Deuteronomy 28
28
The Lord Will Bless You if You Obey
Moses said to Israel:
1-2 #
Dt 11.13-17. Today I am giving you the laws and teachings of the Lord your God. Always obey them, and the Lord will make Israel the most famous and important nation on earth, and he will bless you in many ways.
3The Lord will make your businesses and your farms successful.
4You will have many children. You will harvest large crops, and your herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats will produce many young.
5You will have plenty of bread#28.5 bread: The main food of the Israelites. to eat.
6The Lord will make you successful in your daily work.
7The Lord will help you defeat your enemies and make them scatter in all directions.
8The Lord your God is giving you the land, and he will make sure you are successful in everything you do. Your harvests will be so large that your storehouses will be full.
9If you follow and obey the Lord, he will make you his own special people, just as he promised. 10Then everyone on earth will know that you belong to the Lord, and they will be afraid of you.
11The Lord will give you a lot of children and make sure that your animals give birth to many young. The Lord promised your ancestors that this land would be yours, and he will make it produce large crops for you.
12The Lord will open the storehouses of the skies where he keeps the rain, and he will send rain on your land at just the right times. He will make you successful in everything you do. You will have plenty of money to lend to other nations, but you won't need to borrow any yourself.
13Obey the laws and teachings that I'm giving you today, and the Lord your God will make Israel a leader among the nations, and not a follower. Israel will be wealthy and powerful, not poor and weak. 14But you must not reject any of his laws and teachings or worship other gods.
The Lord Will Put Curses on You if You Disobey
(Leviticus 26.14-46)
Moses said:
15Israel, today I am giving you the laws and teachings of the Lord your God. And if you don't obey them all, he will put many curses on you.
16Your businesses and farms will fail.
17You won't have enough bread#28.17 bread: The main food of the Israelites. to eat.
18You'll have only a few children, your crops will be small, and your herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats won't produce many young.
19The Lord will make you fail in everything you do.
20No matter what you try to accomplish, the Lord will confuse you, and you will feel his anger. You won't last long, and you may even meet with disaster, all because you rejected the Lord.
21-23The Lord will send terrible diseases to attack you, and you will never be well again. You will suffer with burning fever and swelling and pain until you die somewhere in the land that you captured.
The Lord will make the sky overhead seem like a bronze roof that keeps out the rain, and the ground under your feet will become as hard as iron. Your crops will be scorched by the hot east wind or ruined by mildew. 24He will send dust and sandstorms instead of rain, and you will be wiped out.
25The Lord will let you be defeated by your enemies, and you will scatter in all directions. You will be a horrible sight for the other nations to see, 26and no one will disturb the birds and wild animals while they eat your dead bodies.
27The Lord will make you suffer with diseases that will cause oozing sores or crusty itchy patches on your skin or boils like the ones that are common in Egypt. And there will be no cure for you! 28You will become insane and go blind. The Lord will make you so confused, 29that even in bright sunshine you will have to feel your way around like a blind person, who cannot tell day from night. For the rest of your life, people will beat and rob you, and no one will be able to stop them.
30A man will be engaged to a woman, but before they can get married, she will be raped by enemy soldiers. Some of you will build houses, but never get to live in them. If you plant a vineyard, you won't be around long enough to enjoy the first harvest. 31Your cattle will be killed while you watch, but you won't get to eat any of the meat. Your donkeys and sheep will be stolen from you, and no one will be around to force your enemies to give them back. 32Your sons and daughters will be dragged off to a foreign country, while you stand there helpless. And even if you watch for them until you go blind, you will never see them again.
33You will work hard on your farms, but everything you harvest will be eaten by foreigners, who will mistreat you and abuse you for the rest of your life.
34What you see will be so horrible that you will go insane, 35and the Lord will punish you from head to toe with boils that never heal.
36The Lord will let you and your king be taken captive to a country that you and your ancestors have never even heard of, and there you will have to worship idols#28.36 have to worship idols: It was sometimes thought that only the gods of a country could be worshiped within the borders of that country. made of wood and stone. 37People of nearby countries will shudder when they see your terrible troubles, but they will still make fun of you.
