Ulangan 28:20

Curses by Disease and Drought

28:20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you ¹  in everything you undertake ²  until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. ³ 

Mazmur 9:6

9:6 The enemy’s cities have been reduced to permanent ruins; ⁴ 

you destroyed their cities; ⁵ 

all memory of the enemies has perished. ⁶ 

[28:20]  ¹ tn Heb “the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke” (NASB and NIV similar); NRSV “disaster, panic, and frustration.”

[28:20]  ² tn Heb “in all the stretching out of your hand.”

[28:20]  ³ tc For the MT first person common singular suffix (“me”), the LXX reads either “Lord” (Lucian) or third person masculine singular suffix (“him”; various codices). The MT’s more difficult reading probably represents the original text.

[28:20]  tn Heb “the evil of your doings wherein you have forsaken me”; CEV “all because you rejected the Lord.”

[9:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “the enemy – they have come to an end [in] ruins permanently.” The singular form אוֹיֵב (’oyev, “enemy”) is collective. It is placed at the beginning of the verse to heighten the contrast with יְהוָה (yÿhvah, “the Lord”) in v. 7.

[9:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “you uprooted cities.”

[9:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “it has perished, their remembrance, they.” The independent pronoun at the end of the line is in apposition to the preceding pronominal suffix and lends emphasis (see IBHS 299 §16.3.4). The referent of the masculine pronoun is the nations/enemies (cf. v. 5), not the cities (the Hebrew noun עָרִים [’arim, “cities”] is grammatically feminine). This has been specified in the present translation for clarity; many modern translations retain the pronoun “them,” resulting in ambiguity (cf. NRSV “their cities you have rooted out; the very memory of them has perished”).