Deuteronomy 28

₁Moses said: ‘If you truly listen to the Lord your God, and if you do everything that his laws which I give you today say, then the Lord your God will make you the most important people on earth. ₂If you listen to the Lord your God, He will always bless you:

₃He will bless you in your towns and in the field. ₄He will give you a lot of children and bless your land and your animals. There will be a lot of calves and lambs.

₅Your baskets and your bread bowls will always be full of food. ₆The Lord will bless you wherever you go.

₇He will defeat your enemies when they come to attack you. They will come on one road to attack you, but they will flee on 7 roads to get away from you.

₈The Lord will make your store rooms full of food. All will be well with you and everything you do. The Lord your God will bless you in the land that He gives you.

₉If you do what the Lord wants and if you live as He says, He will make you his holy nation. That is what He promised. ₁₀All the nations on earth will see that you belong to the Lord and they will be afraid of you.

₁₁The Lord will give you a lot of everything you need. You, your animals and your fields will be fertile in this land that He promised to give to your forefathers.

₁₂The Lord will open his store rooms where He keeps all his blessings. He will give you rain at the right time so that all will be well in everything you do. You will lend money and things to the people of many nations, but you will not have to borrow anything from them.

₁₃If you listen to the laws of the Lord your God and if you keep on doing what I tell you today, then the Lord will make you the head and not the tail. You will always be on top, not at the bottom. ₁₄But then you must always do everything that I tell you today. You must never worship other gods.’

₁₅‘But if you do not listen to the Lord your God and if you stop doing what his laws that I give you today say, then the Lord will make you suffer and all these bad things will happen to you:

₁₆You will suffer when you are in the town or in the field. ₁₇Your food baskets and your bread bowls will always be empty. ₁₈You and your fields will not be fertile. You will not have a lot of calves and lambs.

₁₉You will suffer when you come into your homes and when you go away. ₂₀If you leave the Lord and go away from Him and keep on doing things that are wrong, He will make you suffer. You will never have peace, and you will always be afraid. He will make bad things happen to you until you have all died and disappeared. It will not take long.

₂₁The Lord will make you sick and you will get diseases. He will keep on doing this until you have all died in the land that you are going to take for yourselves. ₂₂The Lord will make you sick, you will have a fever and swelling and you will get sores. It will become very hot and dry and your wheat will get diseases. The Lord will keep on doing this until you have all died. ₂₃The sky above you will become like a hot bronze roof and the earth below you will become as hard as iron. ₂₄The Lord will stop the rain that falls on your land. It will be like powder and dust falling from the sky until you have all died.

₂₅The Lord will make you lose to all your enemies. You will go on one road to attack them, but you will flee on 7 roads to get away from them. All the lands on earth will be shocked when they look at you.

₂₆The birds and wild animals will eat your dead bodies and no one will chase them away. ₂₇The Lord will make you sick with sores as He did to the Egyptians. You will get painful sores and your skin will swell. It will become very bad and you will not heal.

₂₈The Lord will make you mad and blind and He will confuse you. ₂₉You will be like blind people. In the day time you will have to feel where you are going like people in the dark, but you will not find the right way. People will make you suffer, they will steal your things and no one will help you.

₃₀You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will have sex with her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not eat those grapes.

₃₁You will see someone killing your ox, but you will not get any of its meat to eat. You will see someone taking your donkey, but you will not get it back. Your enemies will take your sheep and goats and no one will help you. ₃₂You will see people taking your children away. You will long for them every day, but you will not be able to do anything. ₃₃People that you do not know will eat everything you have planted and harvested, everything that you have worked for. They will keep on oppressing you and making you suffer.

₃₄You will become mad when you see all of this happening. ₃₅The Lord will make you sick. You will get bad sores on your knees and on your legs. You will not be healed, from your feet to your head.

₃₆You will have chosen a king to rule your land, but the Lord will send you and your king away to a nation that you do not know. Your forefathers also did not know them. And there you will worship other gods, that are made of wood and stone. ₃₇The Lord will send you to other nations and when those nations see you, they will become afraid. They will talk about you and they will laugh at you.

