Deuteronomy 28:37

Moses speaks these words on the plains of Moab, around 1406 BC, to the generation about to cross into Canaan. Their parents came out of Egypt and died during forty years in the wilderness, and this second generation hears the covenant of Horeb renewed before it enters a land full of idols. Deuteronomy 27–30 is that renewal, and Deuteronomy 28 is its centre.

The chapter opens with the blessings that follow obedience (Deuteronomy 28:1–14) and goes on to a far longer list of curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15–68). Leviticus had already given the same warnings of defeat, of sowing in vain and of scattering among the nations (Leviticus 26:14–39). The curses start with disease, famine and drought. Our thirteen verses carry them into war, the body, the mind, the household and finally the nation’s place in its land, and the chapter goes on from here to slavery and hunger.

The blessings and the curses answer one another. Earlier in the chapter the LORD promises to bless Israel’s children and the produce of the field (Deuteronomy 28:4). In these verses children, crops and herds are the very things taken away.

Among the nations of that day, victory and plenty were read as signs of a god’s favour, and defeat as a sign of his displeasure or weakness. Israel’s case stood on firmer ground, because the LORD had bound himself to this people by covenant and had told them beforehand what faithfulness and unfaithfulness would bring. The land itself belonged to that covenant, promised since the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), so every threat to Israel’s hold on it touched the heart of who they were.

The first curse here is defeat, and Moses names its cause at once: “The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies.” The verb is nâgaph, to strike, smite or defeat, and Exodus uses it of the LORD striking Egypt on the night of the Passover (Exodus 12:23). The God who struck Israel’s oppressors would strike Israel too. “Before thine enemies” adds the shame of it, since the rout happens in full view of those who hate them.

“Thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them” pictures an army that marches out in one body and comes back in pieces. Seven is the number of completeness in Hebrew thought, so “seven ways” means every direction at once. The verb nûwç, to flee, here describes a rout in which all order is gone.

The last clause looks past the battlefield: “and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.” The Hebrew word is zaʻăvâh, a form of zᵊwāʿâ, which speaks of agitation and maltreatment. Israel would be shaken loose from its land and driven about among foreign kingdoms. Jeremiah and Ezekiel announce this scattering over Judah in their own day (Jeremiah 15:4, Ezekiel 5:12).

Verses 27 and 35 both say that the LORD will “smite”. The verb in both is nâkâh, the ordinary Hebrew verb for striking, which is close in meaning to the nâgaph of verse 25. In verse 35 the one who strikes is named as “the LORD”, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of Israel’s God. The sickness comes from the same hand that made the covenant.

Verse 27 lists four afflictions. The first is “the botch of Egypt”. The word is shᵉchîyn, an inflamed boil or ulcer, and it is the word used for the boils of the sixth plague on Egypt (Exodus 9:9–11) and for the sores that covered Job (Job 2:7). Israel had watched the LORD judge Egypt with this disease, and is now told that he would judge his own people in the same way if they hardened their hearts as Egypt did. “Emerods” are tumours, often understood as hemorrhoids, the painful and humiliating affliction that struck the Philistines when they captured the ark (1 Samuel 5:6–12). “The scab” and “the itch” are lasting skin conditions. They meant constant discomfort and sleeplessness, and in Israel a skin disease also carried the stigma of ritual uncleanness and isolation.

“Whereof thou canst not be healed” is the hardest part of the verse. The verb râphâʼ means to mend or cure, and Scripture uses it both for God’s healing and for the work of human physicians. Here every remedy fails, and the only one who could heal is the one who has sent the affliction.

Verse 35 returns to the boil and makes it worse. It strikes “in the knees, and in the legs”, the parts of the body a person needs in order to stand, walk and work. It is “a sore botch that cannot be healed”. And it spreads “from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head”, a phrase that names the two ends of the body in order to mean all of it. Isaiah later describes the whole nation as a body sick from the sole of the foot to the head (Isaiah 1:5–6), and in Revelation the first bowl of wrath brings a grievous sore (Revelation 16:2).

The curses now move from the body to the mind. “The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart.” The first word, shiggâʻôwn, comes from a root that means to rave, and it describes a mind that has lost its reason and its sound judgment. The second, ʻivvârôwn, is blindness. It can mean loss of eyesight, and set between madness and a stunned heart it speaks chiefly of a people who can see neither their own condition nor the way back. The third, timmâhôwn, comes from a root meaning to be stunned, and it is bewilderment and dismay. It is an astonishment “of heart”, and the heart, lêbâb, is in Scripture the seat of thought, will, feeling and conscience. The whole inner life is thrown into confusion.

