Leviticus 26:14-18

The Consequences of Disobedience

26:14 “‘If, however, ¹  you do not obey me and keep ²  all these commandments – 26:15 if you reject my statutes and abhor my regulations so that you do not keep ³  all my commandments and you break my covenant – 26:16 I for my part ⁴  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ⁵  You will sow your seed in vain because ⁶  your enemies will eat it. ⁷  26:17 I will set my face against you. You will be struck down before your enemies, those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when there is no one pursuing you.

26:18 “‘If, in spite of all these things, ⁸  you do not obey me, I will discipline you seven times more on account of your sins. ⁹ 

Deuteronomy 28:15-68

Curses as Reversal of Blessings

28:15 “But if you ignore ¹⁰  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: ¹¹  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 ¹²  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. ¹³ 

Curses by Disease and Drought

28:20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you ¹⁴  in everything you undertake ¹⁵  until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. ¹⁶  28:21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases ¹⁷  until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 28:22 He ¹⁸  will afflict you with weakness, ¹⁹  fever, inflammation, infection, ²⁰  sword, ²¹  blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 28:23 The ²²  sky ²³  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 ²⁴  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. ²⁵  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; ²⁶  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 ²⁷  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. ²⁸  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 ²⁹  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. ³⁰  28:41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 28:42 Whirring locusts ³¹  will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil. 28:43 The foreigners ³²  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 ³³  you. 28:46 These curses ³⁴  will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants. ³⁵ 

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 ³⁶  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ³⁷  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 ³⁸  as the eagle flies, ³⁹  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 ⁴⁰  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, ⁴¹  or lambs of your flocks ⁴²  until they have destroyed you. 28:52 They will besiege all of your villages ⁴³  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, ⁴⁴  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ⁴⁵  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 ⁴⁶  you in your villages. 28:56 Likewise, the most ⁴⁷  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, ⁴⁸  will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth ⁴⁹  and her newborn children ⁵⁰  (since she has nothing else), ⁵¹  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 ⁵²  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 ⁵³  that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you. ⁵⁴  28:61 Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, ⁵⁵  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, ⁵⁶  because you will have disobeyed ⁵⁷  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 ⁵⁸  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. ⁵⁹  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.”

Deuteronomy 30:17-19

30:17 However, if you ⁶⁰  turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, 30:18 I declare to you this very day that you will certainly ⁶¹  perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess. ⁶²  30:19 Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!

Joshua 22:16-18

22:16 “The entire community of the Lord says, ‘Why have you disobeyed the God of Israel by turning back today from following the Lord? You built an altar for yourselves and have rebelled today against the Lord. ⁶³  22:17 The sin we committed at Peor was bad enough. To this very day we have not purified ourselves; it even brought a plague on the community of the Lord. ⁶⁴  22:18 Now today you dare to turn back ⁶⁵  from following the Lord! You are rebelling today against the Lord; tomorrow he may break out in anger against ⁶⁶  the entire community of Israel.

Joshua 22:2

22:2 and told them: “You have carried out all the instructions of Moses the Lord’s servant, and you have obeyed all I have told you. ⁶⁷ 

Joshua 7:19-22

7:19 So Joshua said to Achan, “My son, honor ⁶⁸  the Lord God of Israel and give him praise! Tell me what you did; don’t hide anything from me!” 7:20 Achan told Joshua, “It is true. I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel in this way: ⁶⁹  7:21 I saw among the goods we seized a nice robe from Babylon, ⁷⁰  two hundred silver pieces, ⁷¹  and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels. I wanted them, so I took them. They are hidden in the ground right in the middle of my tent with the silver underneath.”

7:22 Joshua sent messengers who ran to the tent. The things were hidden right in his tent, with the silver underneath. ⁷² 

Joshua 7:2

7:2 Joshua sent men from Jericho ⁷³  to Ai (which is located near Beth Aven, east of Bethel ⁷⁴ ) and instructed them, “Go up and spy on the land.” So the men went up and spied on Ai.

Joshua 15:2

15:2 Their southern border started at the southern tip of the Salt Sea, ⁷⁵ 

[26:14]  ¹ tn Heb “And if.”

[26:14]  ² tn Heb “and do not do.”

[26:15]  ³ tn Heb “to not do.”

[26:16]  ⁴ tn Or “I also” (see HALOT 76 s.v. אַף 6.b).

[26:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “soul.” These expressions may refer either to the physical effects of consumption and fever as the rendering in the text suggests (e.g., J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 452, 454, “diminishing eyesight and loss of appetite”), or perhaps the more psychological effects, “which exhausts the eyes” because of anxious hope “and causes depression” (Heb “causes soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh] to pine away”), e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 185.