38You will plant a lot of seed, but gather a small harvest, because locusts#28.38 locusts: A type of grasshopper that comes in swarms and causes great damage to plant life. will eat your crops. 39You will plant vineyards and work hard at taking care of them, but you won't gather any grapes, much less get any wine, because the vines themselves will be eaten by worms. 40Even if your olive trees grow everywhere in your country, the olives will fall off before they are ready, and there won't be enough olive oil for combing your hair.#28.40 olive oil … hair: Olive oil was used for combing the hair.
41Even your children will be taken as prisoners of war.
42Locusts#28.42 Locusts: See the note at 28.38. will eat your crops and strip your trees of leaves and fruit.
43Foreigners in your towns will become wealthy and powerful, while you become poor and powerless. 44You will be so short of money that you will have to borrow from those foreigners. They will be the leaders in the community, and you will be the followers.
More Curses for Disobedience
Moses said:
45Israel, if you don't obey the laws and teachings that the Lord your God is giving you, he will send these curses to chase, attack, and destroy you. 46Then everyone will look at you and your descendants and realize that the Lord has placed you under a curse.
47If the Lord makes you wealthy, but you don't joyfully worship and honor him, 48he will send enemies to attack you and make you their slaves. Then you will live in poverty with nothing to eat, drink, or wear, and your owners will work you to death.
49Foreigners who speak a strange language will be sent to attack you without warning, just like an eagle swooping down. 50They won't show any mercy, and they will have no respect for old people or pity for children. 51They will take your cattle, sheep, goats, grain, wine, and olive oil, then leave you to starve.
52All over the land that the Lord your God gave you, the enemy army will surround your towns. You may feel safe inside your town walls, but the enemy will tear them down, 53while you wait in horror. Finally, you will get so hungry that you will eat the sons and daughters that the Lord gave you. 54-55Because of hunger, a man who had been gentle and kind will eat his own children and refuse to share the meal with his brother or wife or with his other children. 56-57#2 K 6.28,29; Lm 4.10. A woman may have grown up in such luxury that she never had to put a foot on the ground. But times will be so bad that she will secretly eat both her newborn baby and the afterbirth, without sharing any with her husband or her other children.
Disobedience Brings Destruction
Moses said to Israel:
58You must obey everything in The Book of God's Law. Because if you don't respect the Lord, 59he will punish you and your descendants with incurable diseases, 60like those you were so afraid of in Egypt. 61Remember! If the Lord decides to destroy your nation, he can use any disease or disaster, not just the ones written in The Book of God's Law.
62There are as many of you now as the stars in the sky, but if you disobey the Lord your God, only a few of you will be left. 63The Lord is happy to make you successful and to help your nation grow while you conquer the land. But if you disobey him, he will be just as happy to pull you up by your roots.
64Those of you that survive will be scattered to every nation on earth, and you will have to worship stone and wood idols#28.64 have to worship … idols: See the note at 28.36. that never helped you or your ancestors. 65You will be restless—always longing for home, but never able to return. 66You will live in constant fear of death. 67Each morning you will wake up to such terrible sights that you will say, “I wish it were night!” But at night you will be terrified and say, “I wish it were day!”
68I told you never to go back to Egypt. But now the Lord himself will load you on ships and send you back. Then you will even try to sell yourselves as slaves, but no one will be interested.
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Deuteronomy 28: CEV
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Contemporary English Version, Second Edition (CEV®)
© 2006 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.
Deuteronomy 28
28
Blessings for Obeying the Law
1“Now, if you will be careful to obey the Lord your God and follow all his commands that I tell you today, the Lord your God will put you high above all the nations on earth. 2If you will obey the Lord your God, all these blessings will come to you and be yours:
3“He will bless you
in the city and in the field.
4He will bless you
and give you many children.
He will bless your land
and give you good crops.
He will bless your animals
and let them have many babies.
He will bless you with calves and lambs.
5He will bless your baskets and pans
and fill them with food.
