Ulangan 28:45-52

28:45 All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given ¹  you. 28:46 These curses ²  will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants. ³ 

The Curse of Military Siege

28:47 “Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 28:48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty ⁴  you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They ⁵  will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 28:49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth ⁶  as the eagle flies, ⁷  a nation whose language you will not understand, 28:50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. 28:51 They ⁸  will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, ⁹  or lambs of your flocks ¹⁰  until they have destroyed you. 28:52 They will besiege all of your villages ¹¹  until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you.

Ulangan 29:24-28

29:24 Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger ¹²  all about?” 29:25 Then people will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 29:26 They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they did not know and that he did not permit them to worship. ¹³  29:27 That is why the Lord’s anger erupted against this land, bringing on it all the curses ¹⁴  written in this scroll. 29:28 So the Lord has uprooted them from their land in anger, wrath, and great rage and has deported them to another land, as is clear today.”

Ulangan 31:17-18

31:17 At that time ¹⁵  my anger will erupt against them ¹⁶  and I will abandon them and hide my face from them until they are devoured. Many disasters and distresses will overcome ¹⁷  them ¹⁸  so that they ¹⁹  will say at that time, ‘Have not these disasters ²⁰  overcome us ²¹  because our ²²  God is not among us ²³ ?’ 31:18 But I will certainly ²⁴  hide myself at that time because of all the wickedness they ²⁵  will have done by turning to other gods.

[28:45]  ¹ tn Heb “commanded”; NAB, NIV, TEV “he gave you.”

[28:46]  ² tn Heb “they”; the referent (the curses mentioned previously) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[28:46]  ³ tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).

[28:48]  ⁴ tn Heb “lack of everything.”

[28:48]  ⁵ tn Heb “he” (also later in this verse). The pronoun is a collective singular referring to the enemies (cf. CEV, NLT). Many translations understand the singular pronoun to refer to the Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV).

[28:49]  ⁶ tn Heb “from the end of the earth.”

[28:49]  ⁷ tn Some translations understand this to mean “like an eagle swoops down” (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), comparing the swift attack of an eagle to the attack of the Israelites’ enemies.

[28:51]  ⁸ tn Heb “it” (so NRSV), a collective singular referring to the invading nation (several times in this verse and v. 52).

[28:51]  ⁹ tn Heb “increase of herds.”

[28:51]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “growth of flocks.”

[28:52]  ¹¹ tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.

[29:24]  ¹² tn Heb “this great burning of anger”; KJV “the heat of this great anger.”

[29:26]  ¹³ tn Heb “did not assign to them”; NASB, NRSV “had not allotted to them.”

[29:27]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the entire curse.”

[31:17]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “on that day.” This same expression also appears later in the verse and in v. 18.

[31:17]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “find,” “encounter.”

[31:17]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “him.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “them.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.

[31:17]  ²⁰ tn Heb “evils.”

[31:17]  ²¹ tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:17]  ²² tn Heb “my.”

[31:17]  ²³ tn Heb “me.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “us,” which is necessary in any case in the translation because of contemporary English style.

[31:18]  ²⁴ tn The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute for emphasis, which the translation indicates with “certainly.”

[31:18]  ²⁵ tn Heb “he.” Smr, LXX, and the Targums read the plural “they.” See note on the first occurrence of “they” in v. 16.