Deuteronomy 28:1-68
1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:
2 And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.
3 Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.
4 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.
5 Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.a
6 Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.
7 The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.
8 The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses,b and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
9 The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways.
10 And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.
11 And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods,c in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee.
12 The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.
13 And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them:
14 And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
15 But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:
16 Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field.
17 Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.
18 Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.
19 Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.
20 The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.
21 The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it.
22 The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword,d and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.
23 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.
24 The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
25 The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removede into all the kingdoms of the earth.
26 And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.
27 The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.
28 The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:
29 And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.
30 Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof.
31 Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: thine ass shall be violently taken away from before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them.
32 Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long: and there shall be no might in thine hand.
33 The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway:
34 So that thou shalt be mad for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.
35 The LORD shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head.
36 The LORD shall bring thee, and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone.
37 And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.
38 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it.
39 Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them.
40 Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olive shall cast his fruit.
41 Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity.
42 All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.f
43 The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low.
44 He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.
45 Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee:
46 And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.
47 Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things;
48 Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.
49 The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand;g
50 A nation of fierceh countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young:
51 And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee.
52 And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
53 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body,i the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:
54 So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave:
55 So that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates.
56 The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter,
57 And toward her young onej that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.
58 If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD;
59 Then the LORD will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance.
60 Moreover he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee.
61 Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the LORD bringk upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
62 And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the LORD thy God.
63 And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.
64 And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.
65 And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind:
66 And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life:
67 In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.
68 And the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.
Deuteronomy 28:5. Blessed shall be thy basket. The LXX read, thy barns and thy store.
Deuteronomy 28:24. The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust. Our oriental travellers say in succession, that when hurricanes happen in the sandy deserts, they carry the fine sands high in the air, and rain on cities and villages the dust, which penetrates every corner of the houses where the air has access. They often bury camels and asses in the deserts, and form ridges and hills which prove a great obstruction to husbandry. The tracts and roads, after those tempests and gales, are completely lost, and men travel as they can between the ridges, their eyes and ears sustaining great pain from the dust which has penetrated into those more tender senses of the body. The western shore of the Nile was once the most fertile part of Egypt; the sands having since marched in clouds, have buried all the beautiful towns and districts, and turned the fruitful field into a desert.
Deuteronomy 28:27. The botch of Egypt, often referred to: Deuteronomy 7:15.
Deuteronomy 28:49. A nation against thee from afar. The Romans, to punish them as rebels, “whose language thou canst not understand:” this made the calamity greater. Hezekiah's ministers understood the Assyrian tongue, which was a sister language of the Hebrew; but the Latin was difficult to learn. The Romans realized all the horrors of these predictions against a people denationalized and devoted. See on Daniel 9:24; Daniel 9:27. As swift as the eagle flieth. The Chaldean armies are frequently represented as flying swift as the eagle, which is the prince of birds. One measured by Bruce in Abyssinia, of the golden eagle species, from wing to wing, eight feet four inches, and from the back to the tip of the tail, four feet seven inches. The eagle renews his plumage in the spring, as most birds of prey, to which allusion is made in Psalms 103:5. He lives to a great age, and is often found with a bald head.
Deuteronomy 28:64. The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other. Voltaire, the far-famed infidel of Ferney, in Swisserland, contributed to make Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, an unbeliever. Dr. Steinkoff, minister of the Lutheran church in London, stated one evening in conversation, that Frederick has been heard to say, “After all, I think there must be some truth in the prophecies respecting the Jews; they are so often repeated, and so very strikingly fulfilled in the dispersion of that people.” So complete is this dispersion, “from one end of the earth even to the other,” that there is scarcely a port or city without jews. In India, in China, and in central Asia, their condition is most deplorable; they are poor and distressed even to a proverb. Christian nations are now their best friends and protectors. Tertullian, Augustine, Lactantius, and others of the ancient fathers, lay a strong emphasis on the sufferings of the jews, as consequent on their sin of crucifying “the Lord of glory.”
Deuteronomy 28:66. Thou shalt fear day and night. The fathers apply this to the fears which fell on the jews after the crucifixion, when “great fear fell on every soul.” Acts 2:43. In the dark ages, christians as well as heathens, treated the jews with great cruelty.
Deuteronomy 28:68. Ships. Navigation, in the times of Moses, was well understood.
REFLECTIONS.
The covenant made at Sinai forty years before is here repeated to the new generation, and with such enlargements as were calculated most deeply to impress the nation. It is in fact the identical covenant made with Abraham, approaching the crisis of splendour and prosperity. Genesis 12. The promise of the Messiah was superadded, in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed with the fulness of spiritual benefits which should overflow in his kingdom. The temporal blessings, ever to be viewed as shadows and figures of the spiritual, comprehend every good which can contribute to personal, domestic and national prosperity. And these were not vain panegyrics and pompous presumption to allure a wandering nation to a fixed habitation; they were all realized in the reign of David, and of Solomon his son. David had nine hundred thousand men able to bear arms, which must have included a population of six millions, all well nourished in a small tract of country; and Solomon made gold and silver plentiful as iron and brass in Jerusalem. This should encourage every christian to look for the same blessings, temporal and spiritual, to descend on his soul and on his family, while walking in the Lord's way.
