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Deuteronomy 28: What the Passage Says

240 claims across 68 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Deuteronomy 28 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses sets out the two outcomes attached to the covenant once Israel is in the land. Verses 1-14 list the blessings that follow careful obedience: fruitful families, fields, and herds, victory over enemies, and standing above other nations. Verses 15-68 list the curses that follow refusal to obey: disease, drought, crop failure, defeat, siege so severe that parents eat their own children, exile, and scattering among the nations, ending with a return to Egypt where no one will buy them as slaves. The chapter closes the terms Moses has been giving by spelling out what hangs on them.

Claim by Claim

  1. 28:1
    • If you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, a blessing follows.
    • The obedience required is to observe and do all his commandments.
    • The speaker is commanding these commandments this day.
    • The LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
  2. 28:2
    • All these blessings will come upon you.
    • The blessings will overtake you.
    • This is conditional on your obeying the voice of the LORD your God.
  3. 28:3
    • You will be blessed in the city.
    • You will be blessed in the field.
  4. 28:4
    • The fruit of your womb will be blessed.
    • The fruit of your ground will be blessed.
    • The offspring of your livestock will be blessed.
    • The calves of your herd will be blessed.
    • The young of your flock will be blessed.
  5. 28:5
    • Your basket will be blessed.
    • Your kneading trough will be blessed.
  6. 28:6
    • You will be blessed when you come in.
    • You will be blessed when you go out.
  7. 28:7
    • The LORD will cause the enemies who rise against you to be struck down before you.
    • They will come out against you by one road.
    • They will flee before you by seven roads.
  8. 28:8
    • The LORD will command the blessing upon your storehouses.
    • The LORD will command the blessing upon everything you put your hand to.
    • He will bless you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
  9. 28:9
    • The LORD will establish you as a holy people to himself.
    • He has sworn this to you.
    • This is conditional on your keeping the commandments of the LORD your God.
    • This is conditional on your walking in his ways.
  10. 28:10
    • All the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD.
    • They will be afraid of you.
  11. 28:11
    • The LORD will make you abound in prosperity.
    • This abundance will be in the fruit of your womb.
    • This abundance will be in the offspring of your livestock.
    • This abundance will be in the fruit of your ground.
    • This will happen in the land the LORD swore to your fathers to give you.
  12. 28:12
    • The LORD will open to you his good storehouse, the heavens.
    • He will give rain to your land in its season.
    • He will bless all the work of your hand.
    • You will lend to many nations.
    • You will not borrow.
  13. 28:13
    • The LORD will make you the head and not the tail.
    • You will be only above and not beneath.
    • This is conditional on your obeying the commandments of the LORD your God.
    • The speaker is commanding these commandments this day.
    • The commandments are to be observed and done.
  14. 28:14
    • You are not to turn aside from any of the words the speaker commands this day, to the right or to the left.
    • You are not to go after other gods to serve them.
  15. 28:15
    • If you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God, a curse follows.
    • The disobedience in view is failing to observe and do all his commandments and statutes.
    • The speaker is commanding these this day.
    • All these curses will come upon you.
    • The curses will overtake you.
  16. 28:16
    • You will be cursed in the city.
    • You will be cursed in the field.
  17. 28:17
    • Your basket will be cursed.
    • Your kneading trough will be cursed.
  18. 28:18
    • The fruit of your womb will be cursed.
    • The fruit of your land will be cursed.
    • The calves of your herd will be cursed.
    • The young of your flock will be cursed.
  19. 28:19
    • You will be cursed when you come in.
    • You will be cursed when you go out.
  20. 28:20
    • The LORD will send cursing upon you.
    • The LORD will send confusion upon you.
    • The LORD will send rebuke upon you.
    • These will come in everything you put your hand to do.
    • This will continue until you are destroyed.
    • This will continue until you perish quickly.
    • The cause is the wickedness of your deeds.
    • The LORD says that by these deeds you have forsaken him.
  21. 28:21
    • The LORD will make the pestilence cling to you.
    • It will cling until he has consumed you from off the land.
    • The land in view is the one you are going to possess.
  22. 28:22
    • The LORD will strike you with wasting disease.
    • The LORD will strike you with fever.
    • The LORD will strike you with inflammation.
    • The LORD will strike you with burning heat.