₃₈You will take lots of seeds to sow in your field, but you will not get a lot of seeds when you harvest your wheat or barley, because locusts will eat everything. ₃₉You will plant vineyards and you will work hard, but you will not get any grapes or wine, because the worms will eat all of them. ₄₀You will have olives in your field, but you will not have any olive oil to put on your skin, because the olives will fall off.

₄₁You will have children, but they will not belong to you, because enemies will catch them and take them away. ₄₂Locusts will eat and destroy all your trees and everything that grows on your land.

₄₃The strangers who live among you will become more important than you. ₄₄They will lend you money and things, but you will not be able to lend them anything. They will be the head and you will be the tail.’

₄₅‘All of these bad things will happen to you and it will continue until you have all died, because you did not listen to the Lord your God and you did not do what his laws that He gave you say. ₄₆These things will be signs for you and your descendants forever. ₄₇When the Lord blessed you and gave you lots of things, you did not rejoice and you did not enjoy serving the Lord. ₄₈That is why you will now serve your enemies. The Lord will send them to you. You will serve them while you are hungry and thirsty. You will be naked and you will have nothing. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck until He causes you to die. ₄₉The Lord will bring another nation to go to war_against you, people from a land very far away from you. The enemies will come to you like an eagle that comes down from the sky. You will not know their language, ₅₀they will be cruel people, they will not respect old people and they will not feel sorry for young people. ₅₁Those people will eat your calves and lambs, and your grain and fruit. They will keep on doing this until all of you have died. They will not leave any wheat, wine or olive oil for you, and no calves or lambs. They will do this until all of you have died. ₅₂They will attack you, in all your towns and everywhere in the land that the Lord your God gave you. They will besiege you until the high and strong walls of your cities have fallen, even if you thought that those walls would protect you.

₅₃When the enemies attack you and make you suffer, you will start eating your own children. You will eat the flesh of your sons and daughters that the Lord has given you. ₅₄Even someone who is good and friendly will become cruel to his brothers, his wife whom he loves and his children who are alive. ₅₅He will eat their flesh and he will not give anything to any of you, because that is all that he will have after your enemies have attacked your towns and after they have made you suffer in all your towns and cities. ₅₆Even a woman who has a soft heart, who is very neat and who does not want to walk on the ground without shoes, will become hard against the man she loves and her children. ₅₇She will eat the children that she has had and everything that came out of her with the child. She will eat it where no one else can see her, because that will be all that she has after your enemies have attacked your towns and made you suffer in all your towns.

₅₈You must do everything that the laws in this book say and you must respect the Lord your God. Everyone must respect and fear Him. If you do not, ₅₉then the Lord will make you and your descendants sick. You will be very sick and you will not be healed. ₆₀You were afraid of all those diseases in Egypt, but the Lord will bring those diseases to you and you will not be healed. ₆₁He will also bring other diseases to you which are not written about in this book of laws. The Lord will bring these diseases to you until you have all died. ₆₂There were as many of you as the stars in the sky before, but only a few of you will keep on living because you did not listen to the Lord your God. ₆₃It pleases the Lord to bless you, to give you good things and a lot of children, but if you do not listen to Him it will also please Him to cause you all to die and disappear. He will take you away from the land that you are going to take for yourselves.

₆₄The Lord will make you flee all over the world to go and live among the other nations, from one side of the earth to the other side. There you will serve other gods, gods that you and your forefathers did not know, gods that are made of wood and stone. ₆₅You will not enjoy it among those nations, and you will never be able to rest. The Lord will make your heart tremble, your eyes will go bad and you will become blind, and your spirit will become more tired every day. ₆₆Every night and every day you will think that your lives are over and that they will stop. You will be afraid and you will not know if you will still be alive the next day. ₆₇In the morning you will say: “I wish it was evening,” and in the evening you will say: “I wish it was morning.” You will say this because you will be afraid and you will see a lot of bad things. ₆₈The Lord will take you back to Egypt on boats. I have told you before that you would never see that land again, but you will try to sell yourselves to your enemies to be their slaves and slave girls, but no one will want you, and no one will buy you.’