Blessings for obedience
28
📚And this will happen if you listen diligently to the voice of the LORD your God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command you this day: the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth, 2 📚and all these blessings 📖 will come on you, and overtake you, if you will listen to the voice of the LORD your God. 3 📚You will be blessed in the city, and blessed in the field.
4 📚The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the produce of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, the offspring of your cattle, and the flocks of your sheep.
5 Your basket and your kneading bowl will be blessed.
6 📚You will be blessed when you come in, and when you go out.
7 📚The LORD will cause your enemies who rise up against you to be struck down before your face. They will come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways.
8 📚The LORD will command the blessing on you in your storehouses, and in all to which you set your hand and he will bless you in the land which the LORD your God gives.
9 📚The LORD will establish you as a holy people for himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. 10 📚And all people of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will be afraid of you. 11 📚And the LORD will give you abundant prosperity in goods, in the offspring of your body, and in the young of your cattle, and in the produce of your ground, in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you.
12 📚The LORD will open to you his good treasure, the heavens to give the rain on your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hands. And you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. 13 📚And the LORD will make you the head, and not the tail; and you will be at the top and not at the bottom, if you listen to the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you this day, to observe and to do them. 14 📚And you must not go astray from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
28:3-14 To His people Israel, if they were obedient to Him, God promised all sorts of blessings, many of them material. In the Old Testament material possessions and property were regarded as a sign of God’s blessing and it was often (but certainly not always) so. In the New Testament the blessings God promises are, for the most part, spiritual and eternal (Eph 1:3. Compare these blessings here in Deuteronomy with the words of the Lord Jesus in Matt 5:3-12 and Luke 6:20-26. See note at Gen 24:35). Spiritual blessings are, of course, far more important than material ones. The Lord Jesus even said, “blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). It would be folly for believers living in this age to fall back on the Old Testament idea that material possessions or property is a sign of God’s blessing. Many wealthy people (and some of them no doubt so-called Christians) are under the wrath of God because of their unbelief and disobedience (John 3:36; Jam 5:1-6). And many poor people have eternal riches in Christ. Remember that Israel in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in Canaan gives us types and pictures of spiritual realities.⚜
Curses for disobedience
15 📚But this will come about, if you will not listen to the voice of the LORD your God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you this day: all these curses will come on you, and overtake you.
16 📚You will be cursed in the city, and cursed in the field.
17 📚Your basket and your kneading bowl will be cursed.
18 📚The offspring of your body will be cursed, and the produce of your land, the young of your cattle and the flocks of your sheep.
19 📚You will be cursed when you come in, and cursed when you go out.
28:15-19 God does not wish to bring curses on people. Curses are always the results of man’s sin, disobedience and rebellion. They are the outworking of God’s justice (Gen 3:14-19). God will bless when He may, bring curses when He must. The very blessings He promised for obedience (vs 3-6) will be turned into curses by disobedience.⚜
Terrible warnings of future judgment
20 📚The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke, in all that you put your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings, in which you have forsaken me.
28:20 God gave the law and all the instructions concerned with it through Moses. That is, Moses was His representative. Forsaking Moses and the teachings he gave would mean they were forsaking God.⚜
21 📚The LORD will make the plague cling to you, until he has consumed you from off the land, where you go to possess it. 22 📚The LORD will strike you with wasting disease and with fever and with inflammation and with fierce heat and with the sword and with blight and with mildew; and they will pursue you until you perish. 23 📚And your skies over your head will become brass and the ground under you will be iron. 24 📚The LORD will change the rain of your land into powder and dust; it will come down from the sky on you, until you are destroyed.
25 📚The LORD will cause you to be struck down before your enemies. You will go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them. And you will become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 📚And your carcass will be meat for all the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.
27 📚The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with scabs and with the itch, from which you will not be healed. 28 📚The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and heart bewilderment. 29 📚And you will grope about at noon, just as the blind grope in darkness. And you will not prosper in your ways, but will be only oppressed and plundered continually, and there will be no one to save you.
