1“And it will be, if you’ll listen to the voice of YHWH, your God, to be watchful to do all His commandments that I command you today, that YHWH, your God, will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
2And all these blessings will come on you and catch up with you when you’ll listen to the voice of YHWH, your God:
28:2. blessings … curses. The curses are four times the length of the blessings. Like the blessings and curses list in Leviticus 26 (where the curses are three times longer than the blessings), this list may convey that threats of punishment were thought to be more effective than promises of reward. Or it may convey the opposite: that threats are less effective, and therefore more are required. The remarkable thing is that, following all these blessings and curses, Moses speaks beautifully for two chapters about why the people should keep the covenant for itself. The blessings and curses are there out of a realistic recognition of human psychology: rewards and punishments are effective tools of instruction from childhood and up. But the aim is higher: that humans should come to see that what is being put in their hands is “life” and “good” and “love” (Deut 30:15–16).
3You’ll be blessed in the city, and you’ll be blessed in the field.
4The fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land and the fruit of your animals, your cattle’s offspring and your flock’s young, will be blessed.
5Your basket and your bowl will be blessed.
6You’ll be blessed when you come in, and you’ll be blessed when you go out.
7YHWH will make your enemies who come up against you stricken in front of you. By one road they’ll come out at you, and by seven roads they’ll flee in front of you.
8YHWH will command the blessing for you in your storehouses and in everything your hand takes on and will bless you in the land that YHWH, your God, is giving you.
9YHWH will establish you for him as a holy people as He swore to you if you’ll keep the commandments of YHWH, your God, and go in His ways.
10And all the peoples of the earth will see that YHWH’s name is called on you, and they’ll be afraid of you.
11And YHWH will give you a surplus of good in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your animals and in the fruit of your land, on the land that YHWH swore to your fathers to give you.
12YHWH will open His good treasure, the skies, to you, to give your lands showers at their time and to bless all your hand’s work. And you’ll lend to many nations, and you won’t borrow;
13and YHWH will put you at the head and not at the tail; and you’ll only be above, and you won’t be below—if you’ll listen to the commandments of YHWH, your God, that I command you today, to observe and to do,
14and you won’t turn from all the things that I command you today, right or left, to go after other gods, to serve them.
15“And it will be, if you won’t listen to the voice of YHWH, your God, to be watchful to do all His commandments and His laws that I command you today, that all these curses will come on you and catch up with you:
28:15. blessings … curses. The curses are four times the length of the blessings. Like the blessings and curses list in Leviticus 26 (where the curses are three times longer than the blessings), this list may convey that threats of punishment were thought to be more effective than promises of reward. Or it may convey the opposite: that threats are less effective, and therefore more are required. The remarkable thing is that, following all these blessings and curses, Moses speaks beautifully for two chapters about why the people should keep the covenant for itself. The blessings and curses are there out of a realistic recognition of human psychology: rewards and punishments are effective tools of instruction from childhood and up. But the aim is higher: that humans should come to see that what is being put in their hands is “life” and “good” and “love” (Deut 30:15–16).
16You’ll be cursed in the city, and you’ll be cursed in the field.
17Your basket and your bowl will be cursed.
18The fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your cattle’s offspring and your flock’s young, will be cursed.
19You’ll be cursed when you come in, and you’ll be cursed when you go out.
20YHWH will send curse and tumult and annoyance at you in everything your hand takes on that you’ll do, until you’re destroyed and until you perish quickly because of your bad practices, in that you left me.
21YHWH will make an epidemic cling to you until He finishes you from the land to which you’re coming to take possession of it.
22YHWH will strike you with consumption and with fever and with inflammation and with burning and with the sword and with blight and with mildew. And they’ll pursue you until you perish.
23And your skies that are over your head will be bronze, and the land that is under you iron.
24YHWH will make your land’s showers powder and dust; it will fall on you from the skies until you’re destroyed.
25YHWH will make you stricken in front of your enemies. By one road you’ll go out at him, and by seven roads you’ll flee in front of him. And you’ll be a horrifying thing to all the earth’s kingdoms.
26And your carcass will become food for every bird of the skies and for the animals of the earth, with no one making them afraid.
27YHWH will strike you with the boils of Egypt and with hemorrhoids and with scabs and with itches, from which you won’t be able to be healed.
