Deuteronomy 29:19-29

29:19 When such a person ¹  hears the words of this oath he secretly ²  blesses himself ³  and says, “I will have peace though I continue to walk with a stubborn spirit.” ⁴  This will destroy ⁵  the watered ground with the parched. ⁶  29:20 The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger ⁷  will rage ⁸  against that man; all the curses ⁹  written in this scroll will fall upon him ¹⁰  and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. ¹¹  29:21 The Lord will single him out ¹²  for judgment ¹³  from all the tribes of Israel according to all the curses of the covenant written in this scroll of the law. 29:22 The generation to come – your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places – will see ¹⁴  the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it. 29:23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. ¹⁵  29:24 Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger ¹⁶  all about?” 29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 29:26 They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they did not know and that he did not permit them to worship. ¹⁷  29:27 That is why the Lord’s anger erupted against this land, bringing on it all the curses ¹⁸  written in this scroll. 29:28 So the Lord has uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great rage and has deported them to another land, as is clear today.” 29:29 Secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those that are revealed belong to us and our descendants ¹⁹  forever, so that we might obey all the words of this law.

Isaiah 24:6

24:6 So a treaty curse ²⁰  devours the earth;

its inhabitants pay for their guilt. ²¹ 

This is why the inhabitants of the earth disappear, ²² 

and are reduced to just a handful of people. ²³ 

Isaiah 43:28

43:28 So I defiled your holy princes,

and handed Jacob over to destruction,

and subjected ²⁴  Israel to humiliating abuse.”

Isaiah 65:15

65:15 Your names will live on in the curse formulas of my chosen ones. ²⁵ 

The sovereign Lord will kill you,

but he will give his servants another name.

Daniel 9:11

9:11 “All Israel has broken ²⁶  your law and turned away by not obeying you. ²⁷  Therefore you have poured out on us the judgment solemnly threatened ²⁸  in the law of Moses the servant of God, for we have sinned against you. ²⁹ 

Zechariah 5:3

5:3 The speaker went on to say, “This is a curse ³⁰  traveling across the whole earth. For example, according to the curse whoever steals ³¹  will be removed from the community; or on the other hand (according to the curse) whoever swears falsely will suffer the same fate.”

Zechariah 14:12

14:12 But this will be the nature of the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that have fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will decay while they stand on their feet, their eyes will rot away in their sockets, and their tongues will dissolve in their mouths.

Mark 11:21

11:21 Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered.”

Hebrews 6:8

6:8 But if it produces thorns and thistles, it is useless and about to be cursed; ³²  its fate is to be burned.

Hebrews 10:26-31

10:26 For if we deliberately keep on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins is left for us, ³³  10:27 but only a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fury ³⁴  of fire that will consume God’s enemies. ³⁵  10:28 Someone who rejected the law of Moses was put to death ³⁶  without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ³⁷  10:29 How much greater punishment do you think that person deserves who has contempt for ³⁸  the Son of God, and profanes ³⁹  the blood of the covenant that made him holy, ⁴⁰  and insults the Spirit of grace? 10:30 For we know the one who said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” ⁴¹  and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” ⁴²  10:31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Revelation 22:3

22:3 And there will no longer be any curse, ⁴³  and the throne of God and the Lamb will be in the city. ⁴⁴  His ⁴⁵  servants ⁴⁶  will worship ⁴⁷  him,

Revelation 22:20-21

22:20 The one who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! 22:21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. ⁴⁸ 

[29:19]  ¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the subject of the warning in v. 18) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[29:19]  ² tn Heb “in his heart.”

[29:19]  ³ tn Or “invokes a blessing on himself.” A formalized word of blessing is in view, the content of which appears later in the verse.

[29:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “heart.”

[29:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “thus destroying.” For stylistic reasons the translation begins a new sentence here.

[29:19]  ⁶ tn Heb “the watered with the parched.” The word “ground” is implied. The exact meaning of the phrase is uncertain although it appears to be figurative. This appears to be a proverbial observation employing a figure of speech (a merism) suggesting totality. That is, the Israelite who violates the letter and even spirit of the covenant will harm not only himself but everything he touches – “the watered and the parched.” Cf. CEV “you will cause the rest of Israel to be punished along with you.”

[29:20]  ⁷ tn Heb “the wrath of the Lord and his zeal.” The expression is a hendiadys, a figure in which the second noun becomes adjectival to the first.

[29:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “smoke,” or “smolder.”

[29:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “the entire oath.”

[29:20]  ¹⁰ tn Or “will lie in wait against him.”

[29:20]  ¹¹ tn Heb “blot out his name from under the sky.”

[29:21]  ¹² tn Heb “set him apart.”

[29:21]  ¹³ tn Heb “for evil”; NAB “for doom”; NASB “for adversity”; NIV “for disaster”; NRSV “for calamity.”

