Ulangan 28:38-44

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. 28:43 The foreigners ³  who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower. 28:44 They will lend to you but you will not lend to them; they will become the head and you will become the tail!

[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).

[28:43]  ³ tn Heb “the foreigner.” This is a collective singular and has therefore been translated as plural; this includes the pronouns in the following verse, which are also singular in the Hebrew text.