Deuteronomy 28:15-26

Curses as Reversal of Blessings

28:15 “But if you ignore ¹  the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force: ²  28:16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field. 28:17 Your basket and your mixing bowl will be cursed. 28:18 Your children ³  will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. 28:19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. ⁴ 

Curses by Disease and Drought

28:20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you ⁵  in everything you undertake ⁶  until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. ⁷  28:21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases ⁸  until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 28:22 He ⁹  will afflict you with weakness, ¹⁰  fever, inflammation, infection, ¹¹  sword, ¹²  blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 28:23 The ¹³  sky ¹⁴  above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron. 28:24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.

Curses by Defeat and Deportation

28:25 “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror ¹⁵  to all the kingdoms of the earth. 28:26 Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off.

[28:15]  ¹ tn Heb “do not hear the voice of.”

[28:15]  ² tn Heb “and overtake you” (so NIV, NRSV); NAB, NLT “and overwhelm you.”

[28:18]  ³ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[28:19]  ⁴ sn See note on the similar expression in v. 6.

[28:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”

[28:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”

[28:20]  ⁷ tc For the MT first person common singular suffix (“me”), the LXX reads either “Lord” (Lucian) or third person masculine singular suffix (“him”; various codices). The MT’s more difficult reading probably represents the original text.

[28:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “will cause pestilence to cling to you.”

[28:22]  ⁹ tn Heb “The Lord.” See note on “he” in 28:8.

[28:22]  ¹⁰ tn Or perhaps “consumption” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV). The term is from a verbal root that indicates a weakening of one’s physical strength (cf. NAB “wasting”; NIV, NLT “wasting disease”).

[28:22]  ¹¹ tn Heb “hot fever”; NIV “scorching heat.”

[28:22]  ¹² tn Or “drought” (so NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[28:23]  ¹³ tc The MT reads “Your.” The LXX reads “Heaven will be to you.”

[28:23]  ¹⁴ tn Or “heavens” (also in the following verse). The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.

[28:25]  ¹⁵ tc The meaningless MT reading זַעֲוָה (za’avah) is clearly a transposition of the more commonly attested Hebrew noun זְוָעָה (zÿva’ah, “terror”).