Deuteronomy28chapter 28

Deuteronomy 28:1-2

The blessing is made conditional twice over, at the head of verse 1 and again at the close of verse 2, and the condition both times is hearing. Barnes reads the whole chapter as Moses resuming and enlarging what Exodus 23:20-33 and Leviticus 26 had already set out, and the resemblance to Leviticus 26 is close enough to follow line by line. Verse 2 says the blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee, and overtake is the word for a pursuer closing on a man, used again of the curses at verse 45.

Deuteronomy 28:3-6

Six blessings fall in pairs, city and field, coming in and going out, with the fruit of body, ground and cattle set between them. Each pair names two ends of a thing in order to take in everything that lies between, so the blessing covers a whole life without itemising it. Verses 16 to 19 repeat these four verses as curses in nearly the same words, with two changes worth holding side by side: the basket and store move ahead of the fruit, and the fruit of thy cattle drops out of the list.

Deuteronomy 28:7-8

Enemies come out one way and flee seven ways, and verse 25 turns the same sentence around so that Israel goes out one way and flees seven. Seven in that idiom carries completeness rather than a count of roads. The blessing of verse 8 is commanded rather than simply given, and it lands on the storehouses and on all that thou settest thine hand unto, which is work already in hand.

Deuteronomy 28:9-10

An holy people unto himself is the language of Exodus 19:5-6 at Sinai, and the oath referred to is the one sworn there. Called by the name of the LORD means the name has been laid on them, the way the priestly blessing at Numbers 6:27 puts the name upon the children of Israel. What the nations see is the name and what they feel is fear, and Joshua 2:9-11 has Rahab describe that pairing from the other side.

Deuteronomy 28:11-12

His good treasure is defined in the next clause as the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season. Rain is the point on which Canaan differs from Egypt, and Deuteronomy 11:10-11 had already drawn that contrast, a land that drinketh water of the rain of heaven set against a field watered with the foot. Lending to many nations and borrowing from none is reversed word for word at verse 44.

Deuteronomy 28:13-14

Head and tail change places at verse 44, where the stranger takes the head and Israel the tail. Verse 14 states the condition in its simplest form, that they turn aside neither to the right hand nor to the left, and then names what turning aside would mean, to go after other gods to serve them. The blessing section therefore ends where the book keeps landing, on the danger of another god.

Deuteronomy 28:15

Fourteen verses of blessing have run and fifty-four verses of curse now follow, and the imbalance is the shape of the chapter rather than an accident of transmission. Sixty-eight verses make this the second longest chapter in the Torah, behind Numbers 7. The same lopsided proportion appears in the vassal treaties of the second millennium, where the curse section runs far longer than the blessing, a correspondence Meredith Kline set out in Treaty of the Great King and Kenneth Kitchen in On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Verse 15 repeats verse 1 clause for clause with the negative inserted.

Deuteronomy 28:16-19

These four verses are verses 3 to 6 with cursed set where blessed stood. Two things move in the copying, the basket and store coming before the fruit rather than after, and the fruit of thy cattle dropping out of verse 18. Held in two columns, the curse reads as the blessing withdrawn item by item.

Deuteronomy 28:20-22

Verse 20 gives the reason before the list runs, because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me. That me is God speaking inside a speech Moses is giving, and the person shifts back to the third at verse 21 without any mark. Verse 22 names seven afflictions in one line, four of them sicknesses of the body, one the sword, and two of them blasting and mildew that strike standing grain, so a single sentence reaches the man and his field together.

Deuteronomy 28:23-24

Leviticus 26:19 had the heaven as iron and the earth as brass, and here the two metals trade places, brass overhead and iron underfoot. Both images say the sky will give nothing and the ground will take nothing, and the swap suggests two chapters drawing on a shared stock of covenant language rather than one copying the other exactly. Verse 24 turns rain into powder and dust, which Adam Clarke connected with the dust the desert wind carries into that country.

Deuteronomy 28:25-26

Verse 7 is reversed exactly here, one way out and seven ways in flight, with Israel standing in the place the enemy held. Removed into all the kingdoms of the earth is the first of the chapter's scattering lines, and verse 64 takes it to its furthest reach. The unburied carcase of verse 26 is a horror on its own terms in that world, and Jeremiah 7:33 and 34:20 use the same picture of Judah before the exile.

Deuteronomy 28:27-29

The botch of Egypt is the boil of Exodus 9:9, and Deuteronomy 7:15 had promised that God would put none of the evil diseases of Egypt upon them. The curse is that promise run backwards, and verse 60 says so outright. Madness, blindness and astonishment of heart move the affliction inward, and verse 29 has a man groping at noonday with the sun full up.

Deuteronomy 28:30-31

Deuteronomy 20:5-7 excused three men from the army, one who had built a house and not dedicated it, one who had planted a vineyard and not eaten of it, and one who had betrothed a wife and not taken her. Verse 30 names those same three cases and takes all three away. The law that guarded a man's unfinished life is the frame this curse is written in, and verse 31 carries it into his livestock, ox, ass and sheep taken while he watches.

Deuteronomy 28:32-34

The children are taken and the parent is left to watch, with eyes that look and fail with longing for them all the day long. Verse 33 hands the harvest to a nation which thou knowest not, who is the stranger rising at verse 43 and the far nation of verse 49. Verse 34 makes the madness an effect of what the eyes have seen, and verse 67 closes the chapter on that same sight.

