tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”

[28:58]  ⁴³ tn Heb “If you are not careful to do.”

[28:60]  ⁴⁴ sn These are the plagues the Lord inflicted on the Egyptians prior to the exodus which, though they did not fall upon the Israelites, must have caused great terror (cf. Exod 15:26).

[28:60]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “will cling to you” (so NIV); NLT “will claim you.”

[28:61]  ⁴⁶ tn The Hebrew term תּוֹרָה (torah) can refer either (1) to the whole Pentateuch or, more likely, (2) to the book of Deuteronomy or even (3) only to this curse section of the covenant text. “Scroll” better reflects the actual document, since “book” conveys the notion of a bound book with pages to the modern English reader. Cf. KJV, NASB, NRSV “the book of this law”; NIV, NLT “this Book of the Law”; TEV “this book of God’s laws and teachings.”

[28:62]  ⁴⁷ tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[28:62]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “have not listened to the voice of.”

[28:63]  ⁴⁹ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:66]  ⁵⁰ tn Heb “you will not be confident in your life.” The phrase “from one day to the next” is implied by the following verse.

[9:26]  ⁵¹ tn Heb “they cast your law behind their backs.”

[7:23]  ⁵² tn Verses 22-23a read in Hebrew, “I did not speak with your ancestors and I did not command them when I brought them out of Egypt about words/matters concerning burnt offering and sacrifice, but I commanded them this word:” Some modern commentators have explained this passage as an evidence for the lateness of the Pentateuchal instruction regarding sacrifice or a denial that sacrifice was practiced during the period of the wilderness wandering. However, it is better explained as an example of what R. de Vaux calls a dialectical negative, i.e., “not so much this as that” or “not this without that” (Ancient Israel, 454-56). For other examples of this same argument see Isa 1:10-17; Hos 6:4-6; Amos 5:21-25.

[7:23]  ⁵³ tn Heb “Obey me and I will be.” The translation is equivalent syntactically but brings out the emphasis in the command.

[7:23]  ⁵⁴ tn Heb “Walk in all the way that I command you.”

[7:24]  ⁵⁵ tn Or “They went backward and not forward”; Heb “They were to the backward and not to the forward.” The two phrases used here appear nowhere else in the Bible and the latter preposition plus adverb elsewhere is used temporally meaning “formerly” or “previously.” The translation follows the proposal of J. Bright, Jeremiah (AB), 57. Another option is “they turned their backs to me, not their faces,” understanding the line as a variant of a line in 2:27.

[7:25]  ⁵⁶ tn Heb “from the day your ancestors…until this very day.” However, “day” here is idiomatic for “the present time.”

[7:25]  ⁵⁷ tn On the Hebrew idiom see the note at 7:13.

[7:25]  ⁵⁸ tc There is some textual debate about the legitimacy of this expression here. The text reads merely “day” (יוֹם, yom). BHS suggests the word is to be deleted as a dittography of the plural ending of the preceding word. The word is in the Greek and Latin, and the Syriac represents the typical idiom “day after day” as though the noun were repeated. Either יוֹם has dropped out by haplography or a ם (mem) has been left out, i.e., reading יוֹמָם (yomam, “daily”).

[7:26]  ⁵⁹ tn Or “But your predecessors…”; Heb “But they….” There is a confusing interchange in the pronouns in vv. 25-26 which has led to some leveling in the ancient versions and the modern English versions. What is involved here are four levels of referents, the “you” of the present generation (vv. 21-22a), the ancestors who were delivered from Egypt (i.e., the “they” of vv. 22b-24), the “you” of v. 25 which involves all the Israelites from the Exodus to the time of speaking, and the “they” of v. 26 which cannot be the ancestors of vv. 22-24 (since they cannot be more wicked than themselves) but must be an indefinite entity which is a part of the “you” of v. 25, i.e., the more immediate ancestors of the present generation. If this is kept in mind, there is no need to level the pronouns to “they” and “them” or to “you” and “your” as some of the ancient versions and modern English versions have done.

[7:26]  ⁶⁰ tn Heb “hardened [or made stiff] their neck.”

[7:27]  ⁶¹ tn The words, “Then the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit in the shift from the second and third person plural pronouns in vv. 21-26 and the second singular in this verse. The words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[7:28]  ⁶² tn Heb “Faithfulness has vanished. It is cut off from their lips.”

[22:21]  ⁶³ tn Heb “I spoke to you in your security.” The reference is to the sending of the prophets. Compare this context with the context of 7:25. For the nuance “security” for this noun (שַׁלְוָה, shalvah) rather than “prosperity” as many translate see Pss 122:7; 30:6 and the related adjective (שָׁלֵו, shalev) in Jer 49:31; Job 16:2; 21:23.

[22:21]  ⁶⁴ tn Heb “from your youth.” Compare the usage in 2:2; 3:24 and compare a similar idea in 7:25.

[7:12]  ⁶⁵ tn The Hebrew term שָׁמִיר (shamir) means literally “hardness” and since it is said in Ezek 3:9 to be harder than flint, many scholars suggest that it refers to diamond. It is unlikely that diamond was known to ancient Israel, however, so probably a hard stone like emery or corundum is in view. The translation nevertheless uses “diamond” because in modern times it has become proverbial for its hardness. A number of English versions use “flint” here (e.g., NASB, NIV).

[7:13]  ⁶⁶ tn Heb “he.” Since the third person pronoun refers to the Lord, it has been translated as a first person pronoun (“I”) to accommodate English style, which typically does not exhibit switches between persons of pronouns in the same immediate context as Hebrew does.

[7:14]  ⁶⁷ tn Or “desirable”; traditionally “pleasant” (so many English versions; cf. TEV “This good land”).