Deuteronomy 28
1 If you truly obey what the Lord your God tells you, and carefully follow all his commandments that I'm giving you today, then the Lord your God will place you high above all the nations of the earth.
“If you do what Yahweh our God tells you to do and faithfully obey everything that I am today commanding you to do, he will cause you to become greater than any other nation on the earth.
2 You will have all the following blessings and even more, if you do what the Lord your God says.
If you obey Yahweh, this is what he will do to bless you:
3 You will be blessed when you're in the town; you will be blessed when you're in the countryside.
He will bless everything that you do when you are in the cities and he will bless everything that you do when you are [working] in the fields.
4 You will be blessed with many children. You will be blessed with good harvests. You will be blessed with livestock—your cattle will have many calves, and your sheep will have many lambs.
He will bless you by giving you many children [IDM] and by giving you abundant crops, and plenty of cattle and sheep.
5 You will be blessed with plenty of bread.
He will bless you by causing you to have good harvests with plenty of grain [MTY] to make bread.
6 You will be blessed wherever you go and in everything you do.
He will bless you [everywhere]—when you go out [of your houses] and when you come into [your houses].
7 The Lord will defeat the enemies who come to attack you. They will come at you from one direction, but they will scatter seven different ways.
Yahweh will enable you to defeat [the armies of] your enemies; they will attack you from one direction, but they will run away from you in seven/many directions.
8 The Lord will bless your income and everything you do. The Lord your God will bless you in the country he is giving you.
Yahweh will bless you [by filling] your barns [with grain], and he will bless all the work that you do; he will bless you in the land that he is giving to you.
9 The Lord will make you his holy people, just as he promised you, if you obey the Lord your God's commandments and follow his ways.
“If you obey all the commandments that Yahweh our God [has given to you] and if you conduct your lives as he wants you to do, you will continue to be his people, which is what he promised.
10 Then everyone on earth will see that the Lord has chosen you to be his, and they will be afraid of you.
“When all the people-groups on the earth will realize that you belong to [MTY] Yahweh, and they will be afraid of you.
11 The Lord will make you very prosperous. You will have many children, your livestock will produce plenty of young, and your land will grow good harvests—all this in the country the Lord promised your forefathers he would give you.
“And Yahweh will cause you to prosper very much. He will give you many children [IDM], many cattle, and abundant crops in the land that he vowed to our ancestors that he would give to you.
12 The Lord will provide rain for your land at the right time from his heavenly storehouse to bless all your work growing crops. You will lend money to many nations but you won't need to borrow from any of them.
“When rain is needed, Yahweh will send it from where he stores it in the sky, and he will bless all your work, with the result that you [will be able to] lend money to many other nations, but you will not need to borrow [money from them].
13 The Lord will put you in first place, not the last. You will only go up, never down, as long as you listen to and follow carefully the commandments of the Lord your God that I'm giving you today.
If you faithfully obey all of the commands of Yahweh our God that I am giving you today, Yahweh will cause your nation to be a leader among the nations, not inferior to them; you will always be prosperous and never be needy/poor [IDM].
14 Don't deviate from any of my instructions today. Don't go and worship other gods.
[Yahweh will do all these things for you] if you do not turn away from [obeying] what I am commanding you today, and if you never worship or serve other gods.
15 But if you don't obey the Lord your God by following carefully all his commandments and regulations I'm giving you today, then you will experience all the following curses and more:
But if you do not do what Yahweh our God is telling you to do, and if you do not faithfully obey all his rules and regulations that I am giving to you today, this is what he will do to curse you:
16 You will be cursed when you're in the town; you will be cursed when you're in the countryside.
He will curse you when you are in the cities and he will curse you when you are [working] in the fields.
17 You will be cursed by not having bread.
He will curse you by not allowing you to have good harvests with plenty of grain [MTY] to make bread.
18 You will be cursed by not having children, and by not having good harvests, and by your cattle not having calves, and your sheep not having lambs.
He will curse you by giving you only a few children [IDM], by causing you to have poor crops, and by not enabling you to have many cattle and sheep.
19 You will be cursed wherever you go and in everything you do.
He will curse you [everywhere]—when you go out [of your houses] and when you come into [your houses].
