Deuteronomy/Davarim 28: "And it will come to pass . . . IF . . ."

[First posted November 18, 2013.

 

Honestly . . . if God spells out what’s involved in the “IF” —obey or disobey—what part of “IF” do we not understand?

 

Would it not be better to stay on the safe side, since there is automatic blessing in obedience?  

 

For anyone clearly forewarned of dire consequences of disobedience ranging from bad, worse, to worst, what’s there to even think about?  Should one even have second thoughts? Surely everyone should opt for the blessing, is that so difficult considering the alternative?

 

But wait, there are conditions set to get the blessing and there’s the rub! And that’s where humans flunk. In fact, that’s where Israel flunked in its early history. There is precedent: the first couple in Eden were forewarned, yet look what happened . . . Cain was forewarned, but  . . . . so what’s the problem of humankind?  

 

The “I” in idolatry vs. the “I” in the Image of God.  Freedom of choice always requires two options, because there are two impulses at work within human nature.  Even if there are two impulses within, if there is only one choice, is free will still exercised?  

 

Consider this trivial example:  you really want to eat a lamb-burger and not a beef-burger;  but the burger fast-food place says they ran out of lamb-burger.  What choice are you left with?  Just one? take the beef?  Nah, you still can opt to try another place and if none, take the beef or change your mind and eat spaghetti.  Trivial, yeah; how about more difficult life-threatening or life-changing situations such as . . . .well, you think of one yourself and decide if —left with only one choice, what would you do?

 

When there is choice to do right or its opposite, granting one is informed of what is right and clearly God’s will—- why does man go for broke, meaning ‘MY will’ over and above God’s Will? Is this a universal experience?  In the case of Israel, according to its scripture-history, the chosen nation messed up  . . . a lot . . . over and over, until generations down the line learned lessons from consequences of their predecessors wrong choices. 

 

But let’s not look only at Israel; have other nations fared any better? 

 

Commentary here is from the best of Jewish minds as collected in one resource book by Dr. J.H. Hertz, Pentateuch and Haftorahs; our translation of choice is EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.–Admin1.]

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Deuteronomy/Davarim 28

 

THE BLESSINGS AND THE WARNINGS

After the solemn rehearsal of the Dooms, there follows a prescription of their effect and import.  ‘The Prophet has taught the higher law; he has rooted all human duty, both to God and man, in love of God; and now he tries to enlist man’s natural fear and hope as allies of his highest principle’ (Harper).  The Warning, as this chapter is called in Hebrew, is far more detailed than the parallel Warning in Lev. XXVI. ‘The language rises in this chapter to its sublimest strains:  and the prophecies respecting the dispersion and sufferings of the Jewish people in latter days are among the most remarkable in Scripture’ (Speaker’s Bible).

1-14.  THE BLESSINGS

 

1 Now it shall be: 

if you hearken, yes, hearken, to the voice of YHVH your God, 

taking-care to observe all his commandments that I command you today, 

then YHVH your God will make you most-high 

above all the nations of the earth.2 Then there will come upon you all these blessings, and overtake you, 

since you have hearkened to the voice of YHVH your God:

overake thee.  The blessings (and curses, v. 15) are personified as actual beings overtaking their objects.

3-6.  Six forms of blessing, covering Israel’s life in town and field, in offspring, crops, cattle, harvest, and daily bread.

3 Blessed be you, in the town, 

blessed be you, in the (open) field;4 blessed be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your soil, and the fruit of your animals, 

the offspring of your cattle and the fecundity of your sheep.5 Blessed be your basket and your kneading-bowl.

thy basket . . . kneading-trough.  Metaphors for the annual harvest of fruit and daily bread.

6 Blessed be you, in your coming-in, 

blessed be you, in your going-out.

comest in . . . goest out. The blessing of safety in all the manifold activities of ordinary life.

7-13.  The Divine blessing will rest also on their larger enterprises, whether in peace or war.  Theirs will be victory over enemies; material success in all forms of labour, accompanied by religious and cultural supremacy among the nations.

7 May YHVH make your enemies, those that rise against you, 

be smitten before you; 

by one road they will go out against you, 

by seven roads they will flee before you.

seven ways.  A round number, indicating a great quantity.  The compact array of the advancing foe is contrasted with his dispersion, in manifold directions, after defeat.

8 YHVH will ordain for you the blessing 

in your storehouses, 

in all the enterprises of your hand, 

and he will bless you in the land that YHVH your God is giving you.