[26:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have causal force here.

[26:16]  ⁷ tn That is, “your enemies will eat” the produce that grows from the sown seed.

[26:18]  ⁸ tn Heb “And if until these.”

[26:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “I will add to discipline you seven [times] on your sins.”

[28:15]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “do not hear the voice of.”

[28:15]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and overtake you” (so NIV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “and overwhelm you.”

[28:18]  ¹² tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[28:19]  ¹³ sn See note on the similar expression in v. 6.

[28:20]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”

[28:20]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”

[28:20]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “will cause pestilence to cling to you.”

[28:22]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “The Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:22]  ¹⁹ 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]  ²⁰ tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”

[28:22]  ²¹ tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[28:23]  ²² tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”

[28:23]  ²³ 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]  ²⁴ 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]  ²⁵ tn Heb “heart” (so KJV, NASB).

[28:29]  ²⁶ tn Heb “you will not cause your ways to prosper.”

[28:30]  ²⁷ 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]  ²⁸ tn Heb “and there will be no power in your hand”; NCV “there will be nothing you can do.”

[28:36]  ²⁹ tc The LXX reads the plural “kings.”

[28:40]  ³⁰ tn Heb “your olives will drop off” (נָשַׁל, nashal), referring to the olives dropping off before they ripen.

[28:42]  ³¹ 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]  ³² 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]  ³³ tn Heb “commanded”; NAB, NIV, TEV “he gave you.”

[28:46]  ³⁴ tn Heb “they”; the referent (the curses mentioned previously) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[28:46]  ³⁵ tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).

[28:48]  ³⁶ tn Heb “lack of everything.”

[28:48]  ³⁷ 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]  ³⁸ tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”

[28:49]  ³⁹ 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]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).

[28:51]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “increase of herds.”

[28:51]  ⁴² tn Heb “growth of flocks.”

[28:52]  ⁴³ tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.

[28:53]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”

[28:53]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “siege and stress.”

[28:55]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

[28:56]  ⁴⁷ tc The LXX adds σφόδρα (sfodra, “very”) to bring the description into line with v. 54.

[28:56]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “delicateness and tenderness.”

[28:57]  ⁴⁹ tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”

[28:57]  ⁵⁰ tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”

[28:57]  ⁵¹ tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”

[28:58]  ⁵² tn Heb “If you are not careful to do.”

[28:60]  ⁵³ 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]  ⁵⁴ tn Heb “will cling to you” (so NIV); NLT “will claim you.”

[28:61]  ⁵⁵ 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]  ⁵⁶ tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[28:62]  ⁵⁷ tn Heb “have not listened to the voice of.”

[28:63]  ⁵⁸ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:66]  ⁵⁹ tn Heb “you will not be confident in your life.” The phrase “from one day to the next” is implied by the following verse.

[30:17]  ⁶⁰ tn Heb “your heart,” as a metonymy for the person.

[30:18]  ⁶¹ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “certainly.”

[30:18]  ⁶² tn Heb “to go there to possess it.”

[22:16]  ⁶³ tn Heb “What is this unfaithfulness with which you have been unfaithful against the God of Israel, turning today from after the Lord, when you built for yourselves an altar, rebelling today against the Lord?”

[22:17]  ⁶⁴ tn Heb “Was the sin of Peor too insignificant for us, from which we have not made purification to this day? And there was a plague in the assembly of the Lord.”

[22:18]  ⁶⁵ tn Heb “you are turning back.”

[22:18]  ⁶⁶ tn Or “he will be angry with.”

[22:2]  ⁶⁷ tn Heb “You have kept all which Moses, the Lord’s servant, commanded you, and you have listened to my voice, to all which I commanded you.”

[7:19]  ⁶⁸ tn Heb “give glory to.”

[7:20]  ⁶⁹ tn Heb “like this and like this I did.”

[7:21]  ⁷⁰ tn Heb “Shinar,” a reference to Babylon (cf. Gen 10:10; 11:2; 14:1). Many modern translations retain the Hebrew name “Shinar” (cf. NEB, NRSV) but some use the more familiar “Babylon” (cf. NIV, NLT).

[7:21]  ⁷¹ tn Heb “shekels.”

[7:22]  ⁷² tn Heb “Look, [it was] hidden in his tent, and the silver was beneath it.”

[7:2]  ⁷³ map For location see Map5 B2; Map6 E1; Map7 E1; Map8 E3; Map10 A2; Map11 A1.

[7:2]  ⁷⁴ map For the location of Bethel see Map4 G4; Map5 C1; Map6 E3; Map7 D1; Map8 G3.

[15:2]  ⁷⁵ tn Heb “Their southern border was from the end of the Salt Sea, from the tongue that faces to the south.”