Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Deuteronomy 28:32-37
The Fourth Sixfold Curse (Deuteronomy 28:32).
The next sixfold pattern is more complicated. It is again divided into three and three, each made up of two statements followed by a consequence. The curses are now becoming more severe.
The first set of curses related to famine. The second set related to confusion, pestilence, disease and sword. The third set related to the frustration of all that has been laboured for being lost without enjoyment of it, and included the loss of a wife. Now the loss goes deeper with the loss of their children for ever.
‘ Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, and your eyes will look, and fail with longing for them all the day, and there shall be nought in the power of your hand.'
Even their sons and daughters would be lost to them. Deportation was common practise as it provided slave labour. They would be handed over to strangers. And though they might long all through the long days, and day after day, to see them it would never be. They would be in no position to bring it about.
‘ The fruit of your ground, and all your labours, will a nation which you know not eat up, and you will be only oppressed and crushed always,'
Their produce and all that they had laboured for, in order to give it to their loved ones, would instead come into the hands of a nation that they had not even known about, who would suddenly come upon them (compare Genesis 14). These strangers would eat what they had sown, and they instead would be continually oppressed and crushed.
‘ So that you will be mad because of the sight of your eyes which you will see.'
The net result of seeing these things with their eyes, as all that they had built up during their lives for their children was lost to them and their children, and their children were lost to them as well, would bring them into depression and madness. What they saw would be too much for them to cope with. They would also experience disease and exile and watch as they left their homeland far behind (compare Psalms 137).
‘ Yahweh will smite you in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore boil, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.'
And they would experience many diseases of a kind that Yahweh had previously saved them from. Their knees and their legs would be smitten with sore boils which would never heal, making their life of drudgery a nightmare. Indeed their whole bodies would be affected from head to toe. This would probably be the result of the awful conditions under which they would have to live (see Deuteronomy 28:27 contrast Deuteronomy 7:15; Deuteronomy 8:4; Exodus 15:26). It would, of course, render them ‘unclean'.
‘ Yahweh will bring you, and your king whom you will set over you, to a nation that you have not known, you nor your fathers, and there will you serve other gods, wood and stone.'
Note the negative view of their future king. Moses perceptively recognises that having a king over them, as he knows one day they will have (for not only was it prophesied but in neglecting Yahweh they would have to look elsewhere for leadership, as they had to Moses), would not tend to lead to faithfulness to Yahweh. He was fully aware that Deuteronomy 17:14 was a pleasant hope, a picture of Yahweh's ideal king, rather than something that could be expected. He knew this people too well. Their king would come from among them and be like them. And he links their king with them going into their exile. They would have chosen to be like the Canaanites and he is seeing them in those terms, in the terms of the nations driven out of Canaan who would also be exiled with their kings. What they had done to the Canaanites, would be done to them, because they would have become like the Canaanites. And there they would be without Yahweh. They would serve other gods of wood and stone (compare Deuteronomy 4:28), for that is one reason why they will have been cast out of the land, because of their idolatry.
They would have already chosen to follow gods of wood and stone in the land. Now they would be all that they had, because Yahweh had deserted them. (This certainly did partly happen. But God did not full desert them. He raised up prophets in order to encourage the remnant so that they might still have hope).
‘ And you will become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all the peoples to whom Yahweh will lead you away.'
And all the people among whom they would find themselves would be astonished. They would be talked about and gossiped about as the foolish nation that turned away from Yahweh. Proverbs would be made up about their folly. They would become a byword. Compare Deuteronomy 7:6; Deuteronomy 14:2; Deuteronomy 26:18 which brings home what they would have lost. (For the idea compare Isaiah 14:10; Isaiah 14:16 spoken of the king of Babylon. They too, like him, had once made the earth tremble).