9 YHVH will establish you to be a people holy to him, 

as he swore to you, 

when you keep the commandments of YHVH your God a

nd walk in his ways.

a holy people. Set apart for Himself, and therefore inviolable.

10 Now when all the peoples of the earth see 

that the name of YHVH is proclaimed over you, 

they will hold you in awe.

called upon thee.  i.e. that He is thy Owner, and, as such, surrounds thee with His protection.

11 YHVH will leave-excess for you of good-things,

 in the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your animals, and the fruit of your soil, 

on the soil that YHVH swore to your fathers, to give them.12 YHVH will open for you his goodly treasuries, the heavens, 

by giving the rain of your land in its set-time, 

and by blessing all the doings of your hand; 

you will lend to many nations, 

but you yourself will not have to take-a-loan.

good treasure. The celestial reservoirs in which the rain was conceived to be stored; Job, XXXVIII,22.

shalt tend. A sign of wealth, as well as of power and independence.

13 YHVH will make you the head and not the tail, 

you will be only top, you will not be bottom, 

-if you hearken to the commandments of YHVH your God 

which I command you today, by taking-care and by observing 

(them),

only. Here in the meaning of ‘nothing but’; ever rising in reputation.

15-68.  THE WARNINGS

In the remainder of this chapter, the Lawgiver sets forth in words of awful power the fact that God’s laws have a reverse, as well as an obverse, side; that the Divine Covenant was indeed a hope and an encouragement, but also a responsibility and a warning.  ‘The sublimity of the denunciations surpasses anything in the oratory or the poetry of the whole world.  Nothing, except the real horrors of Jewish history, can approach the tremendous maledictions which warned Israel against the violation of the Law’ (Milman).  ‘Three times does the wave of holy passion rise and fall.  At first the exuberance of the woes enumerated overpowers our attention the musically parallel sentences, which in other speeches make perorations, here come for intervals of relief.  Another stream of denunciation brings the serving the LORD with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart by reason of the abundance of all things, into contrast with the serving of the enemy in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things; and the siege laid by the enemy is extended in picture to the last horrors the mind can conceive.  Yet another flood of speech begins with the ‘glorious and fearful’ Name; and there passes before us the fading of the life of promise into plagues and exile; in exile, the trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul; until for a final climax the original salvation of Israel is reversed in a voluntary returning to the land of bondage, the people selling themselves to their enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, a climax yet more final than this, for “no man shall buy you”‘ (Moulton).

The curses are national and not individual.  They are all of them conditional, declaring what God would bring on Israel in the event of its complete apostasy.  Israel’s survival of the Divine Judgment is due to the fact that Israel always possessed a ‘righteous remnant”.

14 that you not turn-aside from all the words that I command you today, 

to the right or to the left, 

by walking after other gods, by serving them.15 But it shall be: 

If you do not hearken to the voice of YHVH your God, 

by taking-care and by observing all his commandments and his laws 

that I command you today, 

then there will come upon you all these curses, and overtake you:

16-19.  These curses take the same verbal form as the blessing, v. 1-6, and express failure in every department of national life.

16 Damned be you, in the town, 

damned be you, in the (open) field;

17 damned be your basket and your kneading-bowl,

18 damned be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your soil, 

the offspring of your cattle and the fecundity of your sheep;

19 damned be you, in your coming-in, damned be you, in your going-out.

20-26.  Disastrous years, fevers, droughts, and ruinous defeat in battle.

20 YHVH will send-forth against you

cursing.  The general term, particulars of which follow.

discomfiture. Inability to complete a task undertaken (Ibn Ezra).

rebuke. Failure to enjoy the fruit of one’s labours through constant anxiety and vexation.

21 YHVH will make-cling to you the pestilence, 

until it has finished you off from the soil that you are entering to possess.

pestilence.  Any dangerous epidemic.

22 YHVH will strike you 

with consumption, with fever and with inflammation, 

with violent-fever and with dehydration, 

with blight and with jaundice; 

they will pursue you until you are destroyed.

will smite thee. With seven plagues; five on men, and two on crops. The identification of the names of the plagues is by Macalister.

consumption. A wasting fever of the Mediterranean type.

fever. Malaria.

inflammation. Typhoid fever.

fiery heat. lit. ‘irritation’, erysipelas.

23 The heavens that are above your head will become bronze, 

and the earth that is beneath you, iron.

