Deuteronomy 28:15-26

Curses for Disobedience

15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:

16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.

18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.^[a]

21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.

22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.

23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron.

24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth.

26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away.

Deuteronomy 28:15-26 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO DEUTERONOMY 28

In this chapter Moses enlarges on the blessings and the curses which belong, the one to the doers, the other to the transgressors of the law; the blessings, De 28:1-14; the curses, some of which concern individual persons, others the whole nation and body of people, and that both under the former and present dispensations, and which had their fulfilment in their former captivities, and more especially in their present dispersion, De 28:15-68.

Cross References

• 1. 1 Kings 9:6; 2 Chronicles 7:19; Leviticus 26:14
• 2. S Deuteronomy 27:26
• 3. Deuteronomy 29:27; Joshua 23:15; 2 Chronicles 12:5; Daniel 9:11; Malachi 2:2
• 4. ver 3
• 5. ver 5
• 6. ver 4
• 7. ver 6
• 8. ver 8,15; Leviticus 26:16; Jeremiah 42:18; Malachi 2:2; Malachi 3:9; Malachi 4:6
• 9. Psalms 39:11; Psalms 76:6; Psalms 80:16; Isaiah 17:13; Isaiah 51:20; Isaiah 54:9; Isaiah 66:15; Ezekiel 5:15
• 10. Deuteronomy 4:26
• 11. S Exodus 32:22
• 12. Leviticus 26:25; Numbers 14:12; Jeremiah 24:10; Amos 4:10
• 13. ver 48; Deuteronomy 32:24
• 14. Leviticus 26:16; 2 Kings 8:1; Job 12:15; Psalms 105:16; Jeremiah 14:1; Haggai 1:11; Malachi 3:9
• 15. Haggai 2:17
• 16. S Leviticus 26:25
• 17. Deuteronomy 4:26; Amos 4:9
• 18. S Leviticus 26:19
• 19. Leviticus 26:19; Deuteronomy 11:17; 1 Kings 8:35; 1 Kings 17:1; Isaiah 5:6; Jeremiah 14:1; Haggai 1:10
• 20. 1 Samuel 4:10; Psalms 78:62
• 21. S Leviticus 26:17; Isaiah 30:17
• 22. ver 37
• 23. 2 Chronicles 29:8; 2 Chronicles 30:7; Jeremiah 15:4; Jeremiah 24:9; Jeremiah 26:6; Jeremiah 29:18; Jeremiah 44:12; Ezekiel 23:46
• 24. S Genesis 40:19
• 25. Psalms 79:2; Isaiah 18:6; Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 12:9; Jeremiah 15:2; Jeremiah 16:4; Jeremiah 19:7; Jeremiah 34:20

Footnotes

• [a]. Hebrew "me"