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Deuteronomy 28:15-68
New English Translation

Curses as Reversal of Blessings

15 “But if you ignore[a] the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force:[b] 16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field. 17 Your basket and your mixing bowl will be cursed. 18 Your children[c] will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.[d]

Curses by Disease and Drought

20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you[e] in everything you undertake[f] until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me.[g] 21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases[h] until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 22 He[i] will afflict you with weakness,[j] fever, inflammation, infection,[k] sword,[l] blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 23 The[m] sky[n] above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron. 24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.

Curses by Defeat and Deportation

25 “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror[o] to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off. 27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, eczema, and scabies, all of which cannot be healed. 28 The Lord will also subject you to madness, blindness, and confusion of mind.[p] 29 You will feel your way along at noon like the blind person does in darkness and you will not succeed in anything you do;[q] you will be constantly oppressed and continually robbed, with no one to save you. 30 You will be engaged to a woman, and another man will rape[r] her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes, but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies, and there will be no one to save you. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it.[s] 33 As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives. 34 You will go insane from seeing all this. 35 The Lord will afflict you in your knees and on your legs with painful, incurable boils—from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. 36 The Lord will force you and your king[t] whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there. 37 You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you.

The Curse of Reversed Status

38 “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory, but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe.[u] 41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 42 Whirring locusts[v] will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil. 43 The resident foreigners[w] who reside among you will become higher and higher over you, and you will become lower and lower. 44 They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them; they will become the head, and you will become the tail!

45 “All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given[x] you. 46 These curses[y] will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants.[z]

The Curse of Military Siege

47 “Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty[aa] you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They[ab] will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth[ac] as the eagle flies,[ad] a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. 51 They[ae] will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds,[af] or lambs of your flocks[ag] until they have destroyed you. 52 They will besiege all of your villages[ah] until all of your high and fortified walls collapse—those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. 53 You will then eat your own offspring,[ai] the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege[aj] by which your enemies will constrict you. 54 The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. 55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict[ak] you in your villages. 56 Likewise, the most[al] tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness,[am] will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth[an] and her newborn children[ao] (since she has nothing else),[ap] because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

The Curse of Covenant Termination

58 “If you refuse to obey[aq] all the words of this law, the things written in this scroll, and refuse to fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants—great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses. 60 He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt[ar] that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you.[as] 61 Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments,[at] until you have perished. 62 There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky,[au] because you will have disobeyed[av] the Lord your God. 63 This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, so he[aw] will also take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess. 64 The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. 65 Among those nations you will have no rest, nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. 66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next.[ax] 67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see. 68 Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”