30 📚You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will lie with her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but will not gather its grapes. 31 📚Your ox will be killed before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken away before your eyes, but it will not be restored to you. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to rescue them. 32 📚Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, and your eyes will look for them all day long and fail with longing, and your hands will be powerless. 33 📚A nation you do not know will eat up the produce of your land, and you will be only oppressed and crushed continually, 34 📚so that you will be driven mad because of the sights which your eyes will see. 35 📚The LORD will strike you on the knees and on the legs with miserable boils that cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
36 📚The LORD will cause you and your king whom you will set over you, to go to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known; and there you will serve other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 📚And you will become a horror, a proverb and a byword, among all nations where the LORD drives you. 38 📚You will carry much seed out to the field, but will gather in only a little, because the locust will devour it. 39 📚You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but will not drink of the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 📚You will have olive trees throughout your whole territory, but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, because your olives will drop off. 41 📚You will have sons and daughters, but you will not enjoy them, because they will go into captivity. 42 📚The locust will eat up all your trees and the produce of your land.
43 📚The foreigner who is among you will get very high above you, and you will come down very low. 44 📚He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail.
45 📚Moreover all these curses will come on you, and will pursue you, and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not listen to the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you. 46 📚And they will be a sign and a wonder on you, and on your descendants forever. 47 📚Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart in an abundance of all things, 48 📚therefore you will serve your enemies, whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in a lack of all things. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.
49 📚The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose tongue you will not understand, 50 📚a nation of fierce countenance, which will have no respect for the old person or show pity to the young. 51 📚And he will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. He will not leave you either grain, wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or your flocks of sheep, until he has destroyed you. 52 📚And he will besiege you in all your gates until your high fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your whole land. He will besiege you in all your gates throughout your whole land which the LORD your God has given you.
53 📚And you will eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the dire straits with which your enemies will distress you. 54 📚So the man who is refined and very delicate among you will give hostile looks at his brother, and at the wife of his bosom, and at the rest of his children who remain, 55 📚so that he will not give any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because nothing is left to him in the siege and in the dire straits with which your enemies will oppress you in all your gates. 56 📚The refined and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of delicateness and refinement, will give hostile looks at the husband of her bosom, and at her son and at her daughter, 57 📚and at the afterbirth that comes from her, and at her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly because of the lack of all things in the siege and in the dire straits with which your enemy will oppress you in your gates.
58 📚If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, so that you may fear this glorious and awe-inspiring name, THE LORD YOUR GOD,
28:58 With what care we should use the glorious and fearful name of God! Compare Ex 20:7.⚜
59 📚then the LORD will bring plagues on you and plagues on your offspring that are extraordinary, great plagues that last a long time, and severe sicknesses that last a long time. 60 📚Moreover he will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt, which you were afraid of, and they will cling to you. 61 📚Also the LORD will bring on you every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this law, until you are destroyed.
62 📚And you will be left few in number, when once you were as many as the stars of the sky, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. 63 📚And it will come about that just as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good and to increase your numbers, so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you and to bring you to nothing. And you will be torn from the land which you are going to possess.
28:63 Their evil would become so ripe for judgment that God would delight in fulfilling justice in their destruction! A similar idea is found in Prov 1:24-26.⚜
64 📚And the LORD will scatter you among all people, from one end of the earth to the other; and there you will serve other gods which neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of wood and stone. 65 📚And among these nations you will find no ease, and the sole of your foot will have no rest; but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and sorrow of mind;
28:65 Lam 1:3; Ps 137. God brought all these things upon Israel because they deserved them, and would not repent and turn to God who could bless them and rescue them from calamity. Notice vs 20,45,47,58,62. By these disasters God was teaching that unbelief and disobedience are terrible sins which justice must punish. We have the same teaching in the New Testament (John 3:36; 2 Thess 1:5-9; 2 Pet 2:9-13; Rev 15:1, 3; 16:5-7; 21:8).⚜
66 📚and your life will hang in suspense before you, and you will be afraid day and night, and your life will have no assurance. 67 📚In the morning you will say, “Would God it were evening!” And at evening you will say, “Would God it were morning!” Because you will be afraid from the fear of your heart and from the sights which your eyes will see. 68 📚And the LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I spoke to you, “You will never see it again”, and there you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, and no one will buy you”.
28:20-68 These terrible punishments were awaiting Israel and finally came upon them for their disobedience. The following references show this.⚜