Deuteronomy 28
28
1-6If you listen obediently to the Voice of God, your God, and heartily obey all his commandments that I command you today, God, your God, will place you on high, high above all the nations of the world. All these blessings will come down on you and spread out beyond you because you have responded to the Voice of God, your God:
God’s blessing inside the city,
God’s blessing in the country;
God’s blessing on your children,
the crops of your land,
the young of your livestock,
the calves of your herds,
the lambs of your flocks.
God’s blessing on your basket and bread bowl;
God’s blessing in your coming in,
God’s blessing in your going out.
7 God will defeat your enemies who attack you. They’ll come at you on one road and run away on seven roads.
8 God will order a blessing on your barns and workplaces; he’ll bless you in the land that God, your God, is giving you.
9 God will form you as a people holy to him, just as he promised you, if you keep the commandments of God, your God, and live the way he has shown you.
10All the peoples on Earth will see you living under the Name of God and hold you in respectful awe.
11-14 God will lavish you with good things: children from your womb, offspring from your animals, and crops from your land, the land that God promised your ancestors that he would give you. God will throw open the doors of his sky vaults and pour rain on your land on schedule and bless the work you take in hand. You will lend to many nations but you yourself won’t have to take out a loan. God will make you the head, not the tail; you’ll always be the top dog, never the underdog, as you obediently listen to and diligently keep the commands of God, your God, that I am commanding you today. Don’t swerve an inch to the right or left from the words that I command you today by going off following and worshiping other gods.
15-19Here’s what will happen if you don’t obediently listen to the Voice of God, your God, and diligently keep all the commandments and guidelines that I’m commanding you today. All these curses will come down hard on you:
God’s curse in the city,
God’s curse in the country;
God’s curse on your basket and bread bowl;
God’s curse on your children,
the crops of your land,
the young of your livestock,
the calves of your herds,
the lambs of your flocks.
God’s curse in your coming in,
God’s curse in your going out.
20 God will send The Curse, The Confusion, The Contrariness down on everything you try to do until you’ve been destroyed and there’s nothing left of you—all because of your evil pursuits that led you to abandon me.
21 God will infect you with The Disease, wiping you right off the land that you’re going in to possess.
22 God will set consumption and fever and rash and seizures and dehydration and blight and jaundice on you. They’ll hunt you down until they kill you.
23-24The sky over your head will become an iron roof, the ground under your feet, a slab of concrete. From out of the skies God will rain ash and dust down on you until you suffocate.
25-26 God will defeat you by enemy attack. You’ll come at your enemies on one road and run away on seven roads. All the kingdoms of Earth will see you as a horror. Carrion birds and animals will boldly feast on your dead body with no one to chase them away.
27-29 God will hit you hard with the boils of Egypt, hemorrhoids, scabs, and an incurable itch. He’ll make you go crazy and blind and senile. You’ll grope around in the middle of the day like a blind person feeling his way through a lifetime of darkness; you’ll never get to where you’re going. Not a day will go by that you’re not abused and robbed. And no one is going to help you.
30-31You’ll get engaged to a woman and another man will take her for his mistress; you’ll build a house and never live in it; you’ll plant a garden and never eat so much as a carrot; you’ll watch your ox get butchered and not get a single steak from it; your donkey will be stolen from in front of you and you’ll never see it again; your sheep will be sent off to your enemies and no one will lift a hand to help you.
32-34Your sons and daughters will be shipped off to foreigners; you’ll wear your eyes out looking vainly for them, helpless to do a thing. Your crops and everything you work for will be eaten and used by foreigners; you’ll spend the rest of your lives abused and knocked around. What you see will drive you crazy.
35 God will hit you with painful boils on your knees and legs and no healing or relief from head to foot.
36-37 God will lead you and the king you set over you to a country neither you nor your ancestors have heard of; there you’ll worship other gods, no-gods of wood and stone. Among all the peoples where God will take you, you’ll be treated as a lesson or a proverb—a horror!
38-42You’ll plant sacks and sacks of seed in the field but get almost nothing—the grasshoppers will devour it. You’ll plant and hoe and prune vineyards but won’t drink or put up any wine—the worms will devour them. You’ll have groves of olive trees everywhere, but you’ll have no oil to rub on your face or hands—the olives will have fallen off. You’ll have sons and daughters but they won’t be yours for long—they’ll go off to captivity. Locusts will take over all your trees and crops.
43-44The foreigner who lives among you will climb the ladder, higher and higher, while you go deeper and deeper into the hole. He’ll lend to you; you won’t lend to him. He’ll be the head; you’ll be the tail.
45-46All these curses are going to come on you. They’re going to hunt you down and get you until there’s nothing left of you because you didn’t obediently listen to the Voice of God, your God, and diligently keep his commandments and guidelines that I commanded you. The curses will serve as signposts, warnings to your children ever after.