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Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 28:15 tn Heb “do not hear the voice of.”
  2. Deuteronomy 28:15 tn Heb “and overtake you” (so NIV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “and overwhelm you.”
  3. Deuteronomy 28:18 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
  4. Deuteronomy 28:19 sn See note on the similar expression in v. 6.
  5. Deuteronomy 28:20 tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”
  6. Deuteronomy 28:20 tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”
  7. Deuteronomy 28:20 tc For the MT first person common singular suffix (“me”), the LXX reads either “Lord” (Lucian) or third person masculine singular suffix (“him”; various codices). The MT’s more difficult reading probably represents the original text.tn Heb “the evil of your doings wherein you have forsaken me”; CEV “all because you rejected the Lord.”
  8. Deuteronomy 28:21 tn Heb “will cause pestilence to cling to you.”
  9. Deuteronomy 28:22 tn Heb “The Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.
  10. Deuteronomy 28:22 tn Or perhaps “consumption” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV). The term is from a verbal root that indicates a weakening of one’s physical strength (cf. NAB “wasting”; NIV, NLT “wasting disease”).
  11. Deuteronomy 28:22 tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”
  12. Deuteronomy 28:22 tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).
  13. Deuteronomy 28:23 tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”
  14. Deuteronomy 28:23 tn Or “heavens” (also in the following verse). The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
  15. Deuteronomy 28:25 tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (zaʿavah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zevaʿah, “terror”).
  16. Deuteronomy 28:28 tn Heb “heart” (so KJV, NASB).
  17. Deuteronomy 28:29 tn Heb “you will not cause your ways to prosper.”
  18. Deuteronomy 28:30 tc For MT reading שָׁגַל (shagal, “ravish; violate”), the Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate presume the less violent שָׁכַב (shakhav, “lie with”). The unexpected counterpart to betrothal here favors the originality of the MT.
  19. Deuteronomy 28:32 tn Heb “and there will be no power in your hand”; NCV “there will be nothing you can do.”
  20. Deuteronomy 28:36 tc The LXX reads the plural “kings.”
  21. Deuteronomy 28:40 tn Heb “your olives will drop off” (נָשַׁל, nashal), referring to the olives dropping off before they ripen. Elsewhere זַיִת (zayit, “olive”) can refer to an olive, the tree branch, the tree, or the grove. Agriculturally it might make the most sense to mean the olive flower (cf. Job 15:33). Whether the flowers drop off without being fertilized, or the olives drop off while unripe, the harvest is lost.
  22. Deuteronomy 28:42 tn The Hebrew term denotes some sort of buzzing or whirring insect; some have understood this to be a type of locust (KJV, NIV, CEV), but other insects have also been suggested: “buzzing insects” (NAB); “the cricket” (NASB); “the cicada” (NRSV).
  23. Deuteronomy 28:43 tn Heb “the foreigner.” This is a collective singular and has therefore been translated as plural; this includes the pronouns in the following verse, which are also singular in the Hebrew text.
  24. Deuteronomy 28:45 tn Heb “commanded”; NAB, NIV, TEV “he gave you.”
  25. Deuteronomy 28:46 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the curses mentioned previously) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  26. Deuteronomy 28:46 tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).
  27. Deuteronomy 28:48 tn Heb “lack of everything.”
  28. Deuteronomy 28:48 tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).
  29. Deuteronomy 28:49 tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”
  30. Deuteronomy 28:49 tn Some translations understand this to mean “like an eagle swoops down” (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), comparing the swift attack of an eagle to the attack of the Israelites’ enemies.
  31. Deuteronomy 28:51 tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).
  32. Deuteronomy 28:51 tn Heb “increase of herds.”
  33. Deuteronomy 28:51 tn Heb “growth of flocks.”
  34. Deuteronomy 28:52 tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.
  35. Deuteronomy 28:53 tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”
  36. Deuteronomy 28:53 tn Heb “siege and stress.”
  37. Deuteronomy 28:55 tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”
  38. Deuteronomy 28:56 tc The LXX adds σφόδρα (sphodra, “very”) to bring the description into line with v. 54.
  39. Deuteronomy 28:56 tn Heb “delicateness and tenderness.”
  40. Deuteronomy 28:57 tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”
  41. Deuteronomy 28:57 tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”
  42. Deuteronomy 28:57 tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”
  43. Deuteronomy 28:58 tn Heb “If you are not careful to do.”
  44. Deuteronomy 28:60 sn These are the plagues the Lord inflicted on the Egyptians prior to the exodus which, though they did not fall upon the Israelites, must have caused great terror (cf. Exod 15:26).
  45. Deuteronomy 28:60 tn Heb “will cling to you” (so NIV); NLT “will claim you.”
  46. Deuteronomy 28:61 tn The Hebrew term תּוֹרָה (torah) can refer either (1) to the whole Pentateuch or, more likely, (2) to the book of Deuteronomy or even (3) only to this curse section of the covenant text. “Scroll” better reflects the actual document, since “book” conveys the notion of a bound book with pages to the modern English reader. Cf. KJV, NASB, NRSV “the book of this law”; NIV, NLT “this Book of the Law”; TEV “this book of God’s laws and teachings.”
  47. Deuteronomy 28:62 tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
  48. Deuteronomy 28:62 tn Heb “have not listened to the voice of.”
  49. Deuteronomy 28:63 tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.
  50. Deuteronomy 28:66 tn Heb “you will not be confident in your life.” The phrase “from one day to the next” is implied by the following verse.
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Deuteronomy 28:15-68
New American Standard Bible

Consequences of Disobedience

15 “(A)But it shall come about, if you do not [a]obey the Lord your God, to be careful to [b]follow all His commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

16 “(B)Cursed will you be in the city, and cursed will you be in the [c]country.

