Deuteronomy 28:1-26

The Covenant Blessings

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.

Curses as Reversal of Blessings

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 

Curses by Disease and Drought

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.

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 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.

[28:1]  ¹ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “indeed.”

[28:1]  ² tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I enjoin on you today” (likewise in v. 15).

[28:2]  ³ tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”

[28:3]  ⁴ tn Or “in the country” (so NAB, NIV, NLT). This expression also occurs in v. 15.

[28:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[28:6]  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.

[28:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “who rise up against” (so NIV).

[28:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “way” (also later in this verse and in v. 25).

[28:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” Because English would not typically reintroduce the proper name following a relative pronoun (“he will bless…the Lord your God is giving”), the pronoun (“he”) has been employed here in the translation.

[28:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the commandments of the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in the previous verse.

[28:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and walk in his ways” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[28:10]  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).

[28:11]  ¹³ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “will give you a lot of children.”

[28:11]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:11]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 36, 64).

[28:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “all the work of your hands.”

[28:13]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “the Lord your God’s.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “commanding” (so NRSV); NASB “which I charge you today.”

[28:14]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “from all the words which I am commanding.”

[28:14]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in order to serve.”

[28:15]  ²¹ tn Heb “do not hear the voice of.”

[28:15]  ²² tn Heb “and overtake you” (so NIV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “and overwhelm you.”

[28:18]  ²³ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[28:19]  ²⁴ sn See note on the similar expression in v. 6.

[28:20]  ²⁵ tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”

[28:20]  ²⁶ tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”

[28:20]  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.

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

[28:22]  ²⁹ tn Heb “The Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:22]  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”).

[28:22]  ³¹ tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”

[28:22]  ³² tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[28:23]  ³³ tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”

[28:23]  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.

[28:25]  ³⁵ tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (za’avah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zÿva’ah, “terror”).