47-48a Because you didn’t serve God, your God, out of the joy and goodness of your heart in the great abundance, you’ll have to serve your enemies whom God will send against you. Life will be famine and drought, rags and wretchedness; then he’ll put an iron yoke on your neck until he’s destroyed you.
48b-52 Yes, God will raise up a faraway nation against you, swooping down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you can’t understand, a mean-faced people, cruel to grandmothers and babies alike. They’ll ravage the young of your animals and the crops from your fields until you’re destroyed. They’ll leave nothing behind: no grain, no wine, no oil, no calves, no lambs—and finally, no you. They’ll lay siege to you while you’re huddled behind your town gates. They’ll knock those high, proud walls flat, those walls behind which you felt so safe. They’ll lay siege to your fortified cities all over the country, this country that God, your God, has given you.
53-55And you’ll end up cannibalizing your own sons and daughters that God, your God, has given you. When the suffering from the siege gets extreme, you’re going to eat your own babies. The most gentle and caring man among you will turn hard, his eye evil, against his own brother, his cherished wife, and even the rest of his children who are still alive, refusing to share with them a scrap of meat from the cannibal child-stew he is eating. He’s lost everything, even his humanity, in the suffering of the siege that your enemy mounts against your fortified towns.
56-57And the most gentle and caring woman among you, a woman who wouldn’t step on a wildflower, will turn hard, her eye evil, against her cherished husband, against her son, against her daughter, against even the afterbirth of her newborn infants; she plans to eat them in secret—she does eat them!—because she has lost everything, even her humanity, in the suffering of the siege that your enemy mounts against your fortified towns.
58-61If you don’t diligently keep all the words of this Revelation written in this book, living in holy awe before This Name glorious and terrible, God, your God, then God will pound you with catastrophes, you and your children, huge interminable catastrophes, hideous interminable illnesses. He’ll bring back and stick you with every old Egyptian malady that once terrorized you. And yes, every disease and catastrophe imaginable—things not even written in the Book of this Revelation—God will bring on you until you’re destroyed.
62Because you didn’t listen obediently to the Voice of God, your God, you’ll be left with a few pitiful stragglers in place of the dazzling stars-in-the-heavens multitude you had become.
63-66And this is how things will end up: Just as God once enjoyed you, took pleasure in making life good for you, giving you many children, so God will enjoy getting rid of you, clearing you off the Earth. He’ll weed you out of the very soil that you are entering in to possess. He’ll scatter you to the four winds, from one end of the Earth to the other. You’ll worship all kinds of other gods, gods neither you nor your parents ever heard of, wood and stone no-gods. But you won’t find a home there, you’ll not be able to settle down. God will give you a restless heart, longing eyes, a homesick soul. You will live in constant jeopardy, terrified of every shadow, never knowing what you’ll meet around the next corner.
67In the morning you’ll say, “I wish it were evening.” In the evening you’ll say, “I wish it were morning.” Afraid, terrorized at what’s coming next, afraid of the unknown, because of the sights you’ve witnessed.
68 God will ship you back to Egypt by a road I promised you’d never see again. There you’ll offer yourselves for sale, both men and women, as slaves to your enemies. And not a buyer to be found.
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Deuteronomy 28: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Deuteronomy 28
28
1 IF YOU will listen diligently to the voice of the Lord your God, being watchful to do all His commandments which I command you this day, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you heed the voice of the Lord your God.
3 Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the field.
4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock.
5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading trough.
6 Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out.
7 The Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.
8 The Lord shall command the blessing upon you in your storehouse and in all that you undertake. And He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you.
9 The Lord will establish you as a people holy to Himself, as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways.
10 And all people of the earth shall see that you are called by the name [and in the presence of] the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you.
11 And the Lord shall make you have a surplus of prosperity, through the fruit of your body, of your livestock, and of your ground, in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.
12 The Lord shall open to you His good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands; and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.
13 And the Lord shall make you the head, and not the tail; and you shall be above only, and you shall not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day and are watchful to do them.
14 And you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
15 But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God, being watchful to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command you this day, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you:
16 Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the field.
17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading trough.
18 Cursed shall be the fruit of your body, of your land, of the increase of your cattle and the young of your sheep.
19 Cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out.
20 The Lord shall send you curses, confusion, and rebuke in every enterprise to which you set your hand, until you are destroyed, perishing quickly because of the evil of your doings by which you have forsaken me [Moses and God as one].
21 The Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until He has consumed you from the land into which you go to possess.
22 The Lord will smite you with consumption, with fever and inflammation, fiery heat, sword and drought, blasting and mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish.
