DeuteronomyChapter 28

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¹"Now if you truly obey the voice of the LORD your God, and if you are careful to follow all his commands I am giving you today, then the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. ²If you obey the voice of the LORD your God, all these blessings will come to you. They will catch up with you: ³You will be blessed in the city. You will be blessed in the country. ⁴Your children will be blessed. The crops of your land will be blessed. The young of your animals will be blessed. This means the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. ⁵Your basket will be blessed, and so will the bowl where you mix your bread dough. ⁶You will be blessed when you come in. You will be blessed when you go out. ⁷Enemies will rise up against you. But the LORD will make them lose to you. They will march out against you from one direction. But they will run away from you in seven directions. ⁸The LORD will order a blessing on your barns. He will bless everything you set your hand to do. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. ⁹The LORD will make you his holy people, just as he promised you with an oath. He will do this if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. ¹⁰Then all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD. And they will be afraid of you. ¹¹The LORD will make you very rich in good things. You will have many children. Your animals will have many young. Your land will grow many crops. All this will happen in the land the LORD promised your fathers with an oath to give you. ¹²The LORD will open the heavens, his rich storehouse. He will send rain on your land at the right time. He will bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations. But you will not borrow from any. ¹³The LORD will make you the head and not the tail. You will only move up and never down. This will happen if you listen to the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully follow them. ¹⁴Do not turn away to the right or to the left from any of the words I command you today. Do not go after other gods to serve them. ¹⁵But if you do not obey the LORD your God, and if you do not carefully follow all his commands and rules that I am giving you today, then all these curses will come on you. They will catch up with you: ¹⁶You will be cursed in the city. You will be cursed in the country. ¹⁷Your basket will be cursed, and so will the bowl where you mix your bread dough. ¹⁸Your children will be cursed. The crops of your land will be cursed. The calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks will be cursed. ¹⁹You will be cursed when you come in. You will be cursed when you go out. ²⁰The LORD will send curses on you. He will send confusion and scolding on everything you set your hand to do. This will go on until you are destroyed and quickly perish. It will happen because of the evil you did when you left him. ²¹The LORD will make the plague cling to you. It will stay until he has wiped you out from the land you are going in to take. ²²The LORD will strike you with a disease that wastes you away. He will strike you with fever and swelling. He will send burning heat and no rain. He will send blight and mold. These will chase you until you perish. ²³The sky over your head will be like bronze. The ground under you will be like iron. ²⁴The LORD will turn the rain of your land into dust and powder. It will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed. ²⁵The LORD will make you lose to your enemies. You will march out against them from one direction. But you will run away from them in seven directions. All the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified at you. ²⁶Your dead bodies will be food for all the birds of the sky and the wild animals. No one will be there to scare them away. ²⁷The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt. He will strike you with tumors, sores, and itching. You will not be able to be cured of them. ²⁸The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness. He will strike your mind with confusion, ²⁹and at noon you will feel your way around like a blind man in the dark. You will not do well in anything you do. Day after day people will beat you down and rob you. No one will save you. ³⁰You will be promised in marriage to a woman. But another man will rape her. You will build a house. But you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard. But you will not enjoy its fruit. ³¹Your ox will be killed while you watch. But you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away from you. It will not be given back. Your flock will be given to your enemies. No one will save you. ³²Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation. Your eyes will grow tired looking for them day after day. And you will have no power to do anything. ³³A people you do not know will eat the crops of your land and everything you worked for. All your life you will be treated cruelly and crushed. ³⁴The things you see will drive you mad. ³⁵The LORD will strike your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured. They will spread from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head. ³⁶The LORD will take you and the king you choose to a nation you do not know. Your fathers did not know it either. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. ³⁷The LORD will drive you away to many nations. Among all of them, you will be something people are horrified at. They will make fun of you and laugh at you. ³⁸You will plant a lot of seed in the field. But you will gather only a little, because the locusts will eat it up. ³⁹You will plant vineyards and take care of them. But you will not drink the wine or pick the grapes, because worms will eat them. ⁴⁰You will have olive trees all over your land. But you will never rub their oil on yourself, because the olives will fall off. ⁴¹You will have sons and daughters. But they will not stay yours, because they will be taken away as captives. ⁴²Swarms of locusts will eat all your trees and the crops of your land. ⁴³The foreigner who lives among you will rise higher and higher above you. But you will sink lower and lower. ⁴⁴He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail. ⁴⁵All these curses will come on you. They will chase you and catch you until you are destroyed. This will happen because you did not obey the LORD your God. You did not keep the commands and rules he gave you. ⁴⁶These curses will be a sign and a wonder on you and your children after you forever. ⁴⁷You did not serve the LORD your God with joy and a glad heart when you had plenty of everything. Because of this, ⁴⁸you will serve your enemies, whom the LORD will send against you. You will be hungry and thirsty. You will have no clothes and nothing at all. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. ⁴⁹The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth. It will swoop down on you like an eagle. You will not understand its language. ⁵⁰It will be a cruel nation. It will not respect the old or show pity to the young. ⁵¹They will eat the young of your animals and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, or oil. They will leave you no calves from your herds or lambs from your flocks. They will do this until they have made you perish. ⁵²They will surround all the cities in your land and attack them. They will keep on until your high, strong walls fall. You trust in those walls. They will attack all your cities in the land the LORD your God has given you. ⁵³Then you will eat your own children. You will eat the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God gave you. You will do this during the siege, when your enemy surrounds you and brings suffering on you. ⁵⁴Even the most gentle and tender man among you will be selfish. He will be selfish toward his brother and toward the wife he loves. He will be selfish toward the rest of his children who are still alive. ⁵⁵He will not share with any of them the flesh of his children that he is eating. This is because he will have nothing else left during the siege, when your enemy brings suffering on you inside all your city gates. ⁵⁶The most gentle and tender woman among you is so gentle and tender that she would not even dare to set the bottom of her foot on the ground. But she will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her son and daughter. ⁵⁷She will hold back from them the afterbirth that comes out from between her legs. She will hold back the children she gives birth to. She will eat them in secret because she has nothing else during the siege, when your enemy brings suffering on you inside your city gates. ⁵⁸If you are not careful to obey all the words of this law that are written in this book, so that you fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, ⁵⁹then he will bring disasters unlike any others on you and your children after you. He will send terrible plagues that last a long time. He will send awful sicknesses that do not go away. ⁶⁰He will bring on you again all the diseases of Egypt that you were afraid of. 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. He will do this until you are destroyed. ⁶²You were once as many as the stars in the sky. But only a few of you will be left, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. ⁶³It pleased the LORD to make you do well and grow in number. In the same way, it will please him to wipe you out and destroy you. You will be pulled up by the roots from the land you are going in to take. ⁶⁴Then the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. You and your fathers have never known them. ⁶⁵Among those nations you will find no rest. You will not even have a place to rest the bottom of your foot. There the LORD will give you a shaking heart and tired eyes. He will give you a soul without hope. ⁶⁶Your life will always be in danger. You will be afraid night and day. You will never be sure you will stay alive. ⁶⁷In the morning you will say, 'I wish it were evening!' And in the evening you will say, 'I wish it were morning!' This is because of the fear in your hearts at the terrible things you will see. ⁶⁸The LORD will send you back to Egypt in ships. He will take you by a way I said you would never see again. There you will try to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, both men and women. But no one will buy you."