The Message Bible MSG
New Living Translation NLT
1 If you listen obediently to the Voice of God, your God, and heartily obey all his commandments that I command you today, God, your God, will place you on high, high above all the nations of the world.
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“If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the world.
2 All these blessings will come down on you and spread out beyond you because you have responded to the Voice of God, your God:
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You will experience all these blessings if you obey the LORD your God:
3 God's blessing inside the city, God's blessing in the country;
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Your towns and your fields will be blessed.
4 God's blessing on your children, the crops of your land, the young of your livestock, the calves of your herds, the lambs of your flocks.
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Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed.
5 God's blessing on your basket and bread bowl;
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Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed.
6 God's blessing in your coming in, God's blessing in your going out.
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Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed.
7 God will defeat your enemies who attack you. They'll come at you on one road and run away on seven roads.
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“The LORD will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven!
8 God will order a blessing on your barns and workplaces; he'll bless you in the land that God, your God, is giving you.
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“The LORD will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
9 God will form you as a people holy to him, just as he promised you, if you keep the commandments of God, your God, and live the way he has shown you.
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“If you obey the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways, the LORD will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do.
10 All the peoples on Earth will see you living under the Name of God and hold you in respectful awe.
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Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the LORD, and they will stand in awe of you.
11 God will lavish you with good things: children from your womb, offspring from your animals, and crops from your land, the land that God promised your ancestors that he would give you.
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“The LORD will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops.
12 God will throw open the doors of his sky vaults and pour rain on your land on schedule and bless the work you take in hand. You will lend to many nations but you yourself won't have to take out a loan.
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The LORD will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them.
13 God will make you the head, not the tail; you'll always be the top dog, never the bottom dog, as you obediently listen to and diligently keep the commands of God, your God, that I am commanding you today.
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If you listen to these commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom.
14 Don't swerve an inch to the right or left from the words that I command you today by going off following and worshiping other gods.
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You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.
15 Here's what will happen if you don't obediently listen to the Voice of God, your God, and diligently keep all the commandments and guidelines that I'm commanding you today. All these curses will come down hard on you:
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“But if you refuse to listen to the LORD your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:
16 God's curse in the city, God's curse in the country;
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Your towns and your fields will be cursed.
17 God's curse on your basket and bread bowl;
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Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed.
18 God's curse on your children, the crops of your land, the young of your livestock, the calves of your herds, the lambs of your flocks.
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Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed.
19 God's curse in your coming in, God's curse in your going out.
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Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed.
20 God will send The Curse, The Confusion, The Contrariness down on everything you try to do until you've been destroyed and there's nothing left of you - all because of your evil pursuits that led you to abandon me.
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“The LORD himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me.
21 God will infect you with The Disease, wiping you right off the land that you're going in to possess.
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The LORD will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy.
22 God will set consumption and fever and rash and seizures and dehydration and blight and jaundice on you. They'll hunt you down until they kill you.
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The LORD will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die.
23 The sky over your head will become an iron roof, the ground under your feet, a slab of concrete.
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The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron.
24 From out of the skies God will rain ash and dust down on you until you suffocate.
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The LORD will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.
25 God will defeat you by enemy attack. You'll come at your enemies on one road and run away on seven roads. All the kingdoms of Earth will see you as a horror.
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“The LORD will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
26 Carrion birds and animals will boldly feast on your dead body with no one to chase them away.
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Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.
27 God will hit you hard with the boils of Egypt, hemorrhoids, scabs, and an incurable itch.
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“The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.
28 He'll make you go crazy and blind and senile.
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The LORD will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic.
29 You'll grope around in the middle of the day like a blind person feeling his way through a lifetime of darkness; you'll never get to where you're going. Not a day will go by that you're not abused and robbed. And no one is going to help you.
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You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.
30 You'll get engaged to a woman and another man will take her for his mistress; you'll build a house and never live in it; you'll plant a garden and never eat so much as a carrot;
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“You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit.
31 you'll watch your ox get butchered and not get a single steak from it; your donkey will be stolen from in front of you and you'll never see it again; your sheep will be sent off to your enemies and no one will lift a hand to help you.
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Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you.
32 Your sons and daughters will be shipped off to foreigners; you'll wear your eyes out looking vainly for them, helpless to do a thing.
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You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them.
33 Your crops and everything you work for will be eaten and used by foreigners; you'll spend the rest of your lives abused and knocked around.
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A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment.
34 What you see will drive you crazy.
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You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you.
35 God will hit you with painful boils on your knees and legs and no healing or relief from head to foot.
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The LORD will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot.
36 God will lead you and the king you set over you to a country neither you nor your ancestors have heard of; there you'll worship other gods, no-gods of wood and stone.
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“The LORD will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone!
37 Among all the peoples where God will take you, you'll be treated as a lesson or a proverb - a horror!
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You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the LORD sends you.
