Scripture Daily

Context No. 2014 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 28:61-68: in context

61Also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this law, the LORD will bring them on you until you are destroyed. 62You will be left few in number, even though you were as the stars of the sky for multitude, because you didn’t listen to the LORD your God’s voice. 63It will happen that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you, so the LORD will rejoice over you to cause you to perish and to destroy you. You will be plucked from the land that you are going in to possess. 64The LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. There you will serve other gods which you have not known, you nor your fathers, even wood and stone. 65Among these nations you will find no ease, and there will be no rest for the sole of your foot; but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and pining of soul. 66Your life will hang in doubt before you. You will be afraid night and day, and will have no assurance of your life. 67In the morning you will say, “I wish it were evening!” and at evening you will say, “I wish it were morning!” for the fear of your heart which you will fear, and for the sights which your eyes will see. 68The LORD will bring you into Egypt again with ships, by the way of which I told you that you would never see it again. There you will offer yourselves to your enemies for male and female slaves, and nobody will buy you.

Moses sets before Israel the consequences of forsaking God, and among the heaviest is not any outward disaster but an inward torment. The LORD will give you there a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a pining soul, he says. Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be afraid night and day, with no assurance of your life. In the morning you will say, I wish it were evening, and at evening, I wish it were morning, for the dread of your heart. It is a picture of a soul with no rest, tormented by fear, finding peace nowhere.

This is a hard passage, and it must be heard honestly: it describes the real consequences of a people forsaking God, and they are grave. But amid the outward calamities, notice what the passage dwells on: the inward torment, the trembling heart, the dread night and day, the life hanging in doubt, the soul that finds rest nowhere and wishes each hour away. It is a picture of the restlessness of a heart apart from God, the loss of peace that comes when one is estranged from him, a soul with no anchor, tormented by fear, unable to rest. The deepest misery here is not the outward loss but the inward unrest, the peace that is gone. And this points, by its terrible contrast, to where true peace is found. The restlessness described here is what the soul knows apart from God, cut off from its true rest. There is no peace, God says elsewhere, for the wicked; they are like the troubled sea that cannot rest. The heart made for God and turned from him cannot find rest; it trembles, dreads, hangs in doubt, wishes each hour away, because it has lost the one in whom alone the soul rests. This is a sober warning, and also a pointer home. The unrest of a life apart from God is real, a genuine consequence of forsaking him, not to be dismissed. But it points us to where rest is found: in returning to God, in whom the restless soul finds its peace. Come to me, Jesus says, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; you will find rest for your souls. The trembling heart, the dread, the life hanging in doubt, describe the soul that has lost God; and the rest of the soul is found in him, in coming to him, in being reconciled to the God apart from whom the heart cannot rest. The passage warns us honestly of the unrest of a life turned from God; and it sends us home to the only place the restless heart finds peace, to God himself, in whom alone the soul comes to rest.

Do I know something of the restlessness this passage describes, the trembling heart and the soul that finds rest nowhere, and can I hear in it both the honest warning that a life turned from God cannot find peace and the way home, that the restless heart finds its rest not in itself or its circumstances but in returning to God, who says to the weary and heavy laden, come to me, and you will find rest for your souls?

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