6He will bless you at all times
in everything you do.
7“The Lord will help you defeat your enemies who come to fight against you. Your enemies will come against you one way, but they will run away from you seven different ways!
8“The Lord will bless you and fill your barns. He will bless everything you do. The Lord your God will bless you in the land that he is giving you. 9If you follow the Lord your God and obey his commands, he will do what he promised. The Lord will make you his own special people. 10Then all the people in that land will see that you are called to be the Lord’s people, and they will be afraid of you.
11“And the Lord will give you many good things. He will give you many children. He will give your cows many calves. He will give you a good harvest in the land that the Lord promised your ancestors to give you. 12The Lord will open his storehouse where he keeps his rich blessings. He will send rain at the right time for your land. He will bless everything you do. You will have money to lend to many nations. And you will not need to borrow anything from them. 13The Lord will make you be like the head, not the tail. You will be on top, not on the bottom. This will happen if you listen to the commands of the Lord your God that I tell you today. You must carefully obey these commands. 14You must not turn away from any of the teachings that I give you today. You must not turn away to the right or to the left. You must not follow other gods to serve them.
Curses for Not Obeying the Law
15“But if you don’t listen to what the Lord your God tells you—if you don’t obey all his commands and laws that I tell you today—then all these bad things will happen to you:
16“The Lord will curse you
in the city and in the field.
17He will curse you
with empty baskets and pans.
18He will curse you,
and you will not have many children.
He will curse your land,
and you will not have good crops.
He will curse your animals,
and they will not have many babies.
He will curse your calves and lambs.
19He will curse you at all times
in everything you do.
20“If you do evil and turn away from the Lord, he will make bad things happen to you. You will have frustration and trouble in everything you do. He will continue to do this until you are quickly and completely destroyed. He will do this because you turned away from him and left him. 21The Lord will send you terrible diseases until you no longer exist, until you are completely gone from the land. 22The Lord will punish you with diseases, fever, and swelling. He will send you terrible heat and you will have no rain. Your crops will die from the heat and disease.#28:22 disease This might be mildew, a disease that turns the heads of grain yellow and stops them from growing seeds. All these bad things will happen until you are destroyed! 23There will be no clouds in the sky—the sky will look like polished brass. And the ground under you will be hard like iron. 24The Lord will not send rain—only sand and dust will fall from the sky. It will come down on you until you are destroyed.
25“The Lord will let your enemies defeat you. You will go to fight against your enemies one way, but you will run away from them seven different ways. The bad things that happen to you will make all the people on earth afraid. 26Your dead bodies will be food for the wild birds and animals. There will be no one to scare them away from your dead bodies.
27“The Lord will punish you with boils, like those he sent on the Egyptians. He will punish you with tumors, sores that run, and an itch that cannot be cured. 28The Lord will punish you by making you crazy. He will make you blind and confused. 29In daylight you will have to feel your way like a blind man. You will fail in everything you do. Again and again people will hurt you and steal from you. And there will be no one to save you.
30“You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will have sexual relations with her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not gather anything from it. 31People will kill your cattle in front of you, but you will not eat any of the meat. People will take your donkeys, and they will not give them back to you. Your enemies will get your sheep, and there will be no one to help you.
32“Other people will be allowed to take your sons and your daughters. Day after day you will look for your children. You will look for them until your eyes become weak and blind—but you will not find them. And God will not help you.
33“A nation that you don’t know will take all your crops and everything you worked for. People will treat you badly and abuse you. 34The things you see will make you go crazy. 35The Lord will punish you with sore boils that cannot be healed. These boils will be on your knees and legs. The boils will be on every part of your body—from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head.
36“The Lord will send you and your king away to a nation you don’t know. You and your ancestors have never seen that nation. There you will serve false gods made of wood and stone. 37In the countries where the Lord will send you, the people will be shocked at the terrible things that happen to you. They will laugh at you and say bad things about you.
