Chapter Summary
Deuteronomy Chapter 28 presents a stark and thorough outline of the consequences for Israel's obedience or disobedience to God. It begins by describing a wide range of wonderful blessings that will shower upon the people if they consistently and faithfully follow all of God's commands. These blessings promise prosperity in all aspects of life, victory over adversaries, abundant offspring and harvests, and a position of honor among all other nations. However, the chapter then shifts to an extensive and severe list of curses. If Israel chooses to disregard God's voice and abandon His laws, they will face overwhelming punishments including debilitating diseases, devastating famine, military defeat, exile from their homeland, profound humiliation, extreme poverty, and unimaginable suffering, all designed to emphasize the absolute necessity of loyalty to their covenant with the Lord.
Bible:Essence Verses
- If you listen carefully and faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, and diligently follow all His instructions that I am giving you today, then the LORD your God will make you more important and respected than all other nations on Earth.
- And all these good things will come upon you and surround you if you pay attention to the voice of the LORD your God.
- You will experience favor and good fortune whether you are in your towns or working in the countryside.
- Your children will be blessed, your crops from the ground will be plentiful, and your herds of cattle and flocks of sheep will multiply.
- Your storage containers for food and your stored provisions will always be full and blessed.
- Good things will happen to you in all your activities, whether you are arriving home or going out.
- The LORD will cause your enemies who attack you to be defeated right in front of you. They will march against you from one direction, but they will scatter and flee in many directions when you defeat them.
- The LORD will command blessings upon your barns and on everything you undertake; He will make you prosperous in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
- The Lord will make you His special, set-apart people, just as He promised with an oath, as long as you continue to follow the commands of the LORD your God and live according to His ways.
- And everyone on Earth will see that you belong to the LORD, and they will respect you greatly.
- The LORD will grant you an abundance of good things: many children, numerous animals, and plentiful crops from the land He promised your ancestors.
- The LORD will unlock His rich storehouse in the sky, sending rain to your land at the perfect time and blessing all your efforts. You will be so prosperous that you will loan money to many other nations, but you will never need to borrow from anyone.
- The LORD will make you a leader and not a follower; you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. This will happen if you listen to and diligently follow the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today.
- And you must not turn away from any of these instructions I am giving you today, either to the right or to the left, by going to worship or serve other gods.
- However, if you refuse to listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and fail to carefully follow all His rules and directions that I'm giving you today, then all these terrible punishments will fall upon you and overwhelm you:
- Trouble and misfortune will follow you whether you are in your towns or out in the fields.
- Your containers for gathering food and your stored provisions will suffer from misfortune.
- Your children will face hardship, your land will yield poor harvests, and your herds of cows and flocks of sheep will not grow.
- Misfortune will accompany you in everything you do, whether you're arriving home or leaving for an activity.
- The LORD will send trouble, confusion, and frustration upon everything you attempt, leading to your swift downfall and destruction. This is because of the evil things you have done, turning away from Him.
- The LORD will allow deadly diseases to cling to you, until they wipe you out from the land you are about to claim.
- The LORD will afflict you with wasting sickness, burning fevers, severe infections, scorching heat, attacks by weapons, crop blight, and fungus. These troubles will relentlessly pursue you until you are gone.
- The sky above you will become as hard as bronze, offering no rain, and the ground beneath you will be as unyielding as iron, producing nothing.
- Instead of rain, the LORD will make only dust and powder fall from the sky onto your land, continuing until you are utterly ruined.
- The LORD will make you suffer defeat at the hands of your enemies. You will march out united to fight them, but you will scatter and run away in every direction. You will then be driven into exile across all the nations of the world.
- Your dead bodies will become food for the birds of the sky and the wild animals, and no one will be able to scare them off.
- The LORD will strike you with the painful boils of Egypt, and with hemorrhoids, skin rashes, and persistent itching that no one can cure.
- The LORD will afflict you with mental illness, inability to see, and utter confusion in your spirit.
- You will stumble around in broad daylight like a blind person trying to find their way in the dark, and you will fail in everything you try. You will constantly be treated badly and robbed, with no one able to rescue you.
- You will promise to marry a woman, but another man will take her. You will construct a home, but you won't get to live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you won't be able to pick its fruit.
- Your ox will be killed right in front of you, and you won't get to eat any of it. Your donkey will be forcibly seized from you and never returned. Your sheep will be handed over to your enemies, and there will be no one to save them.
- Your sons and daughters will be taken away to live among a foreign people. You will watch for them with desperate longing all day, until your eyes grow weak, and you will be powerless to do anything about it.