After this recital of the blessings of the Hebrew covenant, it was most equitable and meet that the curses, in case of apostasy, should follow. These are painted with horrors of the deepest shade, as the rudest blast of winter, slowly approaching and stripping the earth of all the verdure and beauty of summer; as blasts, covering Israel with desolation, and no more succeeded with reviving spring. They approach as ministers of justice, pursuing guilt for a long time with paternal corrections: but when the sad crisis arrived, that no mercies could soften, no judgment sanctify the obdurate, they inflict the fullest strokes of vengeance by excision of an apostate nation for seventy years. And when the astonished heathens enquired the cause of those singular calamities, they were told it was because they had forsaken the covenant of the Lord. Yea, Daniel himself, weeping in captivity, owns the equity of the punishment, and hallows the memory of Moses: chap. 9. Thus the Hebrews were made instructive to the heathen, and instructive to future ages.
From the nature of those blessings and curses we learn that the prosperity and adversity of families and nations are immediately connected with their piety or profaneness. All objections brought to the contrary, from the prosperity of the wicked, are derived from flattering periods in their history. It may safely be averred, that the main series of ancient and modern history, whether written by believers or unbelievers, will evince, on viewing the rise, splendour, and fall of families and states, that the doctrine of Moses is consonant to providence. Angels also, viewing the judgments of God on a fuller scale, cease not to cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts.
After historically tracing the chastisements apostate Israel should sustain from the Assyrians, the soul of our venerable prophet, elevated with the terrors of vision, and having for a moment the veil of futurity uplifted, launched forth beyond the line of patriarchal prophecy, and saw what heaven had not dared to entrust to any mortal, nor even to him till the approach of death. He saw the Messiah and his gospel rejected; he saw the whole Hebrew nation as a putrid carcase in God's esteem; he saw the wide-spread eagle ensigns of the Romans waving in the air, and gathering on the guilty as around their lawful prey. He saw more: he saw all the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem the famine, the pestilence, the slaughter, the destruction of the city, and consequent captivity of the people!
Josephus is more copious, but not more correct than Moses, who wrote sixteen hundred years before. Nay, the prophet saw more than the historian lived to see. He saw the subsequent sieges by Adrian throughout all the land, occasioned by new revolts: Deuteronomy 28:52. He saw the famine, pestilence and sword, exhaust all their treasures of vengeance on this guilty people, for the murder of the Son of God, and the rejection of mercy. He saw the few in number, scattered among all nations, from one end of the earth even to the other; and there compelled sometimes to serve the heathen gods, and sometimes the papal christian gods, as once they were openly obliged to do both in Spain and Portugal. Thus to whatever nation they fled, they had no rest for the soles of their feet, but had a trembling heart; and even till the period of the reformation, their life hung in doubt. Christians, here is instruction for you. Turn your eyes towards this covenant nation, a nation cast away till the times of the gentiles are fulfilled. Where can you visit a nation, where can you enter a port destitute of Hebrew exiles? Wherever they wander, they are God's witnesses, attesting the truth of prophecy, and the consequences of rejecting the gospel. They are not dispersed, as in Babylon, for corrupting their covenant with idols: quite the contrary: but a little before their ruin, the mere sight of a Roman eagle on the walls of Jerusalem occasioned an insurrection of the people. They are rejected for rejecting Christ. Therefore I again say, christians fix your eye on those instructive men; and beware lest you also be destroyed for making light of the gospel. Tremble, licentious age, tremble, lest the glory should depart from you, and rest on them. Tremble, lest when the joy of receiving them back should be as life from the dead, you, in return, should be exposed to all the vengeance they have sustained.
The very striking accomplishment of this extraordinary prophecy, is not only an incontrovertible proof of the truth of revelation; not only irresistible in reclaiming a candid infidel; but it is extremely consolatory to all weak and tempted believers. I do aver that whenever I have been exposed to the injections of Satan concerning the truth of any one doctrine of revelation; for ministers are men; the study of this and other prophecies has always sustained me; and removed the transient doubt with more than a sunbeam of celestial day. Hence I earnestly recommend this study, accompanied with prayer, above all means to weak and troubled minds. It will not only confirm them in the faith, but greatly increase their piety and reverence for God. A young christian, well instructed in this sublimest branch of revelation, clothes himself with a coat of mail, which bids defiance to the sneers and shafts of infidelity, and repels his foes with the word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword. They sink for want of ground; but he stands firm, being supported by the Eternal Rock.