Deuteronomy 28:35-37

A sore botch from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head is the wording Job 2:7 uses of Job himself. Verse 36 brings the king into the curse, the one place in this chapter he appears, and the king law at Deuteronomy 17:14-20 stands behind it. 2 Kings 24:15 and 25:7 record two kings of Judah carried out of the land. An astonishment, a proverb, and a byword returns at 1 Kings 9:7-8 over the temple and at Jeremiah 24:9 over Judah.

Deuteronomy 28:38-42

Five verses of labour that comes to nothing, seed and locust, vineyard and worm, olive and dropped fruit, children and captivity, and the locust again. This curse works by leaving the work standing and removing the yield, a different stroke from the pestilence and the sword. Haggai 1:6 uses the same form of words about a later generation, ye have sown much, and bring in little, and Amos 4:9 lists the palmerworm among warnings Israel let pass.

Deuteronomy 28:43-44

The stranger is the man this book keeps under protection, at 10:18-19, 14:29 and 24:19-21, and here he rises above the household that sheltered him. Verse 44 undoes verses 12 and 13 clause by clause, lending becomes borrowing and the head becomes the tail. The reversal itself is the curse at this point, with no fresh affliction named.

Deuteronomy 28:45-46

The curses pursue and overtake, which is the verb used of the blessings at verse 2, so both halves of the chapter close on a chase. Verse 46 calls them a sign and a wonder, and signs and wonders is the pair Deuteronomy 6:22 and 26:8 use of what God did to Egypt. The words that described the deliverance now describe the delivered nation, and upon thy seed for ever carries it past the generation standing there.

Deuteronomy 28:47-48

Here the chapter states its ground, and the ground is the manner of the service. Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things, places the charge at the season when Israel had everything and served without gladness. Henry reads the sin as the abuse of plenty, and Calvin takes the joy required as the proof that obedience was willing, since it is grudging service the verse condemns. Verse 48 answers in kind, service for service, with a yoke of iron where the abundance had been, a figure Jeremiah 28:13-14 takes up again.

Deuteronomy 28:49-52

The nation from far comes as swift as the eagle flieth and speaks a tongue thou shalt not understand, and Jeremiah 5:15 and Habakkuk 1:6-8 use both figures of Babylon. The text names no nation, and readers have applied it to Assyria, to Babylon and to Rome according to which siege they had in view. Verse 52 brings down the walls wherein thou trustedst and repeats in all thy gates twice in one verse, which leaves no city standing outside the sentence.

Deuteronomy 28:53-55

The siege turns a family on itself, and the text states it without softening, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters. 2 Kings 6:28-29 records it in the siege of Samaria and Lamentations 2:20 and 4:10 record it after the fall of Jerusalem, so the curse has two occasions in the Old Testament alone. Josephus reports it again in the siege of Jerusalem under Titus, in Wars of the Jews. Verses 54 and 55 add that the man who does it is the tender and delicate one, the least likely man in the camp.

Deuteronomy 28:56-57

The woman of verse 56 is described before her act is named, so delicate that she would not set the sole of her foot upon the ground. Her eye turns evil toward her husband, her son and her daughter, the same three degrees of nearness the man's case listed at verse 54. Verse 57 adds that the eating is done secretly, the one detail the man's case did not carry. The chapter states the case and leaves it standing without comment.

Deuteronomy 28:58-61

Verse 58 gives the condition again in a new form, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, and the King James prints THE LORD THY GOD in capitals here to mark the divine name standing in the Hebrew. Plagues wonderful uses the word applied to the marvellous works of God, which puts these sicknesses in the class of wonders. Verse 60 says the diseases of Egypt will return, the ones thou wast afraid of, and that answers Exodus 15:26 where God named himself the healer who would lay none of them on Israel. Verse 61 closes the list by refusing to close it, taking in every sickness which is not written in the book of this law.

Deuteronomy 28:62-63

Few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude, reverses the promise sworn to Abraham at Genesis 15:5 and 22:17 and repeated to this generation at Deuteronomy 10:22. Verse 63 is the hardest sentence in the chapter, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, so he will rejoice over you to destroy you. Calvin and Gill both read the rejoicing as speech after the manner of men, describing the certainty and readiness of the act rather than pleasure taken in it, while other readers let the plain force of the word stand. Ezekiel 33:11 says God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and the two verses are commonly read together.

Deuteronomy 28:64-66

Verse 64 is the line later readers have most often set beside subsequent history, scattered among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other. What the text itself puts there is the scattering and the service of other gods, wood and stone, repeating the wording of verse 36. The rest of the sentence describes the inside of a man, a trembling heart, failing of eyes, sorrow of mind, and a life hanging in doubt before him. No rest for the sole of the foot answers Genesis 8:9, where the dove found none and came back to the ark.

Deuteronomy 28:67-68

Morning and evening each become the wrong hour, and the reason given is the fear of thine heart and the sight of thine eyes, which sends a reader back to verse 34. The last curse is a return to Egypt by ships, and the speaker calls it the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again. Commentators point to Exodus 14:13 and to the king law at Deuteronomy 17:16, which forbids causing the people to return to Egypt, and they differ over which is meant. The chapter ends with the people offered for sale as bondmen and no man buying, so the last word is that the slave market itself has no use for them.