20 The Lord will send you curses, making you confused and frustrated in everything you do, until you are brought down and die quickly because of the evil that you've done by abandoning him.
If you do evil things and reject Yahweh, he will curse you by causing you to (be confused/not know what to do), and to be frustrated in everything that you do, until [your enemies] quickly and completely destroy you {you will be quickly and completely destroyed}.
21 The Lord will give you infectious diseases until he has wiped you out from the country you are entering town.
Yahweh will cause you to experience terrible diseases, until not one of you remains alive in the land that you are about to enter and occupy.
22 Then Lord will hit you with sickness that makes you waste away, with a severe fever and swelling like you're burning up, while your crops are damaged by drought and blight and mildew. These will attack you until you die.
Yahweh will strike/afflict you with diseases that shrivel your bodies, with fever, with inflammation/swelling. It will be extremely hot, and it will not rain. There will be scorching winds, and [Yahweh will cause] your crops to rot. All these things will strike you until you die.
23 The sky above you will be like bronze, and the earth beneath you will be like iron.
There will be no rain [MET], [with the result that] the ground will be [as hard as] iron [MET].
24 The Lord will change the rain of your land into dust and sand; it will fall from the sky on you until you're destroyed.
Instead of sending rain, Yahweh will send strong winds to blow sand and dust over your land, until your land is ruined.
25 The Lord will have your enemies defeat you. You will attack them from one direction, but you will scatter seven different ways. Everyone on earth will be horrified at what happens to you.
Yahweh will enable your enemies to defeat you; your soldiers will attack your enemies from one direction, but they will run away from your enemies in seven/many directions, and when the people of other nations see what is happening to you, they will say that it is horrible.
26 Your dead bodies will be food for birds of prey and wild animals, and there won't be anyone to scare them away.
[You will die], and birds and wild animals will come and eat your corpses, and there will not be anyone to scare/shoo them away.
27 The Lord will give you boils like he did to the Egyptians, with swellings and scabs and skin rashes that can't be cured.
Yahweh will cause you to have boils on your skin, like he caused the people of Egypt to have [many years ago]. He will cause you to have tumors, open sores, and your skin will itch, and there will be nothing that will cure those diseases.
28 The Lord will send you mad and make you blind and confused,
Yahweh will cause [some of] you to become insane; he will cause some of you to become blind, and he will cause [some of] your minds to become confused.
29 so that even at noon you will be groping around like a blind man in the dark. You won't be successful in what you do. You'll be persecuted and robbed the whole time, and no one will come and save you.
[Because you will not be able to see where you are going], at midday you will (grope/feel your way) around with your hands, like people do in the darkness. You will continually be oppressed and robbed, and no one will help you.
30 You will be engaged to marry a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house but you won't live in it. You will plant a vineyard but won't benefit from any harvest.
Some of you men will be engaged/promised to marry a young woman, but someone else will rape her. You will build houses, but you will never live in them. You will plant grapevines, but you will not eat the grapes; [someone else will eat them].
31 Your ox will be slaughtered right in front of you, but you won't eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away and won't be returned to you. Your sheep will be taken by your enemies, and no one will come and save you.
Your enemies will butcher your cattle while you watch them, and you will not get any of the meat to eat. They will drag away your donkeys while you watch them do it, and they will not give them back to you. They will take away your sheep; and no one will help you [rescue them].
32 Your sons and daughters will be taken away as slaves to other nations while you watch, and you'll wear your eyes out crying over them, but there won't be anything you can do about it.
While you watch, your sons and daughters will be given to foreigners to become their slaves. Every day you will very sadly watch for your children to return, but (you will watch in vain/they will never return).
33 A foreign nation you've never heard of will eat all the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will be continually persecuted and downtrodden.
People from a foreign nation will take all the crops that you worked hard to produce, and they will constantly treat you harshly and cruelly [DOU].
34 What you see will drive you mad.
The result will be that all these terrible things that you see/experience will cause you to become insane.
35 The Lord will give you painful boils that can't be cured on your knees and thighs, in fact from head to toe.
Yahweh will cause your legs [to be covered with] painful boils that cannot be healed, and you will have boils from the bottoms of your feet to the tops of your heads.
