Scripture Daily

Context No. 3964 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 28:15-30: in context

15But it shall come to pass, if you will not listen to the LORD your God’s voice, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come on you and overtake you. 16You will be cursed in the city, and you will be cursed in the field. 17Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. 18The fruit of your body, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your livestock, and the young of your flock will be cursed. 19You will be cursed when you come in, and you will be cursed when you go out. 20The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you put your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the evil of your doings, by which you have forsaken me. 21The LORD will make the pestilence cling to you, until he has consumed you from off the land where you go in to possess it. 22The LORD will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with fiery heat, with the sword, with blight, and with mildew. They will pursue you until you perish. 23Your sky that is over your head will be bronze, and the earth that is under you will be iron. 24The LORD will make the rain of your land powder and dust. It will come down on you from the sky, until you are destroyed. 25The LORD will cause you to be struck before your enemies. You will go out one way against them, and will flee seven ways before them. You will be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth. 26Your dead bodies will be food to all birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth; and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with the tumors, with the scurvy, and with the itch, of which you can not be healed. 28The LORD will strike you with madness, with blindness, and with astonishment of heart. 29You will grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. You will only be oppressed and robbed always, and there will be no one to save you. 30You will betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her. You will build a house, and you won’t dwell in it. You will plant a vineyard, and not use its fruit.

This is a hard passage to read, a long and heavy catalog of curses that would follow if Israel forsook the LORD and refused to obey him. We do not linger over the harrowing details, but we do not skip past the passage either, for it tells us something true.

These warnings were not the words of a cruel God delighting in threats, but of a God setting before his people, with total honesty, the real consequences of abandoning him. Alongside the blessings promised for faithfulness, God laid out plainly the ruin that turning from him would bring, precisely because he wanted them to choose life. Sin has real and devastating consequences, and love does not hide that; a God who warns us clearly of the cliff's edge is not cruel but caring. And there is more. The whole weight of this curse, which fell on covenant-breakers, was finally taken up by Christ, who, as Scripture says, became a curse for us, bearing on the cross the judgment our sin deserved. What we read here in dread, we can read at the foot of the cross with gratitude.

Do I take seriously the real consequences of forsaking God, hearing his warnings as the honesty of love, and do I flee to Christ, who became a curse for me so that I might receive the blessing instead?

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