Deuteronomy 28:60

Moses speaks on the plains of Moab to the generation about to cross into Canaan, and he renews with them the covenant the LORD made with Israel at Horeb. The chapter sets the blessings promised for obedience (Deuteronomy 28:1–14) beside a much longer list of curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15–68), just as Leviticus closes its laws with blessing and curse (Leviticus 26). Verse 58 opens the last part of that list with a condition that verse 59 completes: if Israel will not keep the law, then the LORD will make their plagues wonderful.

“This book” is the law Moses was writing down (Deuteronomy 31:24), so Israel was warned in writing, in words they could read again. “All the words” takes in the whole of it, and “observe to do” means carrying it out in daily life. God set the consequences before the people in advance, so that whoever walked into them did so knowingly.

The verse then gives the purpose of the law: “that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name”. The verb yârêʼ is the ordinary word for fear, and with the LORD as its object it means the awe and reverence that lead to worship and obedience. “Glorious” comes from kâbad, a root meaning heavy or weighty, which speaks of honour and splendour, and “fearful” comes from the same root as “fear”. His name is weighty with honour and rightly feared. In Scripture a shêm, a name, stands for the one who bears it, his character, his reputation and his authority, so to fear the name is to revere the LORD himself. That name is “THE LORD THY GOD”, Yᵉhôvâh ʼĕlôhîym. The eternal Lord of all is also Israel’s own God, bound to them in covenant, and the little word “thy” makes their disobedience the betrayal of someone they knew.

This is the name the LORD proclaimed when he passed before Moses on the mountain (Exodus 34:5). There he declared himself merciful and forgiving, and also the God who does not clear the guilty (Exodus 34:7). Both sides of that name are at work in this passage. The LORD requires reverence from all who come near him (Leviticus 10:3), the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10, Psalm 111:10), and Hebrews asks the same reverence and awe of us, because our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:28–29).

The order of the verse shows where the trouble lies. Breaking the law comes from failing to revere the God who gave it, so the root of every curse that follows is in the heart. At Sinai the LORD had told Israel that if they would obey his voice and keep his covenant they would be his treasured people (Exodus 19:5). Their life in the land rested on that faithfulness. The promises to Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3) rest on God’s own word, while the covenant of Sinai tied Israel’s enjoyment of the land to its obedience.

“Then the LORD will make thy plagues wonderful”. The verb pâlâʼ means to be distinct, extraordinary or wonderful, and here it describes plagues so severe that people would be astonished at them. Its subject is the LORD, so these were his doing, as surely as the plagues he sent on Egypt (Exodus 9:14). The word for plague, makkâh, comes from the verb “to strike” and means a blow, a wound or a pestilence. The plagues are “great”, gâdôwl, in their size and severity, and they reach “thy seed”, the children still to be born, so that a nation’s unfaithfulness would weigh on the generations after it.

Twice the verse says “and of long continuance”. Behind it is ʼâman, a root whose simplest form means to support or foster, as a nurse cares for a child. The form used here, ne’emanah, belongs to the stem that means firm or established, so the plagues would be fixed and lasting, with no quick end. The “sore sicknesses” are chŏlîy, sickness, joined to raʻ, the common word for evil or bad. They are malignant, painful, wearing diseases.

Israel had watched the LORD’s plagues fall on Egypt (Exodus 7–12). Now Moses warns that “all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of” would come on Israel. The word madveh simply means sickness or disease, and the words “of Egypt” in the verse point to what Israel saw there, the boils and blains among them (Exodus 9:9–11), and probably also the sicknesses common in Egypt that Israel had lived among for so long. The same word with “of Egypt” appears in Deuteronomy 7:15, where the LORD promises to put none of those diseases on an obedient Israel. The verb yâgôr, to fear or dread, recalls how real that terror had been. The God who had spared them would bring on them the very things they dreaded.