17 “(C)Cursed will be your basket and your kneading bowl.

18 “(D)Cursed will be the [d]children of your womb, the [e]produce of your ground, the newborn of your herd, and the offspring of your flock.

19 “(E)Cursed will you be when you come in, and cursed will you be when you go out.

20 “(F)The Lord will send against you curses, panic, and (G)rebuke, in [f]everything you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and until (H)you perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have abandoned Me. 21 (I)The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has eliminated you from the land where you are entering to take possession of it. 22 (J)The Lord will strike you with consumption, inflammation, fever, feverish heat, and with [g]the sword, (K)with blight, and with mildew, and they will pursue you until (L)you perish. 23 [h]The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you, iron. 24 (M)The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed.

25 “(N)The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies; you will go out one way against them, but you will flee seven ways from their presence, and you will (O)be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 (P)Your dead bodies will [i]serve as food for all birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.

27 “(Q)The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt and with (R)tumors, the festering rash, and with scabies, from which you cannot be healed. 28 The Lord will strike you with insanity, blindness, and with confusion of [j]mind; 29 and you will be (S)groping about at noon, just as a person who is blind gropes in the darkness, and you will not be successful in your ways; but you will only be [k]oppressed and robbed all the time, with no one to save you. 30 (T)You will [l]betroth a woman, but another man will [m]violate her; (U)you will build a house, but you will not live in it; you will plant a vineyard, but you will not make use of its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat of it; your donkey will be snatched away from you, and will not [n]be restored to you; your [o]sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to save you. 32 (V)Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, while your eyes look on and long for them constantly; but there will be nothing [p]you can do. 33 (W)A people whom you do not know will eat the produce of your ground and every product of your labor, and you will never be anything but oppressed and mistreated continually. 34 You will also be driven insane by the sight of [q]what you see. 35 (X)The Lord will strike you on the knees and thighs with severe boils from which you cannot be healed, and strike you from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. 36 (Y)The Lord will bring you and your king, whom you appoint over you, to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, made of (Z)wood and stone. 37 And (AA)you will become an object of horror, a song of mockery, and an object of taunting among all the peoples where the Lord drives you.

38 “(AB)You will bring out a great amount of seed to the field, but you will gather in little, because (AC)the locust will devour it. 39 (AD)You will plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor bring in the harvest, because the worm will eat it. 40 (AE)You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, because your olives will drop off prematurely. 41 (AF)You will father sons and daughters but they will not remain yours, because they will go into captivity. 42 (AG)The cricket will take possession of all your trees and the produce of your ground. 43 (AH)The stranger who is among you will rise above you higher and higher, and you will go down lower and lower. 44 (AI)He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; (AJ)he will be the head, and you will be the tail.

45 “So all these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you (AK)until you are destroyed, because you would not [r]obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. 46 And they will become (AL)a sign and a wonder [s]against you and your [t]descendants forever.

47 “(AM)Since you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a cheerful heart, in gratitude for the abundance of all things, 48 you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, (AN)in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and devoid of all things; and He (AO)will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

49 “(AP)The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, (AQ)as the eagle swoops down; a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation [u]with a defiant attitude, who will (AR)have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young. 51 Furthermore, it will eat the [v]offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed; a nation that will leave you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the newborn of your cattle or the young of your flock, until they have eliminated you. 52 (AS)And it will besiege you in all your [w]towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land, and it will besiege you in all your [x]towns throughout your land which the Lord your God has given you. 53 (AT)Then you will eat the [y]offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, during the siege and the hardship by which your enemy will [z]oppress you. 54 The man who is [aa]refined and very delicate among you [ab]will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife [ac]he cherishes, and toward the rest of his children who are left, 55 so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, since he has nothing else left, during the siege and the hardship by which your enemy will [ad]oppress you in all your [ae]towns. 56 (AU)The [af]refined and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and tenderness, [ag]will be hostile toward the husband [ah]she cherishes and toward her son and daughter, 57 and toward her afterbirth that comes from between her [ai]legs, and toward her children to whom she gives birth, because (AV)she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the siege and the hardship with which your enemy will [aj]oppress you in your [ak]towns.

