Deuteronomy 28 Study Notes

28:33b-35 McConville observes that the sequence here is the reverse of vv. 27-29. The madness is caused by the horrors of war.

28:36-37 Foreign occupation was followed by deportation. Moses prophesied that rebellious Israel would be uprooted by the Lord himself, and they and their king would worship other gods in a strange nation neither they nor their fathers had known. This rules out Egypt, of course, which their fathers knew well. History discloses that they ended up in Assyria (2Kg 17:6) and Babylonia (2Kg 24:10-17).

28:38-44 Here is another collection of futility curses.

28:38-40 The order of curses is essentially that of the blessings in vv. 1-14.

28:44 Rather than being the influential head of the nations, as God had intended for Israel to be (v. 13), they would become a powerless tail because of their unfaithfulness.

28:45-48 These verses serve as an initial conclusion to the curses section. Verse 45 repeats the opening of v. 15. Note the contrasts in vv. 47-48.

28:46 Usually a sign and a wonder indicated the presence and blessing of God (4:34; 7:19; 26:8; Jr 32:21). He performed them to display his incomparable power and glory, especially in the eyes of a doubting world. Jesus performed signs and wonders to validate his ministry and to demonstrate his divine nature (Jn 20:30-31). On the day of Israel’s judgment, however, the curses listed in this passage would become signs and wonders not in support of the Lord and his power but as testimony against Israel. When the nations saw his wrath poured out against his own chosen people, they would stand in awe at the fall of a people group who had been greatly blessed. Israel through all the generations to come would be reminded by their disastrous end that disobedience of the Lord’s covenant carries a heavy cost.

28:48 An iron yoke speaks metaphorically of bondage so severe that it is inescapable. Prisoners of war wore yokes to secure them against escape and to humiliate them. Jeremiah described the Babylonian captivity of Judah as one in which the people would bear the yoke of oppression (Jr 27:7-8) until the Lord broke it (Jr 28:14; 30:8; Ezk 34:27).

28:49-52 The nation from far away turned out to be Assyria, as is made clear in light of later biblical events and descriptions. Assyria besieged Samaria, Israel’s capital city, for three years until the city was forced to surrender (2Kg 17:5).

28:53-57 The siege of Samaria would be so severe that the people would resort to cannibalism. Though the horrific behavior described here does not reference the Assyrian siege, an earlier siege under the Arameans resulted in precisely these events (2Kg 6:24-31). Jeremiah also predicted that the citizens of Jerusalem would become just as desperate to survive the siege of that city by the Babylonians in his own time (Jr 19:9), and in fact he lived to see it with his own eyes (Lm 4:10; Ezk 5:10).

28:58-61 Scroll in v. 58 and book (of this law) in v. 61 are the same Hebrew word (sepher). Note its reappearance in 29:19-20,26; 30:10; 31:26. McConville notes that “as the conclusion of Moses’s covenantal address—and of his life—draws near, therefore, the concept of his words at Moab as a written covenantal document comes to the fore.”

28:58 Moses reiterated that all the curses he had listed—concluding with cannibalism, the worst of them all—would come to pass if the people of Israel were not careful to obey all the words of this law, specifically those written in this scroll—the book of Deuteronomy. It was covenant violation, then, that would be the cause of all of Israel’s future judgment should she refuse to repent.

28:60 Reference to the covenant law calls to mind Israel’s gracious deliverance from Egypt and all its diseases. In an ironic twist, Moses declared that Israel’s coming judgment would bring the very diseases they had avoided in Egypt.

28:61 Israel would even be afflicted with sicknesses not recorded in the book of this law. Isaiah 1:6 describes such a condition: “From the sole of the foot even to the head, no spot is uninjured—wounds, welts, and festering sores not cleansed, bandaged, or soothed with oil.”

28:62 Reaching still further back into sacred history, Moses recalled the promise of the Abrahamic covenant that Israel would be as numerous as the stars of the sky (cp. 1:10; Gn 15:5; 22:17). That promise too would become inverted, leaving Israel with only a few people because they would not obey the Lord.

28:63 The Lord will be glad to cause you to perish is a rhetorical way of saying that he will not hesitate or have pity on them.

28:64 The Lord’s threat to scatter Israel clearly refers to the many times in Israel’s future when the people would undergo exile, whether under the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, or even in the Middle Ages and in modern times. One result of such dislocation would be the tendency to worship foreign gods that neither they nor their fathers had ever known (4:25-31).

28:65-67 These verses describe Israel’s emotional state during their exile. The sole of your foot alludes to the former blessing in 11:24 (see Jos 1:3).

28:68 The fact that the Lord would return disobedient Israel to Egypt suggests that a reverse of the exodus would take place. Many Israelites did indeed end up in Egypt (Jr 44:11-14,24-30). But the reference to ships and to other deportations (Dt 28:63) leads to the conclusion that Egypt was also a figure of speech—a “synecdoche”—to describe all manner of places of deportation and exile.