The Curse of Failure
38“Your fields will produce plenty of grain. But your harvest will be small, because the locusts will eat your harvest. 39You will plant vineyards and work hard in them. But you will not gather the grapes or drink the wine from them, because the worms will eat them. 40You will have olive trees everywhere on your land. But you will not have any of the oil to use, because the olives will drop to the ground and rot. 41You will have sons and daughters. But you will not be able to keep them, because they will be captured and taken away. 42Locusts will destroy all your trees and the crops in your fields. 43The foreigners living among you will get more and more power, and you will lose the power you had. 44The foreigners will have money to loan you, but you will not have any money to loan them. They will control you the way the head controls the body. You will be like the tail.
45“All these curses will come on you. They will keep chasing you and catching you, until you are destroyed, because you did not listen to what the Lord your God told you. You did not obey the commands and laws that he gave you. 46These curses will show people that God judged you and your descendants forever. People will be amazed at the terrible things that happen to you.
47“The Lord your God gave you many blessings. But you did not serve him with joy and a glad heart. 48So you will serve the enemies the Lord will send against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, naked, and poor. He will put a load on you that cannot be removed. You will carry that load until he destroys you.#28:48 He … destroys you Literally, “He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he destroys you.”
The Curse of an Enemy Nation
49“The Lord will bring a nation from far away to fight you. You will not understand their language. They will come quickly, like an eagle coming down from the sky. 50These people will be cruel. They will not care about old people or show mercy to young children. 51They will take your animals and the food you grow. They will take everything until they destroy you. They will not leave you any grain, wine, oil, cattle, sheep, or goats. They will take everything, until they destroy you.
52“That nation will surround and attack your cities. You think that the tall, strong walls around your cities will protect you. But those walls will fall down. The enemy will surround all your cities everywhere in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 53You will suffer very much. The enemy will surround your cities. They will not let you have any food. You will get very hungry. You will be so hungry that you will eat your own sons and daughters—you will eat the bodies of the children the Lord your God gave you.
54“Even the most kind and gentle man among you will become cruel. He will be cruel to his family, and he will be cruel to his wife he loves so much. And he will be cruel to his children who are still alive. 55He will have nothing left to eat, so he will eat his own children. And he will not share that meat with anyone—not even the other people in his own family. All these bad things will happen when your enemy comes to surround your cities and make you suffer.
56“Even the most kind and gentle woman among you will become cruel. She might be a lady so gentle and delicate that she never put her feet on the ground to walk anywhere. But she will become cruel to her husband she loves so much. And she will be cruel to her own son and daughter. 57She will hide and give birth to a baby. And she will eat the baby and everything that comes out of her body with it. All these bad things will happen when your enemy comes to surround your cities and make you suffer.
58“You must obey all the commands and teachings that are written in this book. And you must respect the wonderful and awesome name of the Lord your God. If you don’t obey, 59the Lord will punish you and your descendants with terrible diseases. He will cause you to suffer illnesses that have no cure. And you will find no relief for your misery! 60He will bring on you all the diseases you saw in Egypt that filled you with fear, and you will not be able to avoid them. 61The Lord will even bring troubles and diseases that are not written in this Book of Teachings. He will continue to do this until you are destroyed. 62You might have as many people as the stars in the sky. But only a few of you will be left, because you did not listen to the Lord your God.
63“The Lord was happy to be good to you and to make your nation grow. In the same way the Lord will be happy to ruin and destroy you. You are going to take that land to be yours. But people will take you out of that land! 64The Lord will scatter you among all the people in the world. He will scatter you from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve false gods made of wood and stone. They are false gods that you or your ancestors never worshiped.
65“You will not have any peace among these nations. You will have no place to rest. The Lord will fill your mind with worry. Your eyes will feel tired. You will be very upset. 66You will live with danger and always be afraid. You will be afraid night and day. You will never feel sure about your life. 67In the morning you will say, ‘I wish it were evening!’ In the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ This will happen because of the fear in your heart and the terrible things you will see. 68The Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships. I said you would never have to go to that place again, but he will send you there. In Egypt you will try to sell yourselves as slaves to your enemies, but no one will buy you.”
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