Deuteronomy 28:38

Moses speaks these words on the plains of Moab to the generation about to cross the Jordan, at the close of his second great address. Deuteronomy 28 sets the blessings the LORD promises for obedience beside the curses he warns of for disobedience. The blessings fill fourteen verses (Deuteronomy 28:1–14), and the curses run on far longer (Deuteronomy 28:15–68). The covenant is the one the LORD made with Israel at Horeb and renewed in Moab, and it rests on the choice Moses had already set before them, “a blessing and a curse” (Deuteronomy 11:26–28).

Israel was about to become a nation of farmers in “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8), where life turned on the harvest. So these curses strike at the centre of daily life. The LORD had promised to command his blessing on their storehouses and on all they set their hand to (Deuteronomy 28:8), and earlier in the curses the fruit of their body and of their land is already under threat (Deuteronomy 28:18). In these eleven verses the loss reaches from the field to the family and then to the whole nation, until the people who were promised freedom end as slaves. Behind it all stands what Moses taught in the wilderness, that “man doth not live by bread only” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Israel’s bread and Israel’s freedom came from the LORD, and they would last as long as Israel walked with him.

Four of these verses describe labour whose fruit is lost (verses 38, 39, 40 and 42). In each the people do the work well, and something God sends takes the harvest.

Verse 38 opens with the farmer carrying “much seed” out into the field. The word for seed, zeraʻ, means seed or grain, and it is used also for sowing and for offspring. The verb yâtsâʼ means to go out, and in the form used here to bring out, so the farmer takes his seed from storage and spreads it in the field in hope of a full harvest. Much goes out and little comes in, “for the locust shall consume it.” This locust is the ʼarbeh, the migratory locust known for swarms that multiply fast, and the verb châçal means to eat off or consume. Israel had seen what such swarms could do in the eighth plague on Egypt (Exodus 10). They could darken the sky and strip fields, vineyards and orchards bare in a matter of hours or days.

Verse 39 turns to the vineyard, kerem. The people plant vineyards and “dress them”, and the verb is ʻâbad, to work, labour, serve or till. It covers the pruning, weeding and guarding a vineyard needs, so the loss comes after all that care, at the very end. The worms eat the fruit. The word tôwlâʻ means a maggot or grub, the larvae that eat grapes on the vine before they can be picked, and so the grapes and the wine both go to the worms. Wine belonged to daily meals, to feasts and to the offerings, which means the loss reached past food into celebration and worship.

Verse 40 names the olive. Olive trees would grow “throughout all thy coasts”, and gᵉbûwl means a border and, by extension, the territory inside it, so the trees stand in every part of the land. The trees are there and the oil is gone, “for thine olive shall cast his fruit.” The verb nâshal means to pluck off or drop, and it pictures the fruit falling to the ground before it ripens, at the last stage before harvest.

Verse 41 moves from the farm to the home. “Thou shalt beget sons and daughters.” The verb yâlad means to bear or to father children, and bên is the word for son. In Israel children were a great blessing from God, the carrying on of the family line and its inheritance, and part of his promise to Abraham of a great number of descendants. “But thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity.” The word shᵉbîy means the taking of captives, or captivity itself. Parents would raise children only to watch them carried off as prisoners or slaves, a grief deeper than any lost harvest. It would also turn back the Exodus, sending Israel’s children into the kind of bondage God had brought them out of.

This came to pass. Great empires deported whole peoples, to put down revolt and to gain labour. Assyria carried away the northern kingdom (2 Kings 17), and Babylon carried away the people left in Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:11). Lamentations mourns over the city, “her children are gone into captivity before the enemy” (Lamentations 1:5). Even then God promised a return (Jeremiah 29:10–14).

The stranger, gêr, is a resident alien, someone living in Israel whose origin was elsewhere, often for a long time or for good. The gêr was counted among the weaker members of society, and the law protected him. Israel was to love the stranger as themselves, for they had been strangers in Egypt (Leviticus 19:34, Deuteronomy 10:19). In this curse the dependent outsider rises over the people who once sheltered him.

