Scripture Daily

Context No. 1958 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 28:31-44: in context

31Your ox will be slain before your eyes, and you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be violently taken away from before your face, and will not be restored to you. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to save you. 32Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people. Your eyes will look and fail with longing for them all day long. There will be no power in your hand. 33A nation which you don’t know will eat the fruit of your ground and all of your work. You will only be oppressed and crushed always, 34so that the sights that you see with your eyes will drive you mad. 35The LORD will strike you in the knees and in the legs with a sore boil, of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. 36The LORD will bring you, and your king whom you will set over yourselves, to a nation that you have not known, you nor your fathers. There you will serve other gods of wood and stone. 37You will become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away. 38You will carry much seed out into the field, and will gather little in, for the locust will consume it. 39You will plant vineyards and dress them, but you will neither drink of the wine, nor harvest, because worms will eat them. 40You will have olive trees throughout all your borders, but you won’t anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off. 41You will father sons and daughters, but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. 42Locusts will consume all of your trees and the fruit of your ground. 43The foreigner who is among you will mount up above you higher and higher, and you will come down lower and lower. 44He will lend to you, and you won’t lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail.

Among the warnings of consequence for forsaking God is a series of frustrations that strike at the fruit of one's labor. You will carry much seed to the field but gather little, for the locust will consume it. You will plant vineyards and tend them, but not drink the wine. You will have olive trees, but not anoint yourself with the oil. Your work will be endless and its fruit will slip away, so that all your labor yields nothing you can enjoy.

This part of the warning describes a particular futility: labor without fruit. The people would sow but not reap, plant but not harvest, tend but not enjoy; their work would go on, but its fruit would be lost, eaten by locusts, dropped from the trees, snatched away. All the effort, and nothing to show for it. And beneath this picture lies a truth about the source of fruitfulness: that it is God's blessing, and not merely our effort, that gives our labor its fruit. When God's blessing is withdrawn, the effort remains but the fruit vanishes; the labor is real but empty. This is worth pondering, because it speaks to a temptation we know: to imagine that our fruitfulness depends entirely on our own effort, that if we work hard enough, we will surely reap. Scripture says otherwise. Unless the LORD builds the house, the psalm says, the builders labor in vain; unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. It is God's blessing that gives our labor its fruit; without it, we may sow much and gather little, as the prophet Haggai said, earning wages only to put them in a bag with holes. This is not a counsel to stop working, but a call to recognize that our fruitfulness depends on God's blessing, not our effort alone, and so to seek his blessing and not to trust merely in our own labor. The frustration of endless work that yields nothing is what life becomes when God's blessing is absent; and the fruitfulness we long for comes not from effort alone but from the God who gives the increase. This should both humble us and free us: humble us, that we not trust in our own labor as though it guaranteed results; and free us, that we work while trusting God for the fruit, rather than straining as though everything depended on us. The labor that yields nothing is the picture of effort without God's blessing; and the way to fruitful labor is to work while seeking the blessing of the God who alone makes labor fruitful.

Do I imagine that my fruitfulness depends entirely on my own effort, trusting that if I work hard enough I will surely reap, or can I recognize, in this picture of labor that yields nothing, that it is God's blessing and not my effort alone that gives my work its fruit, and so work while seeking his blessing rather than trusting merely in my own labor?

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