“And they shall cleave unto thee.” Dâbaq means to cling, cleave or stick. Moses uses the same verb when he tells Israel to cleave to the LORD (Deuteronomy 10:20). A people that would not hold fast to God would find disease holding fast to them. Leviticus gives the same warning of sickness for a broken covenant (Leviticus 26:14–16), and Amos later names plagues the LORD sent on Israel in judgment (Amos 4:10).

The chapter has already listed many afflictions. Verse 61 adds “every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law”. The list written in the çêpher, the book, of the tôwrâh, the law, gives examples, and the LORD’s judgment would reach to things it leaves unnamed. He acts in keeping with his character in all of it, and his justice is wider than any list people could foresee. Chŏlîy and makkâh return from verse 59. The verb behind “bring” is ʻâlâh, “to go up”, used of the LORD making these things come up on Israel.

“Until thou be destroyed” names where unbroken rebellion ends. The verb shâmad means to destroy or exterminate, and here it is the ruin of the nation in its land. Leviticus speaks of judgment growing heavier as long as Israel keeps walking contrary to God (Leviticus 26:27–28). Paul says that all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse (Galatians 3:10), and this chapter shows how heavy that curse is. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

God promised Abraham descendants as many as the stars (Genesis 15:5) and renewed the promise of many descendants to Jacob (Genesis 35:11). By Moses’ day Israel already were “as the stars of heaven for multitude”, and verse 62 threatens to undo it: “ye shall be left few in number”. The Hebrew joins mᵉʻaṭ, “few”, to math, “men”, a small company of people. Rôb, “multitude”, means abundance, the state of being many. In Israel many children were counted a sign of God’s favour, and a shrinking people a sign of his displeasure, so this curse struck at the promise that had made them a nation. War, famine, disease and exile would each take their share.

The reason is given plainly: “because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the LORD thy God.” Shâmaʻ means to hear, and in Deuteronomy hearing God’s voice means heeding it, so the word is often rendered “hearken”. Israel’s refusal would be their own choice, and the judgment that answered it would be just. Nehemiah’s prayer later confesses that Israel refused to listen though God bore with them for many years (Nehemiah 9:29–30).

Verse 63 sets two sentences side by side: “as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought”. The verb śûws, to rejoice, stands in both halves. “To do you good” is yâṭab, which in this form means to do good or deal well. “To destroy you” is ʼâbad, a verb that means to wander away, be lost or perish, and with the LORD as its subject, to make perish. “To bring you to nought” is shâmad again, to destroy or exterminate.

The verse ends with the loss of the land: “ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.” Nâçach means to tear away or pull out, the picture of a plant uprooted. The land is ʼădâmâh, the ground or soil, the land Israel was about to enter (bôwʼ, to go or come) and possess (yârash). It was the land promised to Abraham, with its borders marked out in Genesis 15:18–21, so being torn from it meant losing the gift that marked them out as the LORD’s people. Leviticus foretells the same end (Leviticus 26:27–39). God later set Jeremiah over the nations to root out and pull down as well as to build and plant (Jeremiah 1:10), and Hosea foresaw Ephraim cast away and wandering among the nations (Hosea 9:16–17).

“And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other”. Pûwts means to break up or disperse. The people God was gathering into one nation in their own land, as he promised when he called Abraham, would be broken apart and spread across the world, and the scattering would be the LORD’s own act. Leviticus gives the same warning (Leviticus 26:33). “From the one end of the earth even unto the other” makes the scattering as wide as the world, with no corner left as a refuge and no homeland to gather in.

“And there thou shalt serve other gods”. ʻÂbad means to work, labour or serve, and also to worship, so the verse takes in both the slave’s labour and the worshipper’s bow. The gods are ʼachêr ʼĕlôhîym, “other gods”, strange and different from the LORD, gods “which neither thou nor thy fathers have known”. ʼÂb is a father or forefather, and yâdaʻ is to know or be acquainted with. Israel’s fathers knew the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and these gods were foreign to that whole inheritance. They are “wood and stone”, ʻêts wāʾeben, the common way Scripture names idols, lifeless things that people make. The nation told to have no other gods before the LORD (Exodus 20:3) would bow to wood and stone. Jeremiah repeated the warning to Judah, that in exile they would serve other gods (Jeremiah 16:13).