28:27. the boils of Egypt. The horror of the curses is multiplied by the fact that this and other curses are among the ten plagues that were imposed on Egypt. The thought that God would impose on Israel the very plagues that were used on Egypt to make YHWH known and set Israel free is terrifying. The reminder of Egypt will culminate in the last curse (v. 68 below).
28YHWH will strike you with madness and with blindness and with amazement of heart.
29And you’ll be feeling around at noon the way the blind would feel around, in the dark. And you won’t make your ways successful, but you’ll just be exploited and robbed every day, and there will be no one to save you.
28:29. feeling around at noon the way the blind would feel around, in the dark. This curse, too, reflects the plagues on Egypt. In Exod 10:22, the darkness is described with this same term, Hebrew ’
p
l
h, which occurs only in these two places in the Torah. Also, the related verb for “feeling” or “groping” is used there (10:21).
30You’ll betroth a woman, and another man will ravish her. You’ll build a house, and you won’t live in it. You’ll plant a vineyard, and you won’t desanctify it.
28:30. ravish her. The written text of the Torah (the ketib) uses this strong term. When it is read (the qere’), a milder term, “lie with her” (yi
kabenh), is substituted.
28:30. desanctify. See the comment on Deut 20:6.
31Your ox slaughtered before your eyes—and you won’t eat any of it. Your ass stolen from in front of you—and it won’t come back to you. Your sheep given to your enemies—and you’ll have no one to save you.
32Your sons and your daughters given to another people—while your eyes are looking for them all day and giving out, and there’s no God at your hand.
28:32. no God at your hand. Laban uses this expression to convey to Jacob that he has power (“The god at my hand has the means to do bad to you,” Gen 31:29). Here in the curse list of Deuteronomy it is formulated in the negative, conveying that the people will be powerless. Similarly, the curse in v. 29 uses the expression “you won’t make your ways successful,” which is a negative formulation of the words that are used to describe Abraham’s servant’s internal question (“to know if YHWH had made his trip successful or not,” Gen 24:21). Thus there are reminiscences of the first book of the Torah that are reversed here in the curse list in the last book of the Torah—which doubles the force of these horrible threats.
33A people whom you haven’t known will eat your land’s fruit and all the product of your exhaustion, and you’ll only be exploited and crushed every day.
34And you’ll be driven mad from the sight before your eyes that you’ll see.
35YHWH will strike you with bad boils on the knees and on the thighs from which you won’t be able to be healed, from your foot to the top of your head.
36YHWH will drive you and your king whom you’ll set up over you to a nation whom you haven’t known, you and your fathers, and you’ll serve other gods, wood and stone, there.
37And you’ll become an astonishment, a proverb, and an expression among all the peoples to which YHWH will drive you.
38You’ll take out much seed to the field, but you’ll gather little, because locusts will finish it off.
39You’ll plant vineyards and work them, but you won’t drink wine or gather grapes, because worms will eat it.
40You’ll have olives within all your border, but you won’t anoint with oil, because your olive will drop off.
41You’ll give birth to sons and daughters, but you won’t have them, because they’ll go into captivity.
42Crickets will take possession of all your trees and your land’s fruit.
43The alien who is among you will go up above you higher and higher, and you will go down lower and lower.
44He will lend to you, but you won’t lend to him. He will become a head, and you will become a tail.
45“And all these curses will come over you and pursue you and catch up with you until you’re destroyed because you didn’t listen to the voice of YHWH, your God, to observe His commandments and His laws that He commanded you.
46And they’ll be a sign and a wonder in you and in your seed forever.
47Because you didn’t serve YHWH, your God, with joy and with good feeling from the abundance of everything,
48so you’ll serve your enemies whom YHWH will send at you in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in lack of everything. And He’ll put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
49YHWH will fetch a nation from far, from the end of the earth, over you the way an eagle soars, a nation whose language you won’t understand,
50a fierce-faced nation who won’t be partial to the old and won’t show grace to the young—
51and it will eat the fruit of your animals and the fruit of your land until you are destroyed—who won’t leave you grain, wine, and oil, your cattle’s offspring and your flock’s young until it has made you perish.
52And it will close you in, in all your gates, until your high and fortified walls in which you trust come down in all your land; and it will close you in, in all your gates, in all your land that YHWH, your God, has given you.
