46
These curses will be a sign and an amazing thing to warn you and your descendants forever.
47
You didn't serve the LORD your God with a joyful and happy heart when you had so much.
48
So you will serve your enemies, whom the LORD will send against you. You will serve them even though you are already hungry, thirsty, naked, and in need of everything. The LORD will put a heavy burden of hard work on you until he destroys you.
49
The LORD will bring against you a nation from far away, from the ends of the earth. The nation will swoop down on you like an eagle. It will be a nation whose language you won't understand.
50
Its people will be fierce-looking. They will show no respect for the old and no pity for the young.
51
They'll eat the offspring of your animals and the crops from your fields until you're destroyed. They'll leave you no grain, no new wine, no olive oil, no calves from your herds, and no lambs or kids from your flocks. They'll continue to do this until they've completely ruined you.
52
They will blockade all your cities until the high, fortified walls in which you trust come down everywhere in your land. They'll blockade all the cities everywhere in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
53
Because of the hardships your enemies will make you suffer during the blockade, you will eat the flesh of your own children, the sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you.
54
Even the most tender and sensitive man among you will become stingy toward his brother, the wife he loves, and the children he still has left.
55
He will give none of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all that he has left, because of the hardships your enemies will make you suffer during the blockade of all your cities.
56
The most tender and sensitive woman among you--so sensitive and tender that she wouldn't even step on an ant--will become stingy toward the husband she loves or toward her own son or daughter.