Deuteronomy 28:13

Deuteronomy records Moses’ last speeches to Israel, given on the plains of Moab forty years after the exodus. The generation that stood at Sinai had largely died in the wilderness, and their children were about to cross the Jordan into Canaan. Here the LORD renews with them the covenant he made at Horeb. Deuteronomy 27 has just set out the ceremony for the people’s arrival in the land, with tribes standing on Mount Gerizim to bless and on Mount Ebal to curse, and Deuteronomy 28 now gives the terms in full. Fourteen verses of blessing for obedience are followed by the far longer and heavier curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15–68). The curses answer the blessings closely. The city and the field of verse 3 come back under a curse in verses 16 to 19, and the promise of verse 13 is turned around in verse 44, where the stranger becomes the head and Israel the tail. Later Moses puts the whole choice in one sentence: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

The first words set the condition: “if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God”. The verb shâmaʻ means to hear or listen, and in verse 1 the Hebrew doubles it, shâmoaʿ tishmaʿ, literally “hearing, thou shalt hear”. That doubling strengthens the verb, and the KJV gives it as “hearken diligently”. To hear God in this sense is to attend to him with a heart ready to do what he says, which is why Moses at once adds “to observe and to do”. To observe, shâmar, is to keep or guard something with care, and to do, ʻâsâh, is the ordinary word for doing or making, here the carrying out of what has been heard. This is the call that opens Israel’s great confession, “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The same verb shâmaʻ returns in verse 2 and again in verse 13, so the call to hear frames the blessings at both ends.

What Israel is to hear and do is “all his commandments”. The word mitsvâh means a commandment or precept, and here it covers the whole body of what God gave through Moses, moral, ritual and civil alike. “All” asks for a whole-hearted keeping of everything God gave. “Which I command thee this day” ties the commands to this moment of renewal, so that this new generation takes them as its own.

The promise of verse 1 is the heading over everything that follows: “the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth”. The word for high, ʻelyôwn, means high or uppermost, and the nations, gôwy, are the other peoples of the earth, who stood outside Israel’s covenant with the LORD. The height God promises is a place of honour and favour that he himself gives, and through it the nations would see his power and his faithfulness. Verse 13 comes back to the same promise with “the head, and not the tail”.

The same pattern runs through the law and beyond it. Leviticus 26:3–13 promises rain, harvest, peace and victory to a people who walk in God’s statutes. Joshua was later told that keeping the law was the way to prosper wherever he went (Joshua 1:7–8), and Psalm 1 says of the man who delights in the law of the LORD, “whatsoever he doeth shall prosper” (Psalm 1:1–3).

“And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee.” The word for blessing, Bᵉrâkâh, means blessing and also prosperity or a gift, and here it gathers up every good thing the coming verses will name. The blessings “come on” Israel with bôwʼ, the common verb to go or come, and they “overtake”, nâsag, which means to catch up with or reach. The picture is of blessings that run after the obedient and catch them. Israel’s part is to hearken, and the blessings do the running.

The condition is said again: “if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God”. The LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, is God’s covenant name, and it stands beside ʼĕlôhîym, God. He speaks to them as the God who has bound himself to them by covenant.

Verses 3 to 6 are a run of short blessings, each pairing two things that together cover a whole area of life. “Blessed” is the passive participle of bârak, to bless, a verb Strong’s traces to a root meaning to kneel. To be blessed in this sense is to receive good from God’s own hand: fruitfulness, prosperity, peace and safety.

Israel was about to face established nations in Canaan, and verse 7 promises victory: “The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face”. The verb nâgaph means to strike, smite or defeat, and the LORD is the one who causes the blow. Israel sees it happen “before thy face”. This is the same assurance Moses gave at the Red Sea: “The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:14). Joshua told the people at the end of his life, “One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the LORD your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you” (Joshua 23:10). David could say, “I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about” (Psalm 3:6).

“They shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.” The enemy advances as one, ʼechâd, a single organised army with a single aim, and runs away by seven, shebaʻ. Seven often stands in Scripture for completeness, and the numbers draw a picture of an army that comes on together and then scatters in every direction, too broken to regroup. The point is the size of the reversal and the One who brings it about.

Our own fight is described in the New Testament: “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6:12). The God who scattered Israel’s enemies is the same God who stands with his people now.

“Thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.” The verb lâvâh can mean to borrow or, in its causing form, to lend, and here Israel is the lender. A people who lend to many nations have more than enough to share, and they stand free of the servitude that heavy debt could bring.

