By Stan Goodenough

And the LORD said to Moses: “Behold, you will rest with your fathers; and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land, where they go to be among them, and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured.

(Deuteronomy 31:16-17)

More than 1200 years before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and captivity of the people of Judah, and shortly before he died, Moses gathered the Israelites together and, after listing the wonderful blessings they would enjoy if they remained faithful to their God, reeled off a chilling litany of curses which would befall them if they did not.

The people of Israel experienced many of these curses in the period leading up to their first exile. Since then they have experienced all the others.

According to Deuteronomy 28, the curses would fall on:

• both rural and urban areas (vs 16)
• the produce of the land (vs 17-18)
• flocks and herds (vs 18)
• the Israelites’ children (vs 18)

The curses would include:

• death by pestilence and plague, consumption, fever, the sword, scorching, mildew (vs 21-22)
• drought and dust-storms (vs 23-24)
• boils, tumors and scabs (vs 27)
• madness, blindness, confusion (vs 28)
• oppression and plundering at the hands of their enemies, to whom Israel would become troublesome (vs 25)
• the unfaithfulness and/or ravishing of their marriage partners (vs 30)
• theft of home, field, herds and flocks (vs 30 – 31)
• enslavery of sons and daughters (vs 32, 41)
• oppressive occupation by foreign forces (vs 49-52)
• exile (vs 36)
• degradation (vs 37)
• locust plague, crop-destroying worms, rotten harvests (vs 39-40)
• indebtedness and subjugation to “the stranger among you” (vs 43-44)

Furthermore, Moses said, God would send an invading army that would:

• plunder and denude the land (vs 49-51)
• besiege the cities of Israel (vs 52)
• starve the populations to the extent they would be driven to commit unspeakable horrors (vs 53-57)

And as they curses were poured out on the children of Israel they would:

• be decimated in number (vs 62)
• be plucked up from the land where He had planted them (vs 63)
• be scattered from one end of the earth to the other (vs 64)
• be hounded and harried, persecuted and threatened with death in the nations among whom they were scattered. (vs 66-67)
• return to Egypt (vs 68)

This feature will soon include links to notes detailing the dates and places of Israel’s experiences of these curses.

© Israel My Beloved