Ulangan 28:38-42

The Curse of Reversed Status

28:38 “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. 28:39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. 28:40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe. ¹  28:41 You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. 28:42 Whirring locusts ²  will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil.

Ulangan 28:48

28:48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty ³  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ⁴  will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you.

Ulangan 32:24

32:24 They will be starved by famine,

eaten by plague, and bitterly stung; ⁵ 

I will send the teeth of wild animals against them,

along with the poison of creatures that crawl in the dust.

Yehezkiel 14:21

14:21 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: How much worse will it be when I send my four terrible judgments – sword, famine, wild animals, and plague – to Jerusalem ⁶  to kill both people and animals!

[28:40]  ¹ tn Heb “your olives will drop off” (נָשַׁל, nashal), referring to the olives dropping off before they ripen.

[28:42]  ² tn The Hebrew term denotes some sort of buzzing or whirring insect; some have understood this to be a type of locust (KJV, NIV, CEV), but other insects have also been suggested: “buzzing insects” (NAB); “the cricket” (NASB); “the cicada” (NRSV).

[28:48]  ³ tn Heb “lack of everything.”

[28:48]  ⁴ tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).

[32:24]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew term קֶטֶב (qetev) is probably metaphorical here for the sting of a disease (HALOT 1091-92 s.v.).

[14:21]  ⁶ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.