Isaiah describes this same condition in the people of his day, who hear without understanding and see without perceiving (Isaiah 6:9–10), and he calls the LORD’s own servant blind and deaf (Isaiah 42:18–20).

Verse 30 takes the three things on which a man in Israel built his life, and gives each to someone else. Marriage, a house and a vineyard were how a family was founded and how a name and an inheritance were carried on.

“Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her.” Betrothal, ʼâras, was a legally binding covenant. The couple were already husband and wife in law although they did not yet live together, and unfaithfulness during betrothal was treated as adultery and punished by death. The verb the KJV renders “lie with her” is shâgal, a strong word that often describes violation in times of conquest, as when Isaiah speaks of wives ravished at the fall of a city (Isaiah 13:16). Jeremiah uses it of Judah’s whoredoms (Jeremiah 3:2). The curse is the seizing of a bride by a conqueror, and with it the loss of a man’s family and future.

“Thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein.” To build is bânâh, the house is bayith, and to dwell is yâshab. A house was a large outlay of labour and the sign of a settled life, and the builder is turned out of it before he has lived in it.

“Thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof.” To plant is nâṭaʻ and the vineyard is kerem. A vineyard took years of patient work before it paid anything back. The verb behind “gather the grapes” is châlal, which literally means to profane or make common. The law treated the fruit of a newly planted tree as forbidden for three years and as holy to the LORD in the fourth, and only in the fifth year could the owner put it to common use and eat it (Leviticus 19:23–25). The planter under this curse is gone before that year arrives. Amos and Micah bring the same charge against Israel, of houses built and left empty and of sowing that brings in nothing (Amos 5:11, Micah 6:15).

Verse 32 is the most personal of the curses. Conquerors in that age deported the peoples they defeated, and they took skilled workers and children especially, in order to absorb them and break the spirit of the nation. Family and descent stood at the centre of Israel’s life and of its covenant identity, so the loss of children was the loss of the future.

“Thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long.” The word for “fail”, kâleh, comes from a root meaning to finish or waste away. The parents keep looking in the direction their children were taken, and the watching wears them out. “All the day long” makes the grief unbroken.

“And there shall be no might in thine hand.” The word for might, ʼêl, comes from a root meaning strength, and the hand, yâd, the open hand, is the common Hebrew picture for the power to act. The parents have the will to rescue their children and lack every means of doing it. Job’s lament gives voice to this kind of helpless grief (Job 3), and Jeremiah tells Judah that some of its people are appointed for captivity (Jeremiah 15:2).

Verse 36 reaches exile. “The LORD shall bring thee” uses yâlak, the common verb for walking or going, with the LORD (Yᵉhôvâh) as the one who makes Israel go. The exile is his act, and the conquering nation is his instrument.

“And thy king which thou shalt set over thee” is a striking phrase, because Israel had no king when Moses spoke. The tribes would live for a long time without one. The word for king is melek, and “set over” is qûwm, to raise or set up. God knew what form Israel’s life would take centuries ahead, and his judgment would reach the leader the people chose as well as the people themselves.

The destination is “a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known”. Nation is gôwy, a foreign people. Fathers is ʼâb, and to know is yâdaʻ. Israel would be sent to a place with which it had no history and no ties, far from the land of its inheritance. Daniel opens with this captivity (Daniel 1:1–2).

“And there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone.” To serve is ‘āḇaḏ, a verb that means to work, to serve and to worship. “Other” is ʼachêr, and “gods” is ʼĕlôhîym, the plural word that names the true God elsewhere and here means the gods of the nations. “Wood and stone”, ‘ēṣ wā’eḇen, is Scripture’s plain way of speaking about idols: ‘ēṣ is wood and ʼeben is stone, the stuff they are made of. A psalm says of such gods that they have mouths, eyes and ears and can neither speak, see nor hear (Psalm 115:4–7). To serve them breaks the first two commandments (Exodus 20). Jeremiah repeats the warning to Judah in almost the same terms (Jeremiah 16:13).

The last verse tells how the nations will speak of Israel. The three words rise in sharpness. “Astonishment” is šammâh, a word that means a desolation or a horror, and here Israel’s ruin is something onlookers stare at aghast. It shares its English word with the “astonishment of heart” in verse 28, which is a different Hebrew word. “Proverb” is mâshâl, the usual word for a saying, proverb or parable. Here it is a saying of contempt, with Israel as the standing example of misfortune. “Byword” is šĕnîynâh, something pointed, a gibe or a taunt.

