Deuteronomy 28:36–30:9

36 “aThe Lord will bring you and your king, whom you set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, bwood and stone.

37 “aYou shall become a horror, a proverb, and a taunt among all the people where the Lord drives you.

38 “aYou shall bring out much seed to the field but you will gather in little, for bthe locust will consume it.

39 “aYou shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them.

40 “aYou shall have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off.

41 “aYou shall 1have sons and daughters but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity.

42 “aThe cricket shall possess all your trees and the produce of your ground.

43 “aThe alien who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you will go down lower and lower.

44 “aHe shall lend to you, but you will not lend to him; bhe shall be the head, and you will be the tail.

45 “So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you auntil you are destroyed, because you would not 1obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.

46 “They shall become aa sign and a wonder on you and your 1descendants forever.

47 “aBecause you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things;

48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, ain hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things; and He bwill put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

49 “aThe Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, bas the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand,

50 a nation of fierce countenance who will ahave no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young.

51 “Moreover, it shall eat the 1offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who also leaves you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the increase of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish.

52 “aIt shall besiege you in all your 1towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land, and it shall besiege you in all your 1towns throughout your land which the Lord your God has given you.

53 “aThen you shall eat the 1offspring 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 distress by which your enemy will 2oppress you.

54 “The man who is 1refined and very delicate among you 2shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife 3he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain,

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 distress by which your enemy will 1oppress you in all your 2towns.

56 “aThe 1refined and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and 2refinement, 3shall be hostile toward the husband 4she cherishes and toward her son and daughter,

57 and toward her afterbirth which issues from between her 1legs and toward her children whom she bears; for ashe will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will 2oppress you in your 3towns.

58 “If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to 1afear this honored and awesome bname, 2the Lord your God,

59 then the Lord will bring extraordinary plagues on you and 1your descendants, even 2severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses.

60 “aHe will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you.

61 “Also every sickness and every plague which, not written in the book of this law, the Lord will bring on you auntil you are destroyed.

62 “Then you shall be left few in number, awhereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, because you did not 1obey the Lord your God.

63 “It shall come about that as the Lord adelighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the Lord will bdelight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be ctorn from the land where you are entering to possess it.

64 “Moreover, the Lord will ascatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth; and there you shall bserve other gods, wood and stone, which you or your fathers have not known.

65 “aAmong those nations you shall find no rest, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there bthe Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul.

66 “So your life shall 1hang in doubt before you; and you will be in dread night and day, and shall have no assurance of your life.

67 “aIn the morning you shall say, ‘Would that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Would that it were morning!’ because of the dread of your heart which you dread, and for the sight of your eyes which you will see.

68 “The Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke 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.”

Chapter 29

The Covenant in Moab

1 1aThese are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the bcovenant which He had made with them at Horeb.

2 1And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land;

3 athe great trials which your eyes have seen, those great signs and wonders.

4 “Yet to this day athe Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear.

5 “I have led you forty years in the wilderness; ayour clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot.

6 “aYou have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, in order that you might know that I am the Lord your God.

7 “aWhen you 1reached this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out to meet us for battle, but we 2defeated them;

8 and we took their land and agave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites.

9 “aSo keep the words of this covenant to do them, bthat you may prosper in all that you do.

10 “You stand today, all of you, before the Lord your God: your chiefs, your tribes, your elders and your officers, even all the men of Israel,

11 your little ones, your wives, and the alien who is within your camps, from athe one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water,

12 that you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath which the Lord your God is making with you today,

13 in order that He may establish you today as His people and that aHe may be your God, just as He spoke to you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

14 “Now not with you alone am I amaking this covenant and this oath,

15 abut both with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here today

16 (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed;

17 moreover, you have seen their abominations and their idols of awood, stone, silver, and gold, which they had with them);

18 aso that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you ba root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.

19 “It shall be when he hears the words of this curse, that he will 1boast, saying, ‘I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart in order 2to destroy the watered land with the dry.’

20 “The Lord shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and aHis jealousy will 1bburn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will 2rest on him, and the Lord will cblot out his name from under heaven.

21 “Then the Lord will single him out for 1adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant awhich are written in this book of the law.

22 “Now the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you and athe foreigner who comes from a distant land, when they see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which the Lord has 1afflicted it, will say,

23 ‘All its land is abrimstone and salt, ba burning waste, 1unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of cSodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.’

24 “All the nations will say, ‘aWhy has the Lord done thus to this land? Why this great 1outburst of anger?’

25 “Then men will say, ‘aBecause they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.

26 ‘They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not 1allotted to them.

27 ‘Therefore, the anger of the Lord burned against that land, ato bring upon it every curse which is written in this book;

28 and athe Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.’

29 “aThe secret things belong to the Lord our God, but bthe things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.

Chapter 30

Restoration Promised

1 “So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, athe blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you 1call them to mind bin all…