    • The LORD will strike you with the sword; the word can also mean drought.
    • The LORD will strike you with blight.
    • The LORD will strike you with mildew.
    • These will pursue you until you perish.
  23. 28:23
    • The sky over your head will be bronze.
    • The earth under you will be iron.
  24. 28:24
    • The LORD will make the rain of your land powder and dust.
    • It will come down on you from the sky.
    • This will continue until you are destroyed.
  25. 28:25
    • The LORD will cause you to be struck down before your enemies.
    • You will go out against them by one road.
    • You will flee before them by seven roads.
    • You will become an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
  26. 28:26
    • Your corpse will be food for all the birds of the sky.
    • Your corpse will be food for the beasts of the earth.
    • No one will frighten them away.
  27. 28:27
    • The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt.
    • The LORD will strike you with tumors.
    • The LORD will strike you with scabs.
    • The LORD will strike you with itch.
    • You cannot be healed of these.
  28. 28:28
    • The LORD will strike you with madness.
    • The LORD will strike you with blindness.
    • The LORD will strike you with bewilderment of mind.
  29. 28:29
    • You will grope at noon as a blind man gropes in darkness.
    • You will not prosper in your ways.
    • You will be continually oppressed and robbed.
    • No one will save you.
  30. 28:30
    • You will betroth a wife and another man will lie with her.
    • You will build a house and not live in it.
    • You will plant a vineyard and not enjoy its fruit.
  31. 28:31
    • Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes.
    • You will not eat any of it.
    • Your donkey will be seized from before your face.
    • It will not be returned to you.
    • Your flock will be given to your enemies.
    • You will have no one to rescue them.
  32. 28:32
    • Your sons and daughters will be given to another people.
    • Your eyes will look for them and fail with longing all day long.
    • There will be no power in your hand.
  33. 28:33
    • A nation you do not know will eat up the fruit of your land and all your labor.
    • You will be continually oppressed and crushed.
  34. 28:34
    • You will be driven mad by what your eyes see.
  35. 28:35
    • The LORD will strike you on the knees and on the legs with a severe boil.
    • The boil cannot be healed.
    • It will spread from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
  36. 28:36
    • The LORD will bring you to a nation you and your fathers have not known.
    • The LORD will bring the king you set over you to that nation.
    • There you will serve other gods.
    • Those gods are wood and stone.
  37. 28:37
    • You will become an object of horror among all the peoples where the LORD leads you.
    • You will become a proverb among them.
    • You will become a byword among them.
  38. 28:38
    • You will carry much seed out to the field.
    • You will gather little in.
    • The reason is that the locust will consume it.
  39. 28:39
    • You will plant vineyards and tend them.
    • You will not drink the wine.
    • You will not gather the grapes.
    • The reason is that the worm will eat them.
  40. 28:40
    • You will have olive trees throughout your territory.
    • You will not anoint yourself with the oil.
    • The reason is that your olives will drop off.
  41. 28:41
    • You will father sons and daughters.
    • They will not remain yours.
    • The reason is that they will go into captivity.
  42. 28:42
    • Locusts will take possession of all your trees and the fruit of your land.
  43. 28:43
    • The foreigner among you will rise higher and higher above you.
    • You will come down lower and lower.
  44. 28:44
    • He will lend to you.
    • You will not lend to him.
    • He will be the head.
    • You will be the tail.
  45. 28:45
    • All these curses will come upon you.
    • They will pursue you.
    • They will overtake you until you are destroyed.
    • The reason is that you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God.
    • You did not keep the commandments and statutes he commanded you.
  46. 28:46
    • The curses will be upon you as a sign and a wonder.
    • They will be upon your descendants forever.
  47. 28:47
    • You did not serve the LORD your God with joy.
    • You did not serve him with gladness of heart.
    • This was in a time of abundance of everything.
  48. 28:48
    • Therefore you will serve your enemies whom the LORD sends against you.
    • You will serve them in hunger.
    • You will serve them in thirst.
    • You will serve them in nakedness.
    • You will serve them in lack of everything.
    • He will put an iron yoke on your neck.
    • This will last until he has destroyed you.
  49. 28:49
    • The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away.
    • It will come from the end of the earth.
    • It will swoop as the eagle flies.
    • You will not understand that nation's language.
