Some years ago, a friend of mine enrolled in a course for web design. He thought he had got some kind of scholarship for his training but was shocked to find that he was landed with a bill for a considerable amount of money! The trouble was he had not read the small print. I can hardly think that he is typical as we can all be guilty of hearing what we want to hear or skimming some information and only picking up what we want to!

The Israelites, as they were about to enter the land, faced as a very similar temptation. I can imagine it would be very easy for them to turn off after the first part of Moses’ speech. The section we just looked at in this chapter (vs1-14) is full of good things, as it is all about the blessing the Lord would bring upon them as a nation if they followed all His commands and laws when they entered the land. The danger was they could stop listening after that and then miss what would happen if they failed to follow God’s commands.

It is always a good rule to play special attention if a sentence comes to an end and the next one starts with a: ‘But’ (v15) as it indicates a change of tone in what is being said, and this is the case here. The fact that the curses in this chapter outnumber the blessings by 5 to 1 could lead us into adopting the stereotypical view of the ‘God of the Old Testament’ as a vengeful and vindictive God who punishes people for the slightest infraction of one of His rules! But this is to ignore the picture of God that has been building up steadily throughout the book of Deuteronomy. Yes, those rules were to be taken seriously, but there was a very good reason for that. After all, this is the God who has done everything for His people; He has rescued them and taken care of them. He is a loving God who wants a relationship with His people where they will benefit. To ignore this and to embrace any other kind of lifestyle, especially that of the people of the land they about to enter would be disastrous. Raymond Brown makes this very good point about these curses. ‘The very fact that they had been warned in this way, however, is a token of God’s generous mercy. He warns them because he loves them and does not want them to suffer.’[1]

This section of curses can be divided into three groups. Those in verses 15-44, which conclude with the warnings of verses 45 and 46b. Those which result in military oppression from enemies which are found in verses 47-57 and finally those which give warning of Israel’s future exile as a punishment for rejecting the Lords commands in verses 58-68.[2] A casual read of this section shows that many of these curses repeat themselves in some form or other. But this was not unusual with the writings of the Ancient Near East. The repetitive and seemingly disproportionate number of curses, as opposed to the blessings was a fairly common feature in an Ancient Near East Vassal Treaty which Deuteronomy so closely resembles in its structure.

Verse 15 states the theme of the passage with its change of tone. The section that follows (vs16-19) virtually mirrors the verses on blessing earlier in the chapter (vs3-6) in that they give the opposite of blessing in the same areas of Israel’s life, domestic and agricultural (the exception to this mirror image is the reversal of verses 5 and 17). The message is clear; failure to faithfully follow God’s commands will lead to curses with negative results in these areas.  Verse 20 sums up this section in its statement that: ‘The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and frustration in all you undertake to do’.  It points out this will lead to disaster for them as a nation because they have forsaken the Lord.

 [1] Raymond Brown, The Message of Deuteronomy, The Bible Speaks Today (Inter-Varsity-Press, 1993) 268.

[2] J.A. Thompson, Deuteronomy, An Introduction and Commentary (Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press, 1974) 271.