36 The Lord will exile you and your chosen king you to a foreign nation that neither you nor your forefathers had ever heard of. There you will worship other gods, idols made of wood and stone.
Yahweh will cause your king and the rest of you to be taken to another country, to a place in which you and your ancestors have never lived before, and there you will worship and serve gods that are made of wood or stone.
37 You will be something that horrifies all the nations where you've been exiled by the Lord. They will laugh at you and ridicule you.
When the people-groups in nearby countries see what has happened to you, they will be shocked/horrified; they will make fun [DOU] of you.
38 You will sow a lot of seed in the field, but harvest very little because the locusts will destroy it.
You will plant plenty of seeds in your fields, but you will reap only a small harvest, because locusts will eat the crops.
39 You will plant and vineyards and care for them, but you won't harvest the grapes or drink the wine, because they'll be eaten by maggots.
You will plant grapevines and take care of them, but you will not pick any grapes to make wine, because worms will eat the vines.
40 You will have olive trees all over the country but you won't have any olive oil to use, because the olives will drop early from the trees.
Olive trees will grow everywhere in your land, but you will not get any olive oil to rub on your skin because the olives will drop [on the ground before they are ripe].
41 You will have sons and daughters, but you won't have them for long, because they will be taken off into captivity as slaves.
You will have sons and daughters, but they will not stay with you, because they will be captured and taken away.
42 Locust swarms will destroy all your trees and crops.
Swarms of locusts/insects will eat your crops and [the leaves of] all your trees.
43 Foreigners who live with you will rise higher and higher in status above you, while you sink lower and lower.
Foreigners who live in your land will become more and more [powerful], and you will become less and less [powerful].
44 They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the first, and you will be the last.
They will [have money to] lend to you, but you will not [have any money to] lend to them. They will be superior [IDM] to you, and you will be inferior to them [IDM].
45 All these curses will come down on you. They will chase after you and attack you until you die because you did not obey the Lord your God and keep the commandments and regulations he gave you.
“You will experience all these disasters, and you will continue to experience them you until you are destroyed, if you do not do what Yahweh your God told you to do, and do not obey all the rules and regulations that he gave to you.
46 They will be lasting evidence, visible signs of what happened to you and your descendants.
“These disasters will warn [DOU] you and your descendants forever [about what happens to groups who disobey Yahweh].
47 Because you did not serve the Lord your God with happiness and with a joyful attitude,
“Because Yahweh blessed you abundantly in many ways, you should have served him very joyfully [DOU], but you did not do that.
48 you will serve your enemies that the Lord sends to attack you with hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty. He will tie an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
“Therefore, you will work for the enemies whom Yahweh will send to attack you. You will be hungry and thirsty; you will not have clothes to wear; and you will lack everything else that you need. And Yahweh will cause you to become slaves [MET] and work hard until he gets rid of you.
49 The Lord will bring a nation to attack you from a long way off, from the ends of the earth. They will swoop down upon you like an eagle, this nation whose language you won't understand.
“Yahweh will cause an army from very far away [HYP] to attack you, whose soldiers speak a language that you do not know/understand. They will swoop down on you [quickly] like an eagle [SIM] attacks its prey.
50 They are a ruthless nation who don't respect for the old and have no mercy on the young.
They will be fierce looking. They will not act mercifully toward anyone, not even young children and old people.
51 They will eat your lambs and calves and the crops you've grown until you are destroyed. They won't leave you any grain or new wine or olive oil, no calves from your herds or lambs from your flocks, so you'll die of starvation.
They will [kill and] eat your livestock, and they will eat your crops, and you will (starve/die because you do not have anything to eat). They will not leave for you any grain or wine or [olive] oil or cattle or sheep; and you will all die [from hunger].
52 They will besiege all the towns in your country, until the high, fortified walls that you trust in have fallen. They will besiege all your towns in your country that the Lord your God has given you.
Your enemies will surround your towns throughout the land that Yahweh your God is about to give to you, and they will break down the high and strong walls [around your towns], walls which you trusted/thought would protect you.
53 You'll end up eating your children, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God gave you, because of the siege and the suffering that your enemy will cause you.