  50. 28:50
    • The nation has a fierce face.
    • It will show no regard for the old.
    • It will show no favor to the young.
  51. 28:51
    • It will eat the offspring of your livestock and the fruit of your land until you are destroyed.
    • It will leave you no grain, new wine, or oil.
    • It will leave you no calves of your herd or young of your flock.
    • This will last until it has destroyed you.
  52. 28:52
    • It will besiege you in all your gates until your high and fortified walls come down.
    • You trusted in those walls.
    • The siege will extend throughout all your land.
    • It will besiege you in all your gates throughout the land the LORD your God has given you.
  53. 28:53
    • You will eat the fruit of your own womb.
    • That is the flesh of your sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you.
    • This will happen in the siege.
    • This will happen in the distress with which your enemies press you.
  54. 28:54
    • The man among you who is tender and very refined will look grudgingly on his brother.
    • He will look grudgingly on the wife of his embrace.
    • He will look grudgingly on the rest of his children whom he has left.
  55. 28:55
    • He will not give any of them the flesh of his children that he eats.
    • The reason is that nothing is left to him in the siege.
    • This is in the distress with which your enemies press you in all your gates.
  56. 28:56
    • The tender and refined woman among you would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and tenderness.
    • Her eye will be grudging toward the husband of her embrace.
    • Her eye will be grudging toward her son.
    • Her eye will be grudging toward her daughter.
  57. 28:57
    • Her eye will be grudging toward the afterbirth that comes out from between her feet.
    • Her eye will be grudging toward the children she bears.
    • She will eat them secretly for lack of everything.
    • This is in the siege and the distress with which your enemy presses you in your gates.
  58. 28:58
    • The condition is that you do not observe to do all the words of this law.
    • Those words are written in this book.
    • The purpose of observing them is that you fear this glorious and fearful name.
    • That name is the LORD your God.
  59. 28:59
    • The LORD will make your plagues extraordinary.
    • He will do the same to the plagues of your descendants.
    • The plagues will be great and lasting.
    • The sicknesses will be severe and lasting.
  60. 28:60
    • He will bring back upon you all the diseases of Egypt.
    • You were afraid of those diseases.
    • They will cling to you.
  61. 28:61
    • The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and every plague not written in the book of this law.
    • This will last until you are destroyed.
  62. 28:62
    • You will be left few in number.
    • You had been as numerous as the stars of the sky.
    • The reason is that you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.
  63. 28:63
    • The LORD once delighted over you to do you good and to multiply you.
    • In the same way the LORD will delight over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing.
    • You will be plucked off the land you are going to possess.
  64. 28:64
    • The LORD will scatter you among all peoples.
    • The scattering will reach from one end of the earth to the other.
    • There you will serve other gods.
    • Neither you nor your fathers have known those gods.
    • Those gods are wood and stone.
  65. 28:65
    • Among those nations you will find no ease.
    • The sole of your foot will have no resting place.
    • There the LORD will give you a trembling heart.
    • There the LORD will give you failing eyes.
    • There the LORD will give you a despairing soul.
  66. 28:66
    • Your life will hang in doubt before you.
    • You will be afraid night and day.
    • You will have no assurance of your life.
  67. 28:67
    • In the morning you will say, 'If only it were evening.'
    • In the evening you will say, 'If only it were morning.'
    • The cause is the dread of your heart that you will feel.
    • The cause is the sights your eyes will see.
  68. 28:68
    • The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships.
    • The route is the one the speaker said you would never see again.
    • There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves.
    • No one will buy you.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

28:1
This chapter is the blessings-and-curses section that ancient Near Eastern treaties normally carried at the end: a list of rewards for keeping the terms, followed by a much longer list of penalties for breaking them. "The LORD" printed in capitals stands where the Hebrew has God's personal name, which Jewish tradition did not pronounce aloud.
28:2
"Come upon you and overtake you" is hunting language, the blessings run you down and catch you. The same two verbs come back in verse 15, where it is the curses doing the chasing.
28:3
"In the city... in the field" is a paired opposite naming the two halves of life, walled town and open farmland, and so means everywhere you are. Verses 4-6 work the same way, each pair covering a whole area of life.