Honour and shame mattered greatly among the nations, and a people’s standing was taken as a measure of its god. Israel’s disgrace would therefore touch the name of the LORD, since the nations would conclude that he was weak or had cast his people off. This happens “among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee”. He himself leads them there, and their scattering makes the result of covenant-breaking visible to the world. Jeremiah and Ezekiel both announce that Judah will become a reproach and a taunt among the nations (Jeremiah 24:9, Ezekiel 5:15).

These curses were fulfilled in Israel’s history. The northern kingdom fell to Assyria in 722 BC, and its people were deported and scattered through the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 17). Judah fell to Babylon in stages, ending in 586 BC with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple (2 Kings 25, 2 Chronicles 36, Jeremiah 39). King Jehoiachin and later King Zedekiah were carried to Babylon with their people, as verse 36 had said of the king. Families were torn apart, harvests were eaten by foreign armies, and the exiles lived among the idols of their captors. The later scattering of the Jewish people under Rome carried the same warnings further.

The law pronounces a curse on everyone who fails to keep it (Galatians 3:10), and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). These verses show what that curse looks like, and they show that people have no power to lift it from themselves. Jesus came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and Paul says what he did with its curse: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13–14). He did this so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations and we might receive the promised Spirit.

Each curse in this passage finds its answer in him. Israel was to be smitten before its enemies, and of the Lamb of God (John 1:29) Isaiah says that we esteemed him “smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4). The curse left the dead unburied. Jesus died a criminal’s death, and yet his body was kept from that shame, for Joseph of Arimathea laid it in a tomb (Matthew 27:57–60) as Isaiah had foretold (Isaiah 53:9). His resurrection reverses death and decay altogether (Romans 6:9–10), and those who are his will be raised in glory (1 Corinthians 15:42–44).

The sores that could not be healed point to the sickness of sin, which lies past every human cure. Of Christ it is written, “with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5–6, 1 Peter 2:24). To a people groping at noon he says that he is the light of the world (John 8:12), and he came so that the blind might see (John 9:39). In place of madness God gives a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7), and in place of a stunned heart he gives his peace to keep our hearts and minds (Philippians 4:7). “No man shall save thee” is answered by the one name given under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). He has delivered us from the power of darkness into his own kingdom (Colossians 1:13–14), and in him we have strength for all things (Philippians 4:13).

The man under the curse built a house and lost it, planted and gathered nothing, and saw his bride taken. Christ builds his church (Matthew 16:18) as a spiritual house of living stones (1 Peter 2:5). He is the vine, and those who abide in him bear much fruit (John 15:5). He is the bridegroom who loved the church and gave himself for her, to present her to himself spotless (Ephesians 5:25–27). What we have in him is an inheritance that is kept in heaven and stays unspoiled (1 Peter 1:3–4), every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3) and life in abundance (John 10:10). Our labour in the Lord is never in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

The parents of verse 32 watched for their children with empty hands. On the cross Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), bearing the separation that sin deserves, so that we might be adopted as God’s children (Ephesians 1:5) and given life by his Spirit (Romans 8:11).

Israel’s kings were led into exile and its people into the service of idols. Jesus is the true King of the Jews (Matthew 2:2), who frees his people from slavery to sin (Romans 6:18) and brings them to worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). He is the mediator of a better covenant, in which God writes his law on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34, Hebrews 8:6–12) and gives a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27).

And where Israel became a proverb and a byword, Christ himself was scorned and despised (Psalm 22:6–7, Isaiah 53:3). His shame ended in exaltation, with every knee bowing to him (Philippians 2:8–11), and his people are accepted to the praise of God’s grace (Ephesians 1:6). The curse scattered a people among all the kingdoms of the earth. The good shepherd gathers his other sheep into one flock (John 10:16), redeemed “out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

These verses show us a God who means what he says. He told Israel centuries ahead what unfaithfulness would cost, and history went as he said, which is the same reason we can rest on his promises. His warnings came from love, spoken before the event so that his people could turn and live.

They also show how seriously God takes sin, and so how much was carried at the cross. If you are in Christ, every line of this passage describes something he bore in your place, and the right response to it is gratitude and a willing obedience that springs from love.

The grief of verse 32 is still in the world. Refugees, people who have been trafficked and families torn apart by war know what it is to watch and long with empty hands, and this verse gives us reason to pray for them and stand with them. Verse 37 reminds us that the way God’s people live is seen by others and reflects on his name, for honour or for scorn. And through all of it the passage says where safety lies, which is in the LORD himself and in walking with him.