[29:22]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “will say and see.” One expects a quotation to appear, but it seems to be omitted. To avoid confusion in the translation, the verb “will say” is omitted.

[29:23]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” This construction is a hendiadys intended to intensify the emotion.

[29:24]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “this great burning of anger”; KJV “the heat of this great anger.”

[29:26]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “did not assign to them”; NASB, NRSV “had not allotted to them.”

[29:27]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the entire curse.”

[29:29]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); KJV, ASV, NIV, NRSV “children.”

[24:6]  ²⁰ sn Ancient Near Eastern treaties often had “curses,” or threatened judgments, attached to them. (See Deut 28 for a biblical example of such curses.) The party or parties taking an oath of allegiance acknowledged that disobedience would activate these curses, which typically threatened loss of agricultural fertility as depicted in the following verses.

[24:6]  ²¹ tn The verb אָשַׁם (’asham, “be guilty”) is here used metonymically to mean “pay, suffer for one’s guilt” (see HALOT 95 s.v. אשׁם).

[24:6]  ²² tn BDB 359 s.v. חָרַר derives the verb חָרוּ (kharu) from חָרַר (kharar, “burn”), but HALOT 351 s.v. II חרה understands a hapax legomenon חָרָה (kharah, “to diminish in number,” a homonym of חָרָה) here, relating it to an alleged Arabic cognate meaning “to decrease.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has חורו, perhaps understanding the root as חָוַר (khavar, “grow pale”; see Isa 29:22 and HALOT 299 s.v. I חור).

[24:6]  ²³ tn Heb “and mankind is left small [in number].”

[43:28]  ²⁴ tn The word “subjected” is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[65:15]  ²⁵ tn Heb “you will leave your name for an oath to my chosen ones.”

[9:11]  ²⁶ tn Or “transgressed.” The Hebrew verb has the primary sense of crossing a boundary, in this case, God’s law.

[9:11]  ²⁷ tn Heb “by not paying attention to your voice.”

[9:11]  ²⁸ tn Heb “the curse and the oath which is written.” The term “curse” refers here to the judgments threatened in the Mosaic law (see Deut 28) for rebellion. The expression “the curse and the oath” is probably a hendiadys (cf. Num 5:21; Neh 10:29) referring to the fact that the covenant with its threatened judgments was ratified by solemn oath and made legally binding upon the covenant community.

[9:11]  ²⁹ tn Heb “him.”

[5:3]  ³⁰ tn The Hebrew word translated “curse” (אָלָה, ’alah) alludes to the covenant sanctions that attend the violation of God’s covenant with Israel (cf. Deut 29:12, 14, 20-21).

[5:3]  ³¹ sn Stealing and swearing falsely (mentioned later in this verse) are sins against mankind and God respectively and are thus violations of the two major parts of the Ten Commandments. These two stipulations (commandments 8 and 3) represent the whole law.

[6:8]  ³² tn Grk “near to a curse.”

[10:26]  ³³ tn Grk “is left,” with “for us” implied by the first half of the verse.

[10:27]  ³⁴ tn Grk “zeal,” recalling God’s jealous protection of his holiness and honor (cf. Exod 20:5).

[10:27]  ³⁵ tn Grk “the enemies.”

[10:28]  ³⁶ tn Grk “dies.”

[10:28]  ³⁷ sn An allusion to Deut 17:6.

[10:29]  ³⁸ tn Grk “tramples under foot.”

[10:29]  ³⁹ tn Grk “regarded as common.”

[10:29]  ⁴⁰ tn Grk “by which he was made holy.”

[10:30]  ⁴¹ sn A quotation from Deut 32:35.

[10:30]  ⁴² sn A quotation from Deut 32:36.

[22:3]  ⁴³ tn Or “be anything accursed” (L&N 33.474).

[22:3]  ⁴⁴ tn Grk “in it”; the referent (the city, the new Jerusalem) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[22:3]  ⁴⁵ tn Grk “city, and his.” Although this is a continuation of the previous sentence in Greek, a new sentence was started here in the translation because of the introduction of the Lamb’s followers.

[22:3]  ⁴⁶ tn See the note on the word “servants” in 1:1.

[22:3]  ⁴⁷ tn Or “will serve.”

[22:21]  ⁴⁸ tc Most mss (א Ï) read “amen” (ἀμήν, amhn) after “all” (πάντων, pantwn). It is, however, not found in other important mss (A 1006 1841 pc). It is easier to account for its addition than its omission from the text if original. Such a conclusion is routinely added by scribes to NT books because a few of these books originally had such an ending (cf. Rom 16:27; Gal 6:18; Jude 25). A majority of Greek witnesses have the concluding ἀμήν in every NT book except Acts, James, and 3 John (and even in these books, ἀμήν is found in some witnesses). It is thus a predictable variant.