There is a sad irony here. The people chosen to make the true God known among the nations would be scattered among those nations and serve their gods.

Verses 65 to 67 turn from what would happen to Israel to what would happen within them.

“And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest”. Râgaʻ can mean to toss violently and also, in another sense, to settle or be quiet, so to find “no ease” is to have no settled, quiet place. Mânôwach is a resting place, a home. Rest, menuchah, meant a great deal to Israel. It was tied to the Sabbath, to their inheritance in the land, and to God’s presence among them. Moses had promised that the LORD would give them rest from their enemies in the land (Deuteronomy 12:10), and exile would bring the reverse, a people with nowhere to set their feet.

“But the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind”. The LORD himself gives the fear. “Failing of eyes” describes eyes grown dim from weariness and from watching for help. “Sorrow of mind” is dᵉʼâbôwn, a pining or languishing grief, joined to nephesh, the soul or inner person. Heart, eyes and feet together show the whole person afflicted, body and soul. The psalmist knew such anguish of heart and fading sight (Psalm 38:8–10), and Lamentations says of Judah in captivity, “she findeth no rest” (Lamentations 1:3).

Verse 66 goes deeper: “thy life shall hang in doubt before thee”. Tâlâʼ means to hang or suspend, and figuratively to be uncertain. It is the picture of a life dangling in front of you with nothing firm beneath it. “Thou shalt fear day and night” uses pâchad, to be startled by sudden alarm, and so to be afraid. The fear runs through every hour. “And shalt have none assurance of thy life” draws again on ʼâman, the root whose forms speak of firmness and of trust. Israel would have nothing firm to rest their life on from one day to the next. This is the opposite of the security God promised an obedient people (Deuteronomy 11:13–15) and of the shelter the psalm finds in the Most High (Psalm 91:1–2).

Verse 67 shows what such fear does to the passing of time. “In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning!” Morning brings only more of the day’s suffering, so they long for evening. The night brings terrors of its own, so they long for morning. Each half of the day leaves them wishing for the other. The reason follows: “for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.” The fear is pachad, dread or terror, and it fills the lêbâb, the heart, which in Hebrew is the whole inner person, will, mind, feelings and conscience. Marʼeh is sight, the thing seen. What they would see of siege, slaughter and slavery would feed what they felt.

This is the blessing turned inside out. The obedient were promised, “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out”, with victory over their enemies (Deuteronomy 28:6–8). Leviticus describes the same fear in exile, so great that the sound of a shaken leaf would put them to flight (Leviticus 26:36–39). Lamentations later weeps over Jerusalem with eyes that fail with tears (Lamentations 2:11), and Moses’ own psalm speaks of the labour and sorrow of a life under God’s wrath (Psalm 90:10).

The curses end where Israel’s story as a nation began. “And the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships”. Mitsrayim, Egypt, is a dual form naming Upper and Lower Egypt, and to Israel it was the land of bondage from which the LORD had promised to redeem them (Exodus 6:6). ʼŏnîyâh means a ship. Israel left Egypt on foot through the sea, and they would return by ship, carried far from their own land, as a later prophet says the children of Judah and Jerusalem were sold “unto the Grecians”.

“By the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again”. At the Red Sea Moses told Israel, “the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever” (Exodus 14:13). Their freedom from Egypt was meant to last, and this curse would reverse the greatest deliverance in their history.

“And there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.” Men and women alike would be put up for sale as property, and the last words go lower still. The slaves would be so many, or counted so worthless, or so far from any kinsman to redeem them, that they would find no buyer at all. Qânâh means to acquire, buy or possess. It is the word Moses sang at the sea for the people the LORD had purchased (Exodus 15:16). The God who once bought Israel for himself describes a day when nobody would buy them.