23 The heavens over your head shall be brass and the earth under you shall be iron.
24 The Lord shall make the rain of your land powdered soil and dust; from the heavens it shall come down upon you until you are destroyed.
25 The Lord shall cause you to be struck down before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them, and you shall be tossed to and fro and be a terror among all the kingdoms of the earth. [Fulfilled in II Chron. 29:8.]
26 And your dead body shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away.
27 The Lord will smite you with the boils of Egypt and the tumors, the scurvy and the itch, from which you cannot be healed.
28 The Lord will smite you with madness and blindness and dismay of [mind and] heart.
29 And you shall grope at noonday as the blind grope in darkness. And you shall not prosper in your ways; and you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to save you.
30 You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her; you shall build a house, but not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but not gather its grapes.
31 Your ox shall be slain before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it; your donkey shall be violently taken away before your face and not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have no one to help you.
32 Your sons and daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all the day; and there shall be no power in your hands to prevent it. [Fulfilled in II Chron. 29:9.]
33 A nation which you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your land and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually, [Fulfilled in Judg. 6:1-6; 13:1.]
34 So that you shall be driven mad by the sights which your eyes shall see.
35 The Lord will smite you on the knees and on the legs with a sore boil that cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
36 The Lord shall bring you and your king whom you have set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall [be forced to] serve other gods, of wood and stone. [Fulfilled in II Kings 17:4, 6; 24:12, 14; 25:7, 11; Dan. 6:11, 12.]
37 And you shall become an amazement, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples to which the Lord will lead you.
38 You shall carry much seed out into the field and shall gather little in, for the locust shall consume it. [Fulfilled in Hag. 1:6.]
39 You shall plant vineyards and dress them but shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them.
40 You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory but you shall not anoint yourselves with the oil, for your olive trees shall drop their fruit.
41 You shall beget sons and daughters but shall not enjoy them, for they shall go into captivity. [Fulfilled in Lam. 1:5.]
42 All your trees and the fruit of your ground shall the locust possess. [Fulfilled in Joel 1:4.]
43 The transient (stranger) among you shall mount up higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.
44 He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.
45 All these curses shall come upon you and shall pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.
46 They shall be upon you for a sign [of warning to other nations] and for a wonder, and upon your descendants forever.
47 Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness of [mind and] heart [in gratitude] for the abundance of all [with which He had blessed you],
48 Therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord shall send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and in want of all things; and He will put a yoke of iron upon your neck until He has destroyed you.
49 The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you shall not understand,
50 A nation of unyielding countenance who will not regard the person of the old or show favor to the young,
51 And shall eat the fruit of your cattle and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed, who also shall not leave you grain, new wine, oil, the increase of your cattle or the young of your sheep until they have caused you to perish.
52 They shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you.
53 And you shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the [pressing] misery with which your enemies shall distress you. [Fulfilled in II Kings 6:24-29.]
54 The man who is most tender among you and extremely particular and well-bred, his eye shall be cruel and grudging of food toward his brother and toward the wife of his bosom and toward those of his children still remaining,
55 So that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children which he is eating, because he has nothing left to him in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you in all your towns.
56 The most tender and daintily bred woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground because she is so dainty and kind, will grudge to the husband of her bosom, to her son and to her daughter
57 Her afterbirth that comes out from her body and the children whom she shall bear. For she will eat them secretly for want of anything else in the siege and distress with which your enemies shall distress you in your towns.
58 If you will not be watchful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may [reverently] fear this glorious and fearful name [and presence]–the lord your god–
59 Then the Lord will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary strokes and blows, great plagues of long continuance, and grievous sicknesses of long duration.
60 Moreover, He will bring upon you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you.
61 Also every sickness and every affliction which is not written in this Book of the Law the Lord will bring upon you until you are destroyed.
62 And you shall be left few in number, whereas you had been as the stars of the heavens for multitude, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
63 And as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice to bring ruin upon you and to destroy you; and you shall be plucked from the land into which you go to possess.
64 And the Lord shall scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other; and there you shall [be forced to] serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. [Fulfilled in Dan. 3:6.]
65 And among these nations you shall find no ease and there shall be no rest for the sole of your foot; but the Lord will give you there a trembling heart, failing of eyes [from disappointment of hope], fainting of mind, and languishing of spirit.
66 Your life shall hang in doubt before you; day and night you shall be worried, and have no assurance of your life.
67 In the morning you shall say, Would that it were evening! and at evening you shall say, Would that it were morning!–because of the anxiety and dread of your [minds and] hearts and the sights which you shall see with your [own] eyes.
68 And the Lord shall bring you into Egypt again with ships by the way about which I said to you, You shall never see it again. And there you shall be sold to your enemies as bondmen and bondwomen, but no man shall buy you. [Hos. 8:13.]
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