The Hebrew paints the reversal with doubled words. “Shall get up above thee very high” uses the plain verb ‘âlâh, to go up, with ma‘al ma‘al, literally “upward, upward”. “Thou shalt come down very low” uses yârad, to go down, with maṭṭâh maṭṭâh, “downward, downward”. The verbs are the ordinary words for going up and coming down, and the doubled adverbs give the force, so the stranger climbs higher and higher while Israel sinks lower and lower.

People ask whether this means God prefers foreigners to his own people, or punishes Israel for welcoming them. The judgment falls on Israel for Israel’s own sin, and the stranger’s rise shows how far Israel has fallen. Those whom God told them to treat with kindness and justice would become their masters, and God’s justice holds his own nation to the covenant it swore to keep.

“Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee” gathers up the whole list. Then the curses become hunters that “pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed.” The verb râdaph means to run after, chase or pursue, usually as an enemy does, and “overtake” says the chase ends in capture. shâmad is the plain word for destroy. Here it describes the ruin of the nation: the loss of the land, the fall of the cities and the temple, the end of its independence and exile among the nations. God kept a remnant through it all, so the people lived on while the nation fell.

Leviticus warns that God would scatter them among the nations (Leviticus 26:33), and Joshua, near the end of his life, told Israel that the LORD who had brought every good thing he promised would as surely bring the evil things if they broke his covenant (Joshua 23:15–16). When it came, Lamentations confessed that the LORD “hath fulfilled his word” (Lamentations 2:17).

The reason stands at the end of the verse: “because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God”. The verb shâmaʻ means to hear with attention, and in a setting like this it means to hear and obey. To hearken to his voice is “to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee”, the whole of what God had given Israel. The root of their ruin is a wilful refusal to listen to the God who spoke to them.

“And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.” The curses themselves become the sign. ʼôwth means a sign, mark or signal, something that makes a truth visible. môwphêth means a wonder, miracle, sign or token, and it can be a sign that reminds or confirms. The two words often go together. Israel knew God’s signs and wonders as his acts on their behalf, in the plagues on Egypt (Exodus 7) and the manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16). Now Israel’s own suffering would be the sign, a public lesson to themselves and to every nation that saw them. Jeremiah speaks of the exiles of Judah becoming a reproach and a byword among the kingdoms (Jeremiah 24:9).

In “thy seed” the English word seed means descendants. The curses would reach the children and the children’s children, so the choices of one generation would shape many after it.

Verse 47 names the reason behind everything in this passage: “Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things”. The fault it names lies in the heart. God had given his people plenty of everything, and they served him without delight.

simchâh means joy, gladness or mirth, a state in which people feel and show great joy. It is the joy of Israel’s feasts, of victory, and of life in God’s presence. Gladness of heart is ṭûwb lêbâb, literally goodness of heart. ṭûwb means good, and lêbâb is the heart, the inner seat of thought and feeling, so the phrase describes a heart content and glad within. The two together cover the inward gladness and its outward expression, and both were missing. rôb means multitude or abundance, and “the abundance of all things” is the reason they had for joy. Their coldness grew up in plenty, which made it worse, for they had every cause to be glad and thankful.

Israel’s worship was meant to be full of joy. Their festivals were times of feasting and thanks for God’s gifts and deliverance, and the psalm says, “Serve the LORD with gladness” (Psalm 100:2). Samuel told Saul, “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22), Jesus said that God is worshipped in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), and the first commandment asks for love with all the heart (Matthew 22:37). Paul writes of giving that “God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7), and the same holds for every kind of service. Joy matters to God because it is the sign of a loving and trusting relationship with him, a heart that delights in who he is and sees his goodness behind every gift. Service that is grudging in the middle of plenty shows a heart that has begun to take his gifts for granted.

“Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee”. The people who would not serve the LORD gladly in plenty would serve their enemies in want. The verb for serve is ʻâbad, the same verb used for dressing the vineyards in verse 39. It means to work, to serve and to worship, and here it means forced labour under foreign masters, the reverse of Israel’s calling to serve and worship the LORD alone. The enemies come because the LORD sends them. They are instruments of his judgment, and he upholds his word in judgment as faithfully as in blessing.

The service comes “in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things”. Hunger and thirst strike at the most basic needs. Nakedness means exposure, vulnerability and public shame. “Want of all things” sweeps in every remaining need, and in the KJV it answers the “abundance of all things” of the verse before. These were the common lot of conquered peoples, whose captors withheld food and clothing to keep them down.

