Deuteronomy 28

Blessings for obeying

¹If you truly obey the LORD your God and carefully keep all his commandments that I am giving you today, the LORD your God will raise you high above every nation on earth. ²All these blessings will come on you and catch up with you, if you obey the LORD your God. ³You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the countryside. ⁴Blessed will be the children you bear, the harvest of your soil and the young of your livestock, the young of your cattle and your sheep. ⁵Blessed will be your basket and your kneading bowl. ⁶You will be blessed as you come in and blessed as you go out. ⁷the LORD will let you defeat the enemies who rise up against you. They will march out against you by one road and flee from you by seven. ⁸the LORD will command blessing to be with you in your barns and in everything you set your hand to. He will bless you in the land the LORD your God is giving you. ⁹the LORD will make you a people holy to himself, as he promised you on oath, as long as you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and follow his ways. ¹⁰Then every people on earth will see that you bear the name of the LORD, and they will be afraid of you. ¹¹the LORD will give you plenty of good things: many children, many young among your livestock and rich harvests from your soil, in the land the LORD swore to your ancestors to give you. ¹²the LORD will open for you the heavens, his rich storehouse, to send rain on your land at the right time and to bless all that your hands do. You will lend to many nations and borrow from none. ¹³the LORD will make you the head, never the tail; you will always be at the top and never at the bottom, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God that I am giving you today and carefully keep them, ¹⁴and if you do not turn from any of the words I am giving you today, either to the right or to the left, to follow other gods and serve them.

Curses for not obeying

¹⁵But if you do not obey the LORD your God and carefully keep all his commandments and statutes that I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and catch up with you. ¹⁶You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the countryside. ¹⁷Cursed will be your basket and your kneading bowl. ¹⁸Cursed will be the children you bear, the harvest of your soil, and the young of your cattle and your sheep. ¹⁹You will be cursed as you come in and cursed as you go out. ²⁰the LORD will send on you curse, panic and frustration in everything you set your hand to, until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the evil you have done in forsaking me. ²¹the LORD will make disease cling to you until he has wiped you out from the land you are entering to take possession of. ²²the LORD will strike you with wasting disease, fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and the sword, with blight and mildew. They will hunt you down until you perish.^{a 23}The sky above your head will be bronze, and the ground beneath you iron. ²⁴the LORD will turn the rain of your land into powder and dust; it will fall on you from the sky until you are destroyed. ²⁵the LORD will let your enemies defeat you. You will march out against them by one road and flee from them by seven. You will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶Your dead bodies will be food for all the birds of the sky and the wild animals, and no one will frighten them away. ²⁷the LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, scabs and itch that cannot be cured. ²⁸the LORD will strike you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. ²⁹At noon you will grope like a blind person groping in the dark, and you will not succeed in anything you do. You will be nothing but oppressed and robbed all the time, and no one will come to save you. ³⁰You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but never enjoy its fruit. ³¹Your ox will be slaughtered in front of you, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be seized from you by force and never returned. Your sheep will be handed over to your enemies, and no one will come to save you. ³²Your sons and daughters will be handed over to another people while you look on. Your eyes will wear themselves out longing for them all day long, and you will be powerless to do anything. ³³A people you have never known will eat up the harvest of your soil and everything you have worked for, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed all the time. ³⁴You will be driven mad by what you see with your own eyes. ³⁵the LORD will strike your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet up to the crown of your head. ³⁶the LORD will bring you and the king you set over yourselves to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known. There you will serve other gods, gods of wood and stone. ³⁷You will become an object of horror, a saying and a joke among all the peoples where the LORD drives you. ³⁸You will take much seed out to the field but gather little, because locusts will devour it. ³⁹You will plant vineyards and tend them, but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. ⁴⁰You will have olive trees throughout your country but no oil to rub on your body, because your olives will drop off. ⁴¹You will have sons and daughters, but they will not stay with you, because they will be taken away as captives. ⁴²Swarms of insects will take over all your trees and the crops of your land. ⁴³The outsider living among you will rise above you higher and higher, while you sink lower and lower. ⁴⁴He will lend to you, but you will have nothing to lend to him. He will be the head, and you the tail. ⁴⁵All these curses will come on you. They will hunt you down and catch up with you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God by keeping the commandments and statutes he commanded you. ⁴⁶They will be a sign and a warning against you and your descendants forever. ⁴⁷Since you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and with a glad heart when you had plenty of everything, ⁴⁸you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and in need of everything. He will lay an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.^{b 49}the LORD will bring against you a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like an eagle, a nation whose language you will not understand, ⁵⁰a hard-faced nation that will show no respect to the old and no pity to the young, ⁵¹and it will eat the young of your livestock and the harvest of your soil until you are destroyed. It will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, none of the young of your cattle or your sheep, until it has ruined you. ⁵²It will besiege all your towns until the high, fortified walls you trust in come down throughout your land. It will besiege all your towns throughout the land the LORD your God has given you. ⁵³Then in the siege and in the distress your enemy brings upon you, you will eat your own children, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you. ⁵⁴Even the most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge food to his own brother, to the wife he holds close and to the children he still has left, ⁵⁵and will not give any of them the flesh of his children that he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress your enemy brings upon you in all your towns. ⁵⁶The most gentle and refined woman among you, so delicate and pampered that she would never venture to put the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge food to the husband she holds close, to her son and to her daughter, ⁵⁷and to the afterbirth that comes out from between her legs and to the children she bears. For she will eat them in secret, having nothing else at all, in the siege and in the distress your enemy brings upon you in your towns. ⁵⁸If you do not carefully keep every word of this law written in this book, and do not fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, ⁵⁹then the LORD will strike you and your descendants with astonishing plagues, great and lasting plagues and severe and lasting sicknesses. ⁶⁰He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. ⁶¹the LORD will also bring on you every sickness and plague that is not written in this book of the law, until you are destroyed. ⁶²Though you were as many as the stars in the sky, only a few of you will be left, because you did not obey the LORD your God. ⁶³Just as the LORD delighted in doing you good and making you many, so the LORD will delight in making you perish and destroying you. You will be torn away from the land you are entering to take possession of. ⁶⁴the LORD will scatter you among all the peoples, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. ⁶⁵Among those nations you will find no rest, no place to rest the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an anxious heart, eyes worn out with longing and a despairing spirit. ⁶⁶Your life will hang in doubt before you. You will live in dread night and day, never sure that you will survive. ⁶⁷In the morning you will say, ‘If only evening would come!’ and in the evening, ‘If only morning would come!’ because of the dread that fills your heart and the sights your eyes will see. ⁶⁸the LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way I promised you would never see again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as slaves, men and women, but there will be no buyer.”

The covenant in the land of Moab

⁶⁹These are the words of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make in the land of Moab with the Israelites, besides the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.^c