- Everything your land produces and all the results of your hard work will be consumed by a foreign nation you don't even know. You will constantly be exploited and broken down.
- The terrible things you witness will drive you insane.
- The LORD will strike you on your knees and legs with terrible, incurable sores that will cover you from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head.
- The LORD will send you and the king you choose to rule over you to a country unknown to you or your ancestors. There, you will be forced to worship idols made of wood and stone.
- Among all the nations where the LORD scatters you, people will stare at your sad state in amazement, and you will become a common saying or example of misfortune.
- You will sow many seeds in your fields, but you will harvest very little, because locusts will devour everything.
- You will cultivate vineyards and tend to them, but you won't drink any of their wine or even collect the grapes, because worms will destroy them.
- You will have olive groves all across your land, but you won't get to use their oil, because the olives will fall off the trees before they are ready.
- You will have sons and daughters, but you won't get to experience joy from them, because they will be taken away as prisoners.
- Locusts will devour every tree and every crop in your land.
- Foreigners living among you will rise to positions of great power, while you will sink to a very lowly status.
- They will be the ones who loan money to you, and you will never be in a position to loan to them. They will take charge, and you will trail behind.
- Furthermore, all these dreadful punishments will relentlessly chase you, catch you, and completely wipe you out, because you did not listen to the voice of the LORD your God and failed to obey the rules and laws He gave you.
- These troubles will serve as a terrifying warning and an astonishing example for you and your descendants through all future generations.
- This will happen because, even when you had plenty of everything, you did not serve the LORD your God with cheerful hearts and genuine happiness.
- Therefore, you will be forced to serve your enemies, whom the LORD will send against you, suffering from hunger, thirst, lack of clothing, and every kind of need. He will place a heavy iron collar around your neck, holding you captive until you are completely ruined.
- The LORD will bring a powerful nation against you from a very distant land, from the far corners of the earth. They will swoop down as quickly as an eagle, and you will not understand their language.
- They will be a ruthless people with harsh faces, showing no respect for the elderly and no pity for the young.
- This enemy will consume your livestock and the produce of your land until you are completely ruined. They will leave you with nothing—no grain, no wine, no olive oil, no new calves, and no young sheep—until they have utterly destroyed you.
- They will surround all your towns and lay siege to them until your strong, fortified walls, in which you placed your trust, collapse across your entire land. They will continue to blockade all your towns throughout the whole land that the LORD your God gave you.
- During the desperate siege and crushing hardship that your enemies inflict upon you, you will be so hungry that you will eat your own children—the flesh of your sons and daughters whom the LORD your God gave you.
- Even the most sensitive and refined man among you will look with hostility towards his own brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children,
- Refusing to share any of the flesh of his own children that he is eating with them, because the intense hunger and hardship inflicted by your enemies during the siege of your towns will leave him utterly destitute.
- And even the most gentle and pampered woman among you, who was too delicate to ever put her bare foot on the ground, will look with cruel intent at her cherished husband, her son, and her daughter,
- She will also look with evil intent at her newborn baby and the other children she has, because, in her desperate hunger, she will secretly eat them during the terrible siege and suffering your enemies bring upon your towns.
- If you fail to carefully obey all the instructions in this law, written in this book, and do not show proper reverence for the awesome and magnificent name of the LORD your God,
- Then the LORD will send astonishingly severe punishments upon you and your descendants – terrible, long-lasting disasters and dreadful, persistent illnesses.
- What's more, He will inflict upon you all the terrible diseases of Egypt that you once dreaded, and they will stick with you relentlessly.
- The LORD will also bring upon you every other sickness and disaster not even mentioned in this book of law, until you are utterly wiped out.
- You will become very few in number, even though you were once as countless as the stars in the sky. This will happen because you refused to listen to the voice of the LORD your God.
- Just as the LORD once took pleasure in bringing you prosperity and making you numerous, so He will then take satisfaction in bringing about your ruin and utterly wiping you out. You will be torn away from the land you are going to claim.
- The LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one side of the earth to the other. There, you will be forced to worship other gods made of wood and stone, gods that neither you nor your ancestors have ever known.
- Among those nations, you will find no peace or comfort; your feet will never settle down. Instead, the LORD will give you a constantly fearful heart, failing eyesight, and a troubled spirit.
- Your very existence will always feel uncertain, and you will live in constant fear, day and night, with no confidence that you will survive.
- Each morning you will wish it were evening, and each evening you will wish it were morning, because of the overwhelming dread in your heart and the horrifying sights you will witness.
- The LORD will send you back to Egypt in ships, along the very route I told you that you would never see again. There, you will be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will even want to buy you.