24 YHVH will make the rain of your land powder and dust;

 from the heavens it will come-down upon you 

until you perish.

power and dust. An allusion to the sirocco, with its fogs of sand and dust.

25 YHVH will cause you to be smitten before your enemies: 

by one road you will go-out against them, 

by seven roads you will flee before them- 

you will become an object-of-fright to all the kingdoms of the earth.

a horror unto.  Or, ‘a shuddering unto’; an awe-inspiring spectacle.

26 Your carcass will be for eating 

for all the fowl of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth, 

with none to make (them) tremble.

frighten.  As Rizpah’s mother-love did, II Sam. XXI,10.  So complete would be the rout, that the dead would lie unburied.

27-37.  Incurable diseases, mental blindness, a prey to cruel invaders, and ignominous exile.

27 YHVH will strike you 

with boils of Egypt 

and with tumors, with scabs, and with itching, 

from which you cannot be healed;

the boil of Egypt. VII,15.

28 YHVH will strike you 

with madness, with blindness, and with confusion of heart.

astonishment of heart.  Dismay; confusion of mind.

29 You will feel-about at noon 

like a blind-person feels about in deep-darkness, 

you will not make your way succeed; 

you will be, oh so withheld-from and robbed all the days, with no deliverer.

grope. Reduced to blind helplessness.

as the blind gropeth in darkness. ‘Rabbi Jose said, All my days I grieved at my not being able to explain this verse;  for what difference can it be to the blind man, whether he gropeth in the light of in the dark?  Until one night I was walking in the road, and met a blind man with a lighted torch in his hand.  ‘Son”, said I, “why dost thou carry that torch?  thou canst not see its light.”  “Friend,” replied the blind man, “true it is I cannot see, but as long as I carry this torch in my hand, the sons of men see me, take pity on me, and save me from pitfalls, from thorns and briers”‘ (Talmud).  Thus, the apparently superfluous phrase in darkness was to emphasize the greatness of the calamity that would befall Israel.  Even at noonday they were to grope as the blind do in the darkness, without a ray of light to exhibit their distress to the compassion of men.

30 A woman you will betroth, but another man will lie with her, 

a house you will build, but you will not dwell in it, 

a vineyard you will plant, but you will not put-it-to-use,

not use the fruit thereof.  See XX,6.  The helpless inhabitants would be at the mercy of insatiable conquerors, so that they could call nothing they possessed—not even their wives and children—their own.

31 your ox (will be) slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat of it, 

your donkey will be robbed (from you) in front of you, but it will not return to you, 

your sheep will be given to your enemies, with no deliverer for you.

before thine eyes.  Whilst thou art looking on, unable to raise a hand to prevent it.

32 Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, 

while your eyes look on and languish for them all the day, 

with no God-power to your hand.

thy sons and thy daughters. History records several large deportations of Israelites to distant lands beyond the Euphrates.

33 The fruit of your soil and all that-you-toil-for 

will be consumed by a people that you have not known, 

you will be only withheld-from and downtrodden all the days,

34 and you will go mad from the sight of your eyes that you see!

be mad. i.e. be driven mad.

35 YHVH will strike you 

with evil boils upon the knees and upon the thighs, 

from which you cannot be healed- 

from the sole of your foot up to your crown.36 YHVH will drive you and your king whom you have raised over you 

to a nation that you have not known, (either) you or your fathers, 

you shall serve there other gods, of wood and of stone.

thy king.  II Kings XXIV reports that Jehoiachin was carried captive to Babylon with 10,000 of his subjects.

serve other gods, wood and stone. ‘Transportation to a heathen land would mean absorption into the religion, as well as into the life, of heathenism’ (Welch).

37 You will become an example-of-desolation, a proverb and a byword 

among all the peoples to which YHVH drives you.

a proverb.  A taunt.

byword.  lit. ‘the object of biting remarks.’

38-44.  Impoverished Israel reduced to dependence on the resident foreigner.

38 Much seed you will take out to the field, but little will you gather in, 

for locusts will ravage them.

39 Vineyards you will plant and till, but their wine you will not

 drink, nor will you store (it), 

for the worm will devour them.

40 Olive trees you will have throughout all your territory, but oil you will not (get to) pour-for-anointing, 

for your olives will drop off.

41 Sons and daughters you will beget, but they will not be yours, 

for they will go into captivity.

shall not be thine. With transportation to a foreign land, estrangement from their fathers, Faith and People must inevitably follow.  Such estrangement is deemed a curse in Mal. III,24.  Byalik calls attention to a similar estrangement of the children from their Faith and People in the present age, and considers it the supreme tragedy of the Spiritual Golus of the emancipation era.