38 You'll plant sacks and sacks of seed in the field but get almost nothing - the grasshoppers will devour it.
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“You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops.
39 You'll plant and hoe and prune vineyards but won't drink or put up any wine - the worms will devour them.
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You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines.
40 You'll have groves of olive trees everywhere, but you'll have no oil to rub on your face or hands - the olives will have fallen off.
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You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens.
41 You'll have sons and daughters but they won't be yours for long - they'll go off to captivity.
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You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity.
42 Locusts will take over all your trees and crops.
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Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops.
43 The foreigner who lives among you will climb the ladder, higher and higher, while you go deeper and deeper into the hole.
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“The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker.
44 He'll lend to you; you won't lend to him. He'll be the head; you'll be the tail.
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They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!
45 All these curses are going to come on you. They're going to hunt you down and get you until there's nothing left of you because you didn't obediently listen to the Voice of God, your God, and diligently keep his commandments and guidelines that I commanded you.
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“If you refuse to listen to the LORD your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed.
46 The curses will serve as signposts, warnings to your children ever after.
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These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever.
47 Because you didn't serve God, your God, out of the joy and goodness of your heart in the great abundance,
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If you do not serve the LORD your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received,
48 you'll have to serve your enemies whom God will send against you. Life will be famine and drought, rags and wretchedness; then he'll put an iron yoke on your neck until he's destroyed you.
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you will serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The LORD will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you.
49 Yes, God will raise up a faraway nation against you, swooping down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you can't understand,
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“The LORD will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand,
50 a mean-faced people, cruel to grandmothers and babies alike.
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a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young.
51 They'll ravage the young of your animals and the crops from your fields until you're destroyed. They'll leave nothing behind: no grain, no wine, no oil, no calves, no lambs - and finally, no you.
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Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death.
52 They'll lay siege to you while you're huddled behind your town gates. They'll knock those high, proud walls flat, those walls behind which you felt so safe. They'll lay siege to your fortified cities all over the country, this country that God, your God, has given you.
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They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the LORD your God has given you.
53 And you'll end up cannibalizing your own sons and daughters that God, your God, has given you. When the suffering from the siege gets extreme, you're going to eat your own babies.
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“The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you.
54 The most gentle and caring man among you will turn hard, his eye evil, against his own brother, his cherished wife, and even the rest of his children who are still alive,
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The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children.
55 refusing to share with them a scrap of meat from the cannibal child-stew he is eating. He's lost everything, even his humanity, in the suffering of the siege that your enemy mounts against your fortified towns.
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He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh of one of his own children—because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.
56 And the most gentle and caring woman among you, a woman who wouldn't step on a wildflower, will turn hard, her eye evil, against her cherished husband, against her son, against her daughter,
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The most tender and delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter.
57 against even the afterbirth of her newborn infants; she plans to eat them in secret - she does eat them! - because she has lost everything, even her humanity, in the suffering of the siege that your enemy mounts against your fortified towns.
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She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.
58 If you don't diligently keep all the words of this Revelation written in this book, living in holy awe before This Name glorious and terrible, God, your God,
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“If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the LORD your God,
59 then God will pound you with catastrophes, you and your children, huge interminable catastrophes, hideous interminable illnesses.
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then the LORD will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick.
60 He'll bring back and stick you with every old Egyptian malady that once terrorized you.
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He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief.
61 And yes, every disease and catastrophe imaginable - things not even written in the Book of this Revelation - God will bring on you until you're destroyed.
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The LORD will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed.
62 Because you didn't listen obediently to the Voice of God, your God, you'll be left with a few pitiful stragglers in place of the dazzling stars-in-the-heavens multitude you had become.
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Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the LORD your God.
63 And this is how things will end up: Just as God once enjoyed you, took pleasure in making life good for you, giving you many children, so God will enjoy getting rid of you, clearing you off the Earth. He'll weed you out of the very soil that you are entering in to possess.
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“Just as the LORD has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the LORD will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy.
64 He'll scatter you to the four winds, from one end of the Earth to the other. You'll worship all kinds of other gods, gods neither you nor your parents ever heard of, wood and stone no-gods.
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For the LORD will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone!
65 But you won't find a home there, you'll not be able to settle down. God will give you a restless heart, longing eyes, a homesick soul.
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There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the LORD will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair.
66 You will live in constant jeopardy, terrified of every shadow, never knowing what you'll meet around the next corner.
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Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive.
67 In the morning you'll say, "I wish it were evening." In the evening you'll say, "I wish it were morning." Afraid, terrorized at what's coming next, afraid of the unknown, because of the sights you've witnessed.
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In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you.
68 God will ship you back to Egypt by a road I promised you'd never see again. There you'll offer yourselves for sale, both men and women, as slaves to your enemies. And not a buyer to be found.
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Then the LORD will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.
Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by
Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.