Deuteronomy
28:1–68
Blessings
for Obeying the Lord
Make sure you obey the Lord your God
completely. Be careful to follow all of his commands. I’m giving them to you
today. If you do those things, the Lord will honor you more than all of the
other nations on earth. If you obey the Lord your God, here are the blessings
that will come to you and remain with you.
You will be blessed in the cities.
You will be blessed out in the country.Your children will be blessed. Your
crops will be blessed. The young animals among your livestock will be blessed.
That includes your calves and lambs.
Your baskets and bread pans will be
blessed.
You will be blessed no matter where
you go.
Enemies will rise up against you.
But the Lord will help you win the battle over them. They will come at you from
one direction. But they’ll run away fromyou in seven directions.
The Lord your God will bless your
barns with plenty of grain and otherfood. He will bless everything you do.
He’ll bless you in the land he’s giving you.
The Lord your God will make you his
holy people. He will set you apart for himself. He took an oath and promised to
do that. He promised to do it if you would keep his commands and live exactly
as he wants you to live. All of the nations on earth will see that you belong
to the Lord. And they will be afraid of you.
The Lord will give you more than you
need. You will have many children.Your livestock will have many little ones.
Your crops will do very well. All of that will happen in the land he promised
with an oath to your fathers to give you.
The Lord will open up the heavens.
That’s where he stores his riches. He will send rain on your land at just the
right time. He’ll bless everything you do. You will lend money to many nations.
But you won’t have to borrow from any of them. The Lord your God will make you
leaders, not followers.
Pay attention to his commands that
I’m giving you today. Be careful to follow them. Then you will always be on
top. You will never be on the bottom. Don’t turn away from any of the commands
I’m giving you today. Don’t turn to the right or the left. Don’t follow other
gods. Don’t worship them.
More
Curses for Not Obeying the Lord
But suppose you don’t obey the Lord
your God. And you aren’t careful to follow all of his commands and rules I’m
giving you today. Then he will send curses on you. They’ll catch up with you.
Here are those curses. You will be cursed in the cities. You will be cursed out
in the country.
Your baskets and bread pans will be
cursed.
Your children will be cursed. Your
crops will be cursed. Your calves and lambs will be cursed.
You will be cursed no matter where
you go.
The Lord will send curses on you.
You won’t know what’s going on. In everything you do, he will be angry with
you. You will be destroyed suddenly and completely. That will happen because
you did an evil thing when you deserted the Lord.
He will send all kinds of sicknesses
on you. He’ll send them until he has destroyed you. He’ll remove you from the
land you are entering to take as your own. The Lord will make you sick and very
weak. He will strike you with fever and swelling. He’ll send burning heat.
There won’t be any rain. The hot winds will completely dry up your crops. All
of those things will happen until you die.
The sky above you will be like
bronze. The ground beneath you will be like iron. The Lord will turn the rain
of your country into dust and powder. It will come down from the skies until
you are destroyed. The Lord will help your enemies win the battle over you. You
will come at them from one direction. But you will run away from them in seven
directions.You will look so bad that all of the kingdoms on earth will be
completely shocked when they see you. Birds and wild animals will eat up your
dead bodies. There won’t be anyone left to scare them away.
The Lord will send boils on you,
just like the ones he sent on the Egyptians.You will have growths in your
bodies and boils on your skin. You will itch all over. No one will be able to
heal you. The Lord will make you lose your mind. He will make you blind. You
won’t know what’s going on. Even at noon you will have to feel your way around
like a blind person in the dark. You won’t have success in anything you do. Day
after day you will be robbed and beaten down. No one will be able to save you.
You and a woman will promise to get
married to each other. But another man will take her and rape her. You will
build a house. But you won’t live in it.You will plant a vineyard. But you
won’t eat a single grape from it. Your oxwill be killed right in front of your
eyes. But you won’t eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away from you by
force. And you will never get it back. Your sheep will be given to your
enemies. No one will be able to save them.
Your children will be given to
another nation. Day after day you will watch for them to come back. But you
will only wear out your eyes. You won’t be able to help your children.
A nation you don’t know anything
about will eat what you work to produce on your land. You will be completely
beaten down as long as you live. The things you see will make you lose your
mind. The Lord will send painful boils on your knees and legs. No one will be able
to heal them. They will cover you from head to toe.
The Lord will drive you out of the
land. And he will drive out the king you place over you. All of you will go to
a nation you and your people long ago didn’t know anything about. There you
will worship other gods. They will be made out of wood and stone. You will look
very bad to all of the nations where the Lord sends you. They will be
completely shocked when they see you. They will laugh at you and make fun of
you.