42 All the trees and the fruit of your soil, the buzzing-cricket will possess.

43 The sojourner that is in your midst 

will rise-high above you, higher (and) higher, 

while you descend lower and lower;

the stranger. He who had received the charity of the Israelites, to him would they now have to look for commiseration.  They must learn to live as servants where they had once been masters.

44 he will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; 

he will become the head, but you will become the tail.

45 Now when there come upon you all these curses, 

and pursue you and overtake you, 

until you have been destroyed, 

since you did not hearken to the voice of YHVH your God, 

to keep his commandments and his regulations that I 

commanded you,

because. A return to the keynote of this whole chapter, V. 15.

46 they will be for you a sign and a portent, 

and for your seed, for the ages-

for a sign and for a wonder.  The calamities shall testify to the truth of the Divine interpretation in history.  As soon as they were prepared to acknowledge that what they suffered was not unmerited, there was still soundness in them, and they would receive mercy at the hands of God.

upon thy seed for ever. i.e. as long as they maintained their disobedience and rebelliousness.  But, as stated in Deut. XXX,103, should they ‘bethink themselves’ and ‘return’, then would they reap the blessings of restoration and prosperity.

47 because you did not serve YHVH your God in joy and in good-

feeling of heart out of the abundance of everything.

48 So you will have to serve your enemies, whom YHVH 

will send-forth against you, 

in famine and in thirst, in nakedness and in lack of everything;

 he will put a yoke of iron upon your neck, 

until he has destroyed you.

49-55.  Measure for measure.  Invasion by a far-off nation.  The horrors of seige.

49 YHVH will raise up against you

 a nation from afar, from the edge of the earth, 

like an eagle swooping-down,

a nation whose language you do not understand,

bring a nation against thee. The Assyrians and Babylonians.

50 a nation fierce of countenance 

that does not lift up the countenance of the elderly 

and (to) youths shows-no-mercy.

fierce countenance. Unyielding to considerations of humanity or pity.

51 It will devour the fruit of your animals and the fruit of your soil, 

until you have been destroyed; 

it will not leave for you grain, new-wine, or shining-oil,

the offspring of your cattle or the fecundity of your sheep, 

until it has caused-you-to-perish.

52 It will besiege you within all your gates, 

until the collapse of your walls, high and fortified, 

in which you were feeling-secure throughout all your land, 

and will besiege you within all your gates, throughout all your land that YHVH your God has given you.

53 You will consume the fruit of your womb, 

the flesh of your sons and of your daughters 

that he has given you, YHVH your God, 

in the siege and in the straits with which your enemy puts-you-in-straits.

eat the fruit of thine own body.  Hunger would so brutalize them see II Kings VI,25-29.

straiten thee. ‘Press you hard’ (Moffatt).

54 The tenderest man among you, the one exceeding daintiest- 

his eye shall be too set-on-evil toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, 

and toward the rest of his children that he has spared

shall be evil.  He would begrudge even this ghastly food to those nearest to him.

55 to give to (even) one of them some of the flesh of his children that he eats, 

because he has nothing left of anything 

in the siege and in the straits with which your enemy puts-you-in-

straits, within all your gates.

56 (She) tenderest among you, the daintiest-one, 

whose sole of foot has not essayed to be placed upon the earth 

out of daintiness and out of being-tender-

 her eye shall be set-on-evil against the husband of her bosom, 

against her son and against her daughter,

57 against her afterbirth that goes out from between her legs 

and against her children that she bears; 

indeed, she shall eat them, out of lack of everything, in secret, 

in the siege and in the straits with which your enemy puts-you-in-straits, within your gates.

58 If you do not carefully observe all the words of this Instruction, those written in this document, to hold-in-awe the Name, this honored and awe-inspiring one, 

YHVH your God,

fear this glorious and awful Name.  The adjective ‘glorious’ has reference to the majesty of God, to Whom fear (i.e. reverence) is due; ‘awful’ denotes God’s awe-inspiring nature.  Name is occasionally used as a synonym for Deity, or as denoting the Divine Presence; Lev. XXIV,11.

59 then YHVH will make-extraordinary the blows (against) you 

and the blows (against) your seed, 

blows great and lasting, sicknesses evil and lasting;

wonderful.  Extraordinary, exceptional.