“And he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.” The yoke, ʻôl, is the bar or frame that joins draught animals at the neck, and it is used in Scripture as a picture of oppression and bondage. A yoke was ordinarily made of wood. This one is barzel, iron, a yoke that holds fast and cannot be broken off. In Jeremiah’s day the LORD said that the wooden yoke the false prophet Hananiah had broken would be replaced by yokes of iron, putting the nations under Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon (Jeremiah 28:13–14). The destruction in this verse is shâmad, the same verb as in verse 45. Lamentations describes Judah gone into captivity, dwelling among the nations and finding no rest (Lamentations 1:3).

These curses are the terms of a covenant Israel freely entered, written out in advance so that Israel would turn back before any of them came. God’s own desire was to bless, as the first fourteen verses of the chapter show at length. The warnings were meant to move Israel to obedience and so to spare them the very suffering they describe. Because the covenant was made with the whole nation, the sin of the nation brought suffering on all its members, the innocent and the children too, and that is part of the weight of these verses. God’s judgment is just, and it often aims to bring his people back to him. The promise of return through Jeremiah shows his purpose to restore even while he judges. In all of this God shows that he keeps his warnings as faithfully as his promises.

For believers today, the curse for sin has been borne by Christ, and God’s discipline of his children is for their correction and growth as his sons (Hebrews 12:5–11). Sin still has its consequences, and a life turned from him still loses its peace and its fruit. These verses show how seriously God takes the covenant he makes and the hearts of those he makes it with.

Israel’s history under these curses shows that God’s blessing lies beyond the reach of anyone’s law-keeping. The law is holy, and it exposed sin and the human heart (Romans 7:7–13), for “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Paul says, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us”, so that the blessing of Abraham might come to us through faith (Galatians 3:13–14). He who knew no sin was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), and now there is no condemnation for those who are in him (Romans 8:1–4). Sin shall not have dominion over those who are under grace (Romans 6:14).

Each curse in this passage finds its answer in him. Against seed sown in vain, Jesus spoke of himself as the corn of wheat that falls into the ground and dies and brings forth much fruit (John 12:24). Against the vine eaten by worms, he is the true vine (John 15:1), and those who abide in him bear much fruit (John 15:5), fruit that remains (John 15:16), the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). Against the oil withheld, the Son is anointed with “the oil of gladness” (Hebrews 1:9). Against the locust that consumes all, he is the bread of life (John 6:35) and came that his people might have life more abundantly (John 10:10).

Against children lost to captivity, he gives those who receive him power to become the sons of God (John 1:12), and those the Son makes free are free indeed (John 8:36). Against the stranger raised and Israel brought low, Christ came down lower than any, to the death of the cross, and God has highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–11). Gentiles who were strangers from the covenants of promise are brought near in him (Ephesians 2:11–13). Against the tail and the debtor, he is head over all things to the church (Ephesians 1:22), he has raised his people to sit with him in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6), he has blotted out what stood against us and forgiven every trespass (Colossians 2:13–14), and though he was rich he became poor so that we might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Against service without joy, Jesus served the Father perfectly, and “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). He is our abundance, for “of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16), and in him God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3). “The joy of the LORD is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10), and the service believers give is a living sacrifice, their “reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). Against the iron yoke, hunger, thirst and nakedness, he says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest… For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). He gives living water (John 4:10) and clothes his people with the garments of salvation (Isaiah 61:10), for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16).

These verses show us a God who gives every harvest and every freedom his people enjoy. The seed, the vine, the olive, the children and the nation’s standing were all his gifts, and he could withdraw them. They show us a God whose word holds. He warned Israel plainly and long in advance, and when the curses came Lamentations could say that he had done what he said, while he kept a remnant and promised a return.

They show us too that God cares about the heart of those who serve him. What he looked for in Israel’s plenty was gladness, a people who enjoyed his gifts and served him with joy because they knew who had given them. The contrast is the psalm’s picture of the one who delights in the law of the LORD, “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season” (Psalm 1:3), where the olive here drops its fruit and the worms take the vine.

And they show us what Christ has done. The curse of these verses fell on him, and in him the labour of God’s people is “not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). The iron yoke has given way to an easy one, and the abundance that once tested Israel’s hearts has become the fulness of his grace.