The curses of this chapter describe what really befell Israel, and their vivid language tells how deep the suffering would go. In the days of the judges and the kings Israel knew famine, disease, defeat and dispersion. The northern kingdom fell to Assyria in 722 BC and its people were carried away (2 Kings 17). Judah fell to Babylon in 586 BC, when Jerusalem was destroyed and many of its people were killed, enslaved or deported, leaving a small, poor remnant in the land (2 Kings 25). Jeremiah records the same fall (Jeremiah 52).

The prophets traced these things back to the covenant. Jeremiah charged Judah with refusing to obey its words (Jeremiah 11:8), foretold Babylon’s coming against them (Jeremiah 25:8–11), and spoke of the exile that followed (Jeremiah 29:10). Lamentations mourns a city once full of people and now desolate (Lamentations 1). Yet the same God who scattered promised to gather. Through Jeremiah he said he would bring his people back from all the countries where he had driven them, make them dwell safely, and give them one heart to fear him (Jeremiah 32:37–41).

Jesus foretold another fall of Jerusalem, when armies would surround the city and its people would be led away captive into all nations (Luke 21:20–24). In AD 70 the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, and the Jewish people were scattered far and wide. Hundreds of thousands were sold as slaves across the Roman Empire, many of them carried by ship across the Mediterranean, which matches the ships and the slave market of verse 68 closely.

Israel’s long failure to “observe to do all the words of this law” shows that no one can keep it in his own strength. Jesus came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he kept it perfectly and revered his Father’s name. Then he took the curse on himself: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and by his obedience many are made righteous (Romans 5:19). He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4), and his healing of the sick showed his authority over all the effects of sin. Through him God makes the new covenant and writes his law on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), a better covenant with a better mediator (Hebrews 8:6–13). There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1–4), and the gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:23).

For those who reject him the warning still stands. Whoever does not believe is condemned already (John 3:18), the wrath of God remains on him (John 3:36), God will render to every one according to his deeds (Romans 2:5–9), and what a man sows he will reap (Galatians 6:7).

Each part of this curse has its answer in Christ. Israel was to be left few, and through him all who receive him become children of God (John 1:12), a great multitude from every nation standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9). Israel was to be scattered, and Jesus died to gather into one the children of God who were scattered abroad (John 11:52). God delivers his people from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his Son (Colossians 1:13), so that they turn from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10) and become a chosen generation and a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). Israel was to be plucked from the land, and in Christ we have every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3) and receive a kingdom that cannot be moved (Hebrews 12:28–29). Diseases were to cling to Israel, and Christ gives life in abundance (John 10:10) and calls us to cling to him and abide in him (John 15:4).

Israel was to find no rest, and Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Those who were strangers become fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19). For the trembling heart, Jesus leaves his own peace with his disciples (John 14:27), and the peace of God guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6–7). For the life that hung in doubt, our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3), our hope is an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast (Hebrews 6:19), and the Spirit of adoption leads us to cry, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). Every knee will bow at the name of Jesus (Philippians 2:9–11), the name that is now our refuge.

Israel was to be sold where “no man shall buy you”. Paul says that apart from Christ we are “sold under sin” (Romans 7:14), and no human effort could buy us back. Christ redeemed us with his own precious blood (1 Peter 1:18–19), and he has set us free (Galatians 5:1).

These are some of the hardest verses in the law to read, and they show us who God is. His name is glorious and fearful, weighty with honour, and the right response to him is reverent awe that shows itself in obedience. He tells his people the consequences of their choices long before they make them, which is mercy as well as warning. He keeps his word in judgment as surely as in blessing, so his promises can be trusted completely.

They also show what sin does. Turning from God reaches into body, home, land, worship and the inner life itself, until morning and evening alike bring only fear. Every one of these curses was real, and every one was deserved.

And they show how much was carried at the cross. The curse described here, down to the slave market where no buyer came, is the curse Christ bore for his people. The God who warned that “no man shall buy you” is the God who bought us with the blood of his Son, and the fear of his name now rests on that redemption. As Hebrews says, we receive a kingdom that cannot be moved, and so we serve God with reverence and godly fear (Hebrews 12:28–29).