Blessings & Curses - Deuteronomy 28

Chapter 28 is VERY long and honestly I was dreading it, but after reading it, I really like it. In this chapter, Moses spells out again how Israel will be blessed by God if they are obedient and how they will be “cursed” if they are disobedient. Before getting into it, TB pointed out a couple of key points that I thought were interesting and that I didn’t even realize until he said it. This contrast is between the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic Covenant. He said that with the Abrahamic covenant, it was only one way, a promised made by God to Abraham where the only condition was that Abraham accept it, he didn’t have to do anything else, these were all promised blessings that came with no strings attached. I hadn’t realized that before. Conversely, the Mosaic covenant was a two way promise between God and the Israelite people, and there were strings attached. Additionally, it wasn’t the kind of contract where if Israel breached it by being disobedient, they were just let out of the covenant, there was a punishment attached. They could not escape God by deciding they don’t want to be part of the covenant anymore.

The blessings for obedience are what we’ve learned about before, if they keep the commandments they will be blessed in the city and given bountiful harvests, their children will be blessed, as well as the offspring of their animals. Verses 6-7 talk about military victories, TB broke it down as meaning “when you go out to war, God will win your battles for you and your enemies will flee from before you, and you will come home safely.” All the land will be blessed, and also “thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto,” which means to me all that you endeavor to do will be blessed and prospered. This is something that I’ve been struggling with, I try my best to be righteous, to keep the commandments and my covenants, but my life has been so hard from basically the minute I was born and I’m just to the point now where I’m exhausted and like, I’ve tried my best, why does life just keep getting harder and harder? I’m blessed in a lot of ways, but man life is hard.

There’s even a verse that says, “and all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee.” I’ve thought about this concept recently, like what it would take for the world to know that a certain group of people were blessed and protected by God, what would that look like and what would the effects be? The word “afraid” is cross referenced to Deuteronomy 11:25 which says, “there shall no man be able to stand before you: for the Lord your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you.” In our super connected world, what would it take for non-believers to understand that a certain group is favored by God, and would that then make others want to join that group so that they would be protected by God as well? It's an interesting concept, like your enemies would be afraid of you but to what end? So they would leave you alone? So that they would want to join you and worship God as well? What would the application of this concept look like in our day and time? This is in line with the military promised of victory as well. The promises just go on and on, over and over about the blessings of bounty and treasure, and rain, and positions of power and authority over other non-Hebrew peoples.

All this is promised if the people “harken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them.” And now come the curses if the people are disobedient. I guess without the explicit curses it might be easy to think “well if I’m not obedient to God, then I just won’t get the supernatural goodness and blessings, I’ll just live a normal life instead, but that is definitely not the case. God’s saying, “if you reject my commandments, it won’t be no harm no foul, it will be active harm.” All the curses are basically the opposite of all the blessings, the fields and businesses and cities will be curses, your children and harvests and animals will be cursed. You will lose all your military battles, you’ll be taken as slaves to other nations, you’ll have pestilence and disease. You’ll have drought and dust instead of rain and harvest.

Interestingly, it’s not just physical afflictions but mental as well. Madness, blindness and “astonishment of heart.” Confusion, anger, anxiety. Your houses, wives, children, animals, harvests will all be taken by others. Verse 34 is interpreted in the footnotes as saying “you’ll be driven mad by the sight your eyes shall see.” The physical ailments are just extreme, describing joint pain, sores, boils, all types of awful things and they just go on and on.

Verse 45 says, “Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, will thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee… because thou servedst not the Lord they God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things.” I was surprised by the command to serve God with Joyfulness and gladness of heart. I definitely and guilty of this, it’s so hard for me because I’m a naturally pessimistic person, the amount of cognitive effort that it takes for me to even just trust God to take care of things without freaking out, is immense, so to do it joyfully and with gladness of heart, like I’m just hanging on as it is. I am in the very early stages of a new spiritual transition and I’m starting out at the end of my rope, just exhausted, maybe that’s the point. The whole concept of “if you are obedient you’ll be blessed and if you are disobedient, you’ll be cursed” sounds so transactional. Like, why am I being cursed if I’m trying my best? Why have I been cursed since the day I was born when I was just an innocent kid? Why is anyone suffering? I know it makes me sound whiny, and logically I can understand that it’s God’s will for me personally, that He won’t leave me alone, that it’s all for my good, etc. Logically I know that but emotionally, I can’t help but read “you’ll be cursed if you’re disobedient” and look at my cursed situation and feel like, all this is happening because I’ bad or wrong or disobedient, even though I’m trying my best and if my best is disobedient, then what’s the point? It’s not a linear argument and that’s frustrating. Anyway, I’m done whining.

The IM notes that this chapter is very similar to Leviticus 26 with the exception of the end, which is described as “one particularly gruesome prediciont added in this chapter concerned a siege so terrible that cannibalism would result.” The IM also notes that when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar the people resulted to cannibalism, but the end of chapter 28 is certainly describing what would happen when Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 A.D. The IM goes in depth with the comparison to the specific language in the chapter with how it correlated to Rome which was interesting, but extensive so I’m not going to cover it here. Overall, this was a great chapter, much better than I was anticipating and I’m working through my situation with Jesus and the teachings come through this writing a lot, so thank you for bearing with my whining.