Deuteronomy 28:32-42

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.
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.
34 What you see will drive you crazy.
35 God will hit you with painful boils on your knees and legs and no healing or relief 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.
37 Among all the peoples where God will take you, you'll be treated as a lesson or a proverb - a horror!
38 You'll plant sacks and sacks of seed in the field but get almost nothing - the grasshoppers will devour it.
39 You'll plant and hoe and prune vineyards but won't drink or put up any wine - the worms will devour them.
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.
41 You'll have sons and daughters but they won't be yours for long - they'll go off to captivity.
42 Locusts will take over all your trees and crops.

Deuteronomy 28:32-42 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.

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.