28:4
"the fruit of thy body" means children, and "kine" is an old plural of cow. In a farming society children, herds and harvest were not three separate kinds of wealth but one thing: they were what a household had, and the loss of any of them meant hunger.
28:5
The basket carried the harvest in from the field; the kneading bowl (KJV "store") was the trough where dough was mixed. Together they cover the food supply from field to table.
28:6
"Coming in and going out" is an everyday idiom for the whole round of a person's activity, the ordinary business of leaving home and returning.
28:7
Seven is the standard round number for completeness. They advance as one body and are scattered in every direction at once.
28:8
A barn, or storehouse, is a building where grain and food were kept for later.
28:9
"Holy" in Hebrew means set apart for one owner's use rather than morally pure. It describes status (whose you are), not character.
28:10
To be "called by the name of" someone was a mark of ownership and protection. A name spoken over a person, a city, or a piece of property showed whose it was.
28:12
Rain was pictured as stored in heavenly storehouses that God opens at the right season. And in an economy with no banks, being the lender rather than the borrower was the plain public mark of a household or nation doing well.
28:13
"Head and tail" is a proverbial pair for the top and bottom of the pecking order. The image returns, reversed, in verse 44.
28:14
Turning "to the right hand or to the left" is road language for leaving the marked path. The commands are pictured throughout as a route to be kept to.
28:15
The curses that follow run roughly four times as long as the blessings and in far more detail. That imbalance is standard in ancient treaty texts, where the whole purpose of the curse section was to make the consequences of breaking the agreement impossible to forget.
28:20
"vexation" in 1611 meant panic and confusion, not mild irritation. It describes the sort of disorder that breaks an army or a household apart.
28:21
"pestilence" means an epidemic, a disease sweeping through a whole population, not one person falling ill. "cleave unto thee" means stick to you and not let go.
28:22
The list moves from diseases of people to diseases of crops. The KJV's "sword" and the modern "drought" translate the same three Hebrew consonants, which differ only in vowels that were supplied by later tradition; translations divide here, and either reading is defensible. "Blasting" is scorching of grain by hot wind.
28:23
Bronze sky and iron ground is drought imagery: a sky that gives nothing back and soil too hard to break with a plow. Nearly identical wording appears in Assyrian treaty curses from the same period.
28:24
In the dry season a hot wind off the desert carries fine dust that settles like a filthy rain. What falls from the sky is dirt instead of water.
28:25
The KJV's "removed into all the kingdoms" renders a Hebrew word for something that makes onlookers shudder: your fate becomes the thing other nations flinch at.
28:26
Leaving a body unburied for scavenging birds and animals was, to the ancient world, the worst thing that could happen to a person, a standard curse in treaties of the period, and reckoned worse than death itself.
28:27
"The botch of Egypt" points back to the boils of the Egyptian plagues (Exodus 9). "Emerods" is old English for swellings or tumors; the same Hebrew word describes what struck the Philistines in 1 Samuel 5, and it has long been understood as hemorrhoids.
28:28
"Astonishment of heart": in Hebrew the heart is where a person thinks and decides, not where they feel. This is bewilderment of mind, an inability to reason, rather than an emotion.
28:29
"spoiled" in 1611 meant plundered, stripped of your possessions by force. Groping "at noonday" is an image of total helplessness: unable to find your way even in full daylight.
28:30
Betrothal was legally binding (the woman counted as the man's wife in law though they were not yet living together), so this is more than a broken engagement. The Hebrew verb for what the other man does is a blunt, coarse word for intercourse carrying the sense of violation; scribal tradition directed readers to substitute a milder verb aloud. These three losses (bride, new house, young vineyard) are exactly the three situations that exempted a man from military call-up in Deuteronomy 20:5-7.
28:31
The ox, the donkey and the flock were a farming household's working capital: its plow team, its transport, and its savings on the hoof.
28:32
Armies took children away to faraway countries to work as slaves. Parents almost never saw them again.
28:35
"From the sole of your foot to the top of your head" is a set phrase meaning the whole body, head to toe; the same wording describes Job's affliction in Job 2:7.
28:36
"Wood and stone" names the raw material images were carved from. It is a dismissive way of speaking about the gods of other nations, naming the lumber rather than the deity.
28:37
A "byword" is a name that ends up inside people's sayings, the kind of example invoked when cursing or mocking someone, as in "may you end up like...".