53And you’ll eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom YHWH, your God, has given you, in the siege and in the constraint that your enemy will put on you.
28:53. you’ll eat … the flesh of your sons. This horrid curse comes true four centuries later during the Aramean siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:25–29).
54The tenderest man among you and the very delicate: his eye will look with evil intent at his brother and the wife of his bosom and the rest of his children that he’ll have left
55from giving to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he’ll eat, because nothing will be left to him in the siege and in the constraint that your enemy will put on you in all your gates.
56The tenderest and the most delicate woman among you, who wouldn’t risk setting her foot on the ground out of delicacy and tenderness: her eye will look with evil intent at the man of her bosom and her son and her daughter
57and her afterbirth that comes out from between her legs and her children to whom she’ll give birth, because she’ll eat them in secret due to the lack of everything in the siege and in the constraint that your enemy will put on you in your gates.
58If you won’t be watchful to do the words of this instruction that are written in this scroll, to fear this honored and awesome name: YHWH, your God,
59then YHWH will make your plagues and your seed’s plagues astonishing, great and enduring plagues, and great and enduring illnesses.
60And He’ll bring back among you every disease of Egypt, which you were dreading, and they’ll cling to you.
61YHWH will bring over you every illness and every plague that is not written in this scroll of instruction, as well, until you are destroyed.
62And you’ll be left with few persons when you had been like the stars of the skies for multitude, because you didn’t listen to the voice of YHWH, your God.
63And it will be: as YHWH had satisfaction over you to do good to you and to multiply you, so YHWH will have satisfaction over you to make you perish and to destroy you, and you’ll be torn away from the land to which you’re coming to take possession of it.
64And YHWH will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. And you’ll serve other gods, whom you haven’t known, you and your fathers, there, wood and stone.
65And among those nations you won’t have a respite, and there won’t be a resting place for your foot, and YHWH will give you there a trembling heart and a failing of eyes and a fainting of soul.
28:65. a resting place for your foot. Again an expression from the early part of Genesis reappears at the end of the Torah. The dove that Noah lets go “did not find a resting place for its foot” (Gen 8:9). The helplessness of the dove, with no place on earth to go, now turns out to have been a metaphoric image of the condition of the people of Israel if they do not keep their covenant.
66And your life will be hanging opposite you, and you’ll fear night and day, and you won’t trust in your life.
67In the morning you’ll say, ‘Who would make it evening,’ and in the evening you’ll say, ‘Who would make it morning,’ because of your heart’s fear that you’ll have and because of the sight before your eyes that you’ll see.
68And YHWH will bring you back to Egypt in boats, by the way that I said to you: ‘You won’t go on to see it anymore.’ And you’ll sell yourselves there to your enemies as slaves and as maids, and none will buy!”
28:68. back to Egypt. For the last curse of this list of horrors, what would be the worst threat specifically for the people of Israel: back to Egypt! This nightmare comes true seven hundred years later, after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, described at the end of the book of Kings: “All the people, from the smallest to the biggest … got up and came to Egypt” (2 Kings 25:26; Jer 43:5–7). The last curse is that they will go back to Egypt, and the last page of the book of Kings reports that the entire people go back to Egypt. Yet, incredibly, this fact is almost never mentioned in commentaries on Deuteronomy or Kings or in biblical scholarship in general. The focus has been on the small portion of the nation who go into exile in Babylon, not on the mass of the people, who go as refugees to Egypt. It is time that we recognized, first, the full horror of the final curse of the covenant. Second, we must be sensitive to what it means to Moses to pronounce this curse: the heartbreak of what it would mean for his people to be back in Egypt, even worse off than before, the failure, the humiliation. Third, we must give due attention to the fate of the Jews who ended up back in Egypt. And, fourth, we should appreciate the significance of the fact that it was the small portion of the community who were taken to Babylon who produced the kernel who returned to Israel a generation later and rebuilt the Temple, Jerusalem, and the country—a second life for Israel in its land that lasted six hundred years.
28:68. in boats. The reference to boats has never been understood. It may be an alef/ayin scribal error for ‘nywt (afflictions) or a plural of ’niyyh (mourning; Isa 29:2; Lam 2:5), although these forms of the words are unattested in the Tanak; or it may refer to an historical event that is no longer known.
69These are the words of the covenant that YHWH commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, aside from the covenant that He made with them at Horeb.