You will plant many seeds in your
field. But you will gather very little food. Locusts will eat it up. You will
plant vineyards and take care of them. But you won’t drink the wine. You won’t
gather the grapes. Worms will eat them up. You will have olive trees through
your whole country. But you won’t use the oil. The olives will drop off the
trees. You will have children. But you won’t be able to keep them. They’ll be
taken away as prisoners. Large numbers of locusts will eat up the leaves on all
of your trees. They will also eat up the crops in your land.
Outsiders who live among you will
become your leaders. They will rise higher and higher. But you will sink lower
and lower. They will lend money to you. But you won’t be able to lend money to
them. They will be the leaders. But you will be the followers.
The Lord your God will send all of
those curses on you. They will follow you everywhere. They’ll catch up with
you. You will be under the Lord’s curse until you are destroyed. That’s because
you didn’t obey him. You didn’t keep the commands and rules he gave you. Those
curses will remain as miraculous signs and wonders against you and your
children after you forever.
You didn’t serve the Lord your God
with joy and gladness when times were good. So he will send enemies against
you. You will have to serve them. You will be hungry and thirsty. You will be
naked and poor. The Lord will put the iron chains of slavery around your necks
until he has destroyed you.
The Lord will bring a nation against
you from far away. It will come from the ends of the earth. It will dive down
on you like an eagle. You won’t understand that nation’s language. Its people
will look mean. They won’t haveany respect for old people. They won’t show any
kindness to young people.
They will eat up the young animals
among your livestock. They’ll eat up the crops on your land. They’ll destroy
you. They won’t leave you any grain, olive oil or fresh wine. They won’t leave
you any calves or lambs. They’ll destroy you. They’ll surround all of the
cities through your whole land. They’ll get ready to attack them. They’ll do
those things until the high, strong walls you trust in fall down. That’s what
will happen to the cities in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Your enemies will surround you and
get ready to attack you. They will make you suffer greatly. So you will eat
your own children. You will eat the dead bodies of the sons and daughters the
Lord your God has given you. There may be a gentle and caring man among you.
But he will treat his own brother badly. He’ll be just as mean to the wife he
loves and to any of his children who are still alive. He won’t give to a single
one of them any part of the dead bodies of his children that he’s eating. It
will be all he has left to eat.
That’s how much your enemies will
make you suffer when they surround all of your cities to attack them.There may
be a gentle and caring woman among you. She wouldn’t even touch the ground with
her feet without first putting her sandals on. But she will not share anything
with the husband she loves. She won’t share with her own children either. She
will eat what comes out of her body after she has a baby.
Then she’ll even eat her baby. She
won’t share it with anyone in her family. She’ll plan to eat it in secret.
There won’t be anything else for her to eat because the city she lives in will
be surrounded. That’s an example of how much your enemies will make you suffer
when they are getting ready to attack your cities.
Be careful to follow all of the
words of this law. They are written in this scroll. Have respect for the
glorious and wonderful name of the Lord your God. If you don’t, he will send
terrible plagues on you and your children after you. He’ll send horrible and
lasting troubles. He’ll make you very sick for a long time. He’ll bring on you
all of the sicknesses you were afraid of getting when you were in Egypt. You
won’t be able to get rid of them. The Lord will also bring on you all of the
other kinds of sickness and trouble I haven’t written down in this Scroll of
the Law. You will be destroyed.
At one time you were as many as the
stars in the sky. But there will only be a few of you left. That’s because you
didn’t obey the Lord your God. It pleased the Lord to give you success and to
increase your numbers. But it will please him just as much to wipe you out and
destroy you. You will be removed from the land you are entering to take as your
own.
Then the Lord will scatter you among
all of the nations. He’ll spread you around from one end of the earth to the
other. There you will worship statues of gods that are made out of wood and
stone. You and your people long ago hadn’t known anything about those gods.
Among those nations you won’t find
any peace. There won’t be any place where you can settle down and rest your
feet. There the Lord will give you minds that are filled with worry. He’ll give
you eyes that are worn out from sobbing. Your hearts won’t have any hope.
Your lives will always be in danger.
You will be filled with fear night and day. You will never be sure you are
safe. In the morning you will say, "We wish it were evening!" In the
evening you will say, "We wish it were morning!" Your hearts will be
filled with fear. The things you see will terrify you.
The Lord will send you back to Egypt
in ships. He’ll send you on a journey I said you should never have to make
again. You will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves in Egypt.
But no one will buy you. (NIRV)
Click here for the next reading in this study
This reading is taken from 30
Scripture Readings on Getting to Know God. The complete book can be found
here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZK5HAK/ref=nosim?tag=hudsonbcom-20&linkCode=sb1&camp=212353&creative=380549
HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL READER'S VERSION®. NIV®.
Copyright© 1994, 1996 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All
rights reserved.
0 comments:
Post a Comment