28:38
Desert locusts swarm through this region in numbers that can strip a field bare within hours. The point is not ordinary crop pests but total, sudden loss.
28:39
The worms are the grubs of vine pests that bore into ripening grapes, so the fruit is destroyed on the vine after a full season of pruning and tending.
28:40
Olive oil was rubbed on the skin as ordinary daily care against sun and dry air, much as lotion is now; going without it was a sign of mourning or of poverty. No religious anointing is meant here.
28:41
Captives were marched off to a foreign country to work for the people who took them. Families rarely saw them again.
28:43
The "stranger" is the resident foreigner, someone living in Israel with no land and no family claim there, normally dependent on the goodwill of the locals. The curse is that the bottom of the social order ends up on top.
28:46
"A sign and a wonder" here does not mean a miracle. Both Hebrew words can mean an ominous mark: something other people look at and read as a warning.
28:47
The Hebrew ending, "in/for the abundance of all things," can be read either as "back when you had plenty of everything" or as "because of all your plenty." Both readings are current, and the wording does not settle between them.
28:48
A yoke is the wooden beam laid across oxen's necks to harness them to a plow. It was the standard ancient image for one nation's control over another; iron makes it unbreakable.
28:49
The Hebrew bird here covers both the eagle and the griffon vulture. The comparison is to speed, a large bird dropping on its prey, not to nobility.
28:50
"regard the person of" is an idiom meaning to show favor to someone because of who they are. A nation "of fierce countenance" is a hard-faced one, whose soldiers ignore the usual claims that age and helplessness had on mercy.
28:51
"Corn" in the King James Version means grain of any kind, not maize. Grain, new wine and olive oil are the three staple products of the land, and naming them together stands for the entire food supply.
28:52
"Gates" stands for the fortified towns themselves. The gate was the single break in a town's wall and the place where its public business was conducted, so it came to represent the town as a whole.
28:53
Cannibalism among the starving inside a besieged city is described elsewhere in the Bible (2 Kings 6:28-29) and appears in ancient siege accounts and treaty curses. It was the recognized picture of a siege pushed to its limit.
28:54
"His eye shall be evil toward" is a Hebrew idiom for begrudging, looking at someone with an unwilling, grasping eye and refusing to share. It is not a reference to the superstition of the evil eye.
28:56
The picture is of a woman wealthy enough never to have set a bare foot on bare ground, carried, or walking on matting. The horror of the verse depends on how far such a person is being brought down.
28:57
The Hebrew literally reads "that which comes out from between her feet," and it is ambiguous: it may mean the afterbirth, or the newborn child itself. Translators divide, and the phrase may be meant to cover both.
28:58
"Fear" here means awed dread rather than fright. "This name," printed in the King James Version as THE LORD THY GOD, is the personal name of Israel's God, which in ancient usage stood for the God himself.
28:59
In 1611 English "wonderful" meant astonishing or hard to credit, with no suggestion of anything pleasant. The word is describing the sheer scale of the disasters.
28:60
Egypt had a reputation in the ancient world both for its physicians and for its distinctive diseases. The reference is to illnesses the Israelites had seen there, including the plagues of Exodus.
28:62
"As many as the stars in the sky" quotes the promise made to Abraham (Genesis 15:5; 22:17). The curse is that promise running backwards.
28:63
The Hebrew verb translated "rejoice" means to take pleasure in a thing, or simply to be willing to do it. The sentence deliberately uses the same word for God's giving and for his taking away.
28:64
Being scattered means being taken off your own land and spread thin among other peoples, with no country of your own.
28:65
"failing of eyes" pictures eyes worn out from watching and weeping, a Hebrew way of describing hope that keeps looking and never receives an answer. "sorrow of mind" is closer to despair than to sadness.
28:66
"Hang in doubt" pictures your life dangling by a thread, ready to drop at any second.
28:67
"Would God it were even!" is old English for "I wish it were evening". The picture is of someone who cannot endure either half of the day and spends each one wishing themselves into the other.
28:68
Going back to Egypt "in ships" reverses the exodus, which came out of Egypt overland; ships point to the sea route to the Egyptian slave markets. The final turn is the worst: so many captives are on offer that nobody will take them even as a purchase.

Read Deuteronomy 28