Verse 14 closes the blessings with the boundary that guards them: “And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.” To go aside, çûwr, is to turn off, to swerve from a road. The words, dâbâr, are God’s word and speech, a word that can also mean a matter or thing, and “any of the words” covers all of what God commanded. “To the right hand, or to the left” pictures a straight road with a turning on either side. The LORD gave Joshua the same charge, “turn not from it to the right hand or to the left” (Joshua 1:7–8), Joshua passed it on to Israel before he died (Joshua 23:6), and Proverbs says, “Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil” (Proverbs 4:27). Turning to either side can take the form of adding human rules to God’s word or of setting aside the parts we find hard, and both lead away from him.

The verse names where that road leads: “to go after other gods to serve them”. “Gods” here is ʼĕlôhîym, the same word that names the true God elsewhere, used here of the false gods of the nations, and “other” is ʼachêr. Canaan was full of gods of nature, fertility and war, worshipped with rites that included cult prostitution and even the sacrifice of children. To go after them is to follow and serve them as their own, and that breaks the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Every blessing in the passage comes from the LORD, so turning to another god means turning away from the Giver of them all.

Our idols today can be money, comfort, ambition, the approval of others, or self, anything that takes the place that belongs to God. Paul calls covetousness idolatry and tells believers to put it to death (Colossians 3:5). Jesus answered the tempter with Moses’ own words: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10).

These blessings were the terms of God’s covenant with Israel as a nation in the land, and in Christ he has blessed us “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3) while still caring for our daily needs. Israel’s crops, herds, rain and victories were tied to the nation’s faithfulness as a whole, and they showed God’s faithfulness to the world in visible form. For believers now, the chief blessings are salvation, peace with God, adoption into his family and the gift of his Spirit, whose fruit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23).

God still provides. Paul writes, “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Jesus tells us to stop worrying about food and clothing and to “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:25–33). God gives “all sufficiency in all things” so that we “may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8), and Jesus came that his people “might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Jesus also said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Suffering is often God’s way of refining faith. Tribulation works patience, and patience experience, and experience hope (Romans 5:3–5), and James tells us to count trials all joy because they produce patience (James 1:2–4). A faithful believer may be poor, and hardship is no proof of disobedience. God’s blessing is his presence and favour in every coming in and going out, in hard times as well as good.

Israel kept these conditions only for short seasons. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and the nation came under the curses of this same chapter and at last into exile. Jesus is the Son who hearkened perfectly. His food was “to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34), he came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and “he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). “By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Romans 5:19), and the one who believes in him has his faith “counted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5).

He also took the curse that disobedience had earned. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us ... That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ” (Galatians 3:13–14). God had told Abraham, “in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:18), and Paul says that seed is Christ (Galatians 3:16). In him “all the promises of God ... are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20). He is the mediator of “a better covenant, which was established upon better promises” (Hebrews 8:6), the covenant in which God says, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 8:10).

Each blessing of the passage finds its fullness in him:

• Set on high. God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6), with “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled” (1 Peter 1:3–4).
• The head. God gave Christ “to be the head over all things to the church” (Ephesians 1:22), and “he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18).
• Victory over enemies. On the cross he spoiled principalities and powers, “triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) has conquered death, “thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:54–57).
• Basket, store and treasure. Jesus fed five thousand from a few loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:13–21) and called himself “the bread of life” (John 6:35). In him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).
• Rain from heaven. Jesus promised that “rivers of living water” would flow from those who believe, and John explains that “this spake he of the Spirit” (John 7:38–39).
• The work of your hands. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10), and our “labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
• Fruitfulness. Jesus chose his disciples to “bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain” (John 15:16), and all who believe are “the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26).
• Plenty in the land. “Ye are complete in him” (Colossians 2:10), and the God who gave his Son will “with him also freely give us all things” (Romans 8:32). “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
• A holy people. Peter writes to believers, “ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9).
• Called by his name. In Christ “should all fulness dwell” (Colossians 1:19). He is Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), the Word “made flesh” who “dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and his disciples “were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:26), bearing his name.
• Light to the nations. His people are the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13–16), sent to “teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19–20).
• The one true God. Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and there is “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), so to follow him is to serve the one true God.

The God of this passage loves to bless. He sends his goodness after his people, cares about their bread and their herds, their journeys and their work, and opens the heaven to water their fields. Everything we have comes from his good treasure, so we can receive our food, our families and our work with thanks.

The call to hearken still stands, now as the answer of people who already have every spiritual blessing in Christ. Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15), and “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love” (John 15:10). Listening to God means hearing his word with a heart ready to do it, in the city and in the field, coming in and going out.

And the warning of verse 14 is a kindness. The road God sets before us runs straight, and the turnings on either side lead toward other gods that have nothing to give. You can keep to his road with confidence, because the One who calls you to walk it has already walked it perfectly for you and walks it with you still.