58 “If you are not careful to [al]follow all the words of this Law that are written in this book, to [am](AW)fear this honored and awesome (AX)name, [an]the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will bring extraordinary plagues on you and [ao]your descendants, [ap]severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses. 60 (AY)And He will bring back on you every disease of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you. 61 Also every sickness and every plague, which are not written in the book of this Law, the Lord will bring on you (AZ)until you are destroyed. 62 Then you will be left few in [aq]number, (BA)whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, because you did not [ar]obey the Lord your God. 63 And it will come about that, just as the Lord (BB)rejoiced over you to be good to you, and make you numerous, so will the Lord (BC)rejoice over you to wipe you out and destroy you; and you will be (BD)torn away from the land which you are entering to possess. 64 Furthermore, the Lord will (BE)scatter you among all the peoples, from one end of the earth to [as]the other; and there you will (BF)serve other gods, made of wood and stone, which you and your fathers have not known. 65 (BG)Among those nations you will find no peace, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there (BH)the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul. 66 So your lives will be [at]hanging in doubt before you; and you will be terrified night and day, and have no assurance of your life. 67 (BI)In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And at evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ because of the terror of your heart which you fear, and the sight of your eyes which you will see. 68 And the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I said to you, ‘You will never see it again!’ And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.”

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Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 28:15 Lit listen to the voice of
  2. Deuteronomy 28:15 Lit perform
  3. Deuteronomy 28:16 Lit field
  4. Deuteronomy 28:18 Lit fruit
  5. Deuteronomy 28:18 Lit fruit
  6. Deuteronomy 28:20 Lit every putting forth of your hand which you do
  7. Deuteronomy 28:22 Another reading is drought
  8. Deuteronomy 28:23 Lit Your
  9. Deuteronomy 28:26 Lit be for
  10. Deuteronomy 28:28 Lit heart
  11. Deuteronomy 28:29 Or exploited
  12. Deuteronomy 28:30 A betrothed couple was considered legally married, but did not yet live together
  13. Deuteronomy 28:30 Or be intimate with
  14. Deuteronomy 28:31 Lit return to
  15. Deuteronomy 28:31 Or flock
  16. Deuteronomy 28:32 Lit to the power of your hand
  17. Deuteronomy 28:34 Lit your eyes which you
  18. Deuteronomy 28:45 Lit listen to the voice of
  19. Deuteronomy 28:46 Or on
  20. Deuteronomy 28:46 Lit seed
  21. Deuteronomy 28:50 Lit defiant-faced
  22. Deuteronomy 28:51 Lit fruit
  23. Deuteronomy 28:52 Lit gates
  24. Deuteronomy 28:52 Lit gates
  25. Deuteronomy 28:53 Lit fruit of your womb
  26. Deuteronomy 28:53 Or torment
  27. Deuteronomy 28:54 Or spoiled and pampered
  28. Deuteronomy 28:54 Lit his eye will be evil toward
  29. Deuteronomy 28:54 Lit of his breast
  30. Deuteronomy 28:55 Or torment
  31. Deuteronomy 28:55 Lit gates
  32. Deuteronomy 28:56 Or spoiled and pampered
  33. Deuteronomy 28:56 Lit her eye shall be evil toward
  34. Deuteronomy 28:56 Lit of her breast
  35. Deuteronomy 28:57 Lit feet
  36. Deuteronomy 28:57 Or torment
  37. Deuteronomy 28:57 Lit gates
  38. Deuteronomy 28:58 Lit perform
  39. Deuteronomy 28:58 Or revere
  40. Deuteronomy 28:58 Heb YHWH
  41. Deuteronomy 28:59 Lit plagues on your seed
  42. Deuteronomy 28:59 Lit great
  43. Deuteronomy 28:62 Lit people
  44. Deuteronomy 28:62 Lit listen to the voice of
  45. Deuteronomy 28:64 Lit the end of the earth
  46. Deuteronomy 28:66 Lit be hung for you in front
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