Episode 76: Blessings and curses (Deuteronomy 28-30)

Blessings for obeying God

28 ¹ If you obey God, all these blessings will come upon you:

³ You'll be blessed in the city and in the field.

⁴ Your children, crops, cattle, and sheep will be blessed.

⁶ You'll be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.

⁷ God will cause your enemies to be killed right in front of you.

¹⁰ Everyone on earth will be afraid of you.

¹³ God will make you the head, not the tail, and you’ll be above, not below.

Curses if you don't

¹⁵ But if you don't obey God and observe all of his commandments, all of the following curses will come upon you:

¹⁶ God will curse you in the city; he'll curse in the field.

¹⁸ He'll curse your children, land, and sheep.

¹⁹ He'll curse you when you come in and curse you when out go out.

²⁰ He'll destroy you with cursing, vexation, and rebuke, until you are destroyed and die quickly for you wickedness.

²¹ He'll consume you with pestilence.

²² He'll smite you with consumption, fever, inflammation, burning, the sword, blasting, and mildew. He’ll pursue you until you’re dead.

²⁴ God will make the rain powder and dust until you are destroyed.

²⁶ Your carcass will be eaten by birds and beasts, and no one will scare them away.

²⁷ God will smite you with the botch of Egypt, hemorrhoids, the scab, and the itch, from which you will not be healed.

²⁸ He'll smite you with madness, blindness, and astonishment of heart.

³⁰ You'll get married, and another man will have sex with your wife. You’ll build a house, but not live in it; plant a vineyard, but gather no grapes.

³¹ Your ox will be killed in front of you (and you won't eat it).

³² Your sons and daughters shall be given away.

³⁴ You'll go mad because of the things you see.

³⁹ Worms will eat your grapes, so you won't drink any wine.

⁴¹ Your sons and daughters will be enslaved.

⁴⁴ The stranger will be the head, and you'll be the tail.

⁴⁶ These curses will be a sign and a wonder upon your seed forever.

^56-57 The tender and delicate woman among you will have an evil eye toward her husband, and toward her children, whom she will eat.

⁵⁸ If you don't do all the words of this law that are written in this book, God will make wonderful plagues and sore sickness fall upon you.

⁶⁰ Moreover, he'll give you all the diseases of Egypt, and every sickness and plague that is written about in this book until you are destroyed.

⁶² And you'll be few in number, and God will rejoice over you as he destroys you.

⁶⁵ God will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and sorrow of mind.

⁶⁷ You'll be so scared that in the morning you'll wish it were evening, and in the evening, you'll wish it were morning.

⁶⁸ God will send you to Egypt on ships, where you'll be sold to your enemies as slaves -- but even they won't buy you.

29 ^1-2 Moses called everyone in Israel and said to them,

³ You've seen great temptations, signs, and miracles.

⁴ And yet God hasn't given you a heart to perceive, eyes to see, and ears to hear.

⁵ I have led you for forty years in the wilderness, and yet your clothes and shoes haven't worn out.

⁶ You haven't eaten bread, drunk wine or strong drink, so that you might know that I am God.

⁷ We smote Sihon and Og. ⁸ We took their land and gave it to the Reubenites, Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.

¹⁸ If someone among you serves the gods of other nations, and follows his own heart, saying,

¹⁹ I will have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my own heart.

²⁰ God will not spare him, but his jealousy will smoke against that man, all the curses that are written in this book will fall upon him, and God will blot out his name

²² So your children and strangers will see all the plagues and sicknesses that God has laid upon you, with the brimstone, salt, and burning, like God did at Sodom and Gomorrah.

²³ All the nations will say,

Why did God do this to the land?

What made him so angry?

²⁵ Then people will say,

They didn't obey God after he brought them out of Egypt.

²⁷ So God got angry at the land and brought all the curses that are written in this book.

²⁹ The secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed belong to us.

30 ¹ After God has sent you the blessing and the curse, ² and you've begun to obey him again, ³ he'll have compassion on you and return you from the nations where he scattered you, and do good to you.

⁶ God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your children.

⁷ And he'll put all the curses that he threatened you with on your enemies instead.

¹⁹ God gives you two choices: life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.