“When your enemies are surrounding [your towns], you will be extremely hungry, with the result that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters that Yahweh your God has given to you.
54 The kindest and most sensitive man among you will refuse to share his food with his brother, the wife he loves, and those of his own children who are left.
When your enemies have surrounded your towns, even the most gentle and sensitive men among you will want food very desperately, with the result that they will [kill their own children and] eat their flesh, because they will not have anything else to eat. They will not even share any of it with their brothers or wives whom they love very much or with any of their children who are still alive.
55 He will refuse to share with any of them the flesh of his children that he's forced to eat because he doesn't have anything else because of the siege and suffering your enemy has caused you in all your towns.
56 The kindest and most sensitive woman among you, so kind and sensitive she wouldn't ever go barefoot on the ground, will refuse to share her food, a baby and its afterbirth, with the husband she loves and her own son and daughter.
Even the most gentle and sensitive/kind women among you, who are very refined/rich with the result that they have never had to walk anywhere [HYP], will do the same thing. When your enemies have surrounded your towns, those women will be extremely hungry, with the result that after they give birth to a baby, they will secretly [kill it and] eat its flesh and also eat its afterbirth. And they will not share any of it with their husbands whom they love very much or with any of their other children.
57 She will even secretly eat her the babies she gives birth to and the afterbirth, since she doesn't have anything else because of the siege and suffering your enemy has caused you in all your towns,
58 If you don't carefully observe all these laws written down in this book so that you may show respect for this glorious and awesome Lord your God,
“If you do not faithfully obey all of the laws that I am writing, and if you do not revere Yahweh our glorious God [MTY],
59 he will bring down on you and your descendants unbelievable disasters, intense and long-lasting diseases, and terrible and incurable sicknesses.
he will [punish you by] causing you and your descendants to experience great afflictions and plagues which will last for many years.
60 He will give you all the diseases you were terrified of in Egypt, and they will stay with you.
He will cause you to experience the plagues that he sent on the people of Egypt, and you will never be healed.
61 The Lord will also give you every sickness and disease, even those not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.
He will also cause you to experience many other sicknesses and diseases that I have not talked about in these laws, until you all will die.
62 You who grew as numerous as the stars in the sky will end up as only a few, because you would not obey what Lord your God told you.
You became as numerous as the stars in the sky, but only a few of you will remain alive, if you do not obey Yahweh your God.
63 In the same way as he wanted to make you prosperous and increase in number, so now he will wipe you out and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the country you are going in to own.
Yahweh was very happy to do good things for you and to cause you to become very numerous, but now he will be happy to ruin you and get rid of you. [Those of] you [who do not die from these plagues] will be snatched away from the land that you will soon be entering to possess.
64 The Lord will scatter you among the nations all over the earth, and there you will worship other gods, gods made of wood and stone, which you and your fathers had never heard of.
“Yahweh will scatter you among many people-groups, all over the earth, and in those areas/places you will serve other gods that are made of wood or stone, gods which you and your ancestors have never known/worshiped.
65 You won't find any place to rest among those nations, no place of your own. The Lord will make you anxious, with failing eyesight and a mind full of despair.
In those places you will be restless. Yahweh will cause you to be constantly worried/anxious, feel hopeless, and discouraged.
66 You will see your life hanging in the balance as you doubt. You will be afraid day and night, terrified you won't survive.
You will always be afraid that your enemies will kill you. You will be very fearful, all day and all night.
67 In the morning you'll say, “I wish it was evening!” and in the evening you'll say, “I wish it was morning!” because you're so frightened by the terrifying things you see.
Because you will be very fearful/afraid because of the [terrible] things that you see, each morning you will say ‘I wish it were evening already!’ and each evening you will say ‘I wish it were morning already!’
68 The Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships to a place that I said you weren't ever meant to see again. You will put yourselves on sale there to your enemies as male and female slaves, but nobody will want to buy you.
Yahweh will send [some of] you back to Egypt in ships, even though he promised that you would never [be forced to] go there again. There in Egypt you will try to sell yourselves to become slaves of your enemies [in order to have food to eat], but no one will buy you. [All those things will happen to you if you do not obey the laws that Yahweh is giving to you].”