60 he will return upon you every illness of Egypt 

 from which you shrank-in-fear, 

 so that they cling to you;

61 also every sickness and every blow that is not written in this document of Instruction 

 YHVH will bring up against you, 

 until you have been destroyed;

62 you will be left menfolk few-in-number, 

 in place of your having-been like the stars of the heavens for multitude,

 since you did not hearken to the voice of YHVH your God.

63 And it shall be: 

 as YHVH once delighted in you 

 by doing-good for you and by making-you-many,

 thus will YHVH delight in you 

 by causing you to perish and by destroying you, 

 and you shall be pulled up from the soil that you are entering to possess.

the LORD rejoiced over you. When a son walks in the right way, it is the father’s joy to help him and to show him kindness.  Should, however, the son fall into evil ways, then it is equally the father’s ‘joy’ to find some means—even painful ones—to bring him back to the right path.  In like manner, God ‘rejoices’ to bring upon sinful Israel the trials and sufferings of exile, in order thereby to purify and elevate him, and thus restore him to His favour.

64 YHVH will scatter you among all the peoples, 

from the edge of the earth to the (other) edge of the earth; 

you will serve there other gods, whom you have not known, 

(either) you or your fathers, 

of wood and of stone.

shall scatter thee . . . and stone. See on v. 36.

65 Yet among those nations you shall not find-repose, 

nor shall there be rest for the sole of your foot: 

YHVH will give you there a shuddering heart, failing eyes and languishing breath.

among these nations.  Israel is to have no rest—never-ceasing anxiety, life in perpetual jeopardy, an unendurable present, and a future of undefined terrors.

failing of eyes.  Usually taken to mean the gradual extinction of all hope; or, the eyes refuse their office, because they see only horror.

languishing of soul.  A mind tortured and restless.

66 Your life will hang-by-a-thread before you, 

you will be terrified night and day, 

and you will not trust in (the security of) your life.

life shall hang in doubt before thee.  Like an object suspended by a tender thread and held in front of one’s eyes—about to fall down and break at any moment; but see next comment.

no assurance of thy life.  ‘Thou shalt expect every moment to be thy last’ (Driver).  Better, thou shalt not believe in thy life; i.e. thou canst not believe that these happenings are happening to thee, that they are real; deluding thyself with the vain hope that it is all an evil dream (Steinthal).

67 At daybreak you will say: Who would make it sunset! 

And at sunset you will say: Who would make it daybreak! 

-out of the terror of your heart that you feel-in-terror, 

out of the sight of your eyes that you see.

in the morning thou shalt say. Even as he that suffers acute pain yearns for the hours to pass.  This v. graphically depicts the agonized uncertainty, protracted by day and by night.

68 YHVH will return you to Egypt in ships, 

by the route of which I had said to you: 

You shall not see it again any more! 

You will put yourselves up for sale there to your enemies as servants and as maids, 

with none to buy (you).

bring thee back into Egypt. A culminating calamity. God repeats the prohibition mentioned in XVII,16, and they would be returned to Egypt, to the degradation of their erstwhile Egyptian serfdom.  At the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, both Titus and Hadrian consigned multitudes of Jews into slavery; and Egypt received a large proportion of those slaves.

in ships. They came forth from Egypt ‘600,000 men on foot’, a disciplined host of free warriors, but would be carried hither cooped up in slave-ships.  The Romans had a fleet in the Mediterranean, and this was an easier and safer way of transporting prisoners than by land across the desert.

sell yourselves. Better, offer yourselves for sale; ye will in vain seek and yearn to be bought as man-servants and maid-servants (Rashi).

no man shall buy you. Josephus records that when, at the Destruction of Jerusalem, the Roman troops grew weary of slaughter, 97,000 of the younger prisoners were spared.  Those over 17 years were sent to the mines, or to the arenas to fight as gladiators or against wild beasts; those under 17 were sold as slaves; but the market was so glutted that through offered at nominal prices, none would buy them!  Those who remained unpurchased were sent into confinement, where they perished by hundreds and thousands from hunger.

69.  SUPERSCRIPTION

If, in Hellas, the beautiful was conceived to be the fruit of joyful play;if, in Rome, serious will was held to lead to power and right; in Jerusalem, everything high and holy was deemed to be the vintage of suffering and sorrow’ (Steinthal).

these are the words of the covenant.  A summary description of the contents of the whole chapter.

beside the covenant . . . in Horeb. A reference to the parallel section of the Warning in Lev. XXVI.