Blessings for Obedience

28 “If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth;^{(A) 2} all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God:

³ “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.^(B)

⁴ “Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, both the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock.^(C)

⁵ “Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

⁶ “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

⁷ “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.^{(D) 8} The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you undertake; he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ⁹ The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways.^{(E) 10} All the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you.^{(F) 11} The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give you.^{(G) 12} The Lord will open for you his rich storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all your undertakings. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow.^{(H) 13} The Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be only at the top and not at the bottom—if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today by diligently observing them, ¹⁴ and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I am commanding you today, either to the right or to the left, following other gods to serve them.^(I)

Warnings against Disobedience

¹⁵ “But if you will not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees that I am commanding you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you:^(J)

¹⁶ “Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field.

¹⁷ “Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

¹⁸ “Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock.

¹⁹ “Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.

²⁰ “The Lord will send upon you disaster, panic, and frustration in everything you attempt to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds with which you have forsaken me.^{(K) 21} The Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until it has consumed you off the land that you are entering to possess.^{(L) 22} The Lord will afflict you with consumption, fever, inflammation, with fiery heat and drought,^[a] and with blight and mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish.^{(M) 23} The sky over your head shall be bronze and the earth under you iron.^{(N) 24} The Lord will change the rain of your land into powder, and only dust shall come down upon you from the sky until you are destroyed.

²⁵ “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out against them one way and flee before them seven ways. You shall become an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.^{(O) 26} Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away.^{(P) 27} The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, scurvy, and itch, of which you cannot be healed.^{(Q) 28} The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind; ²⁹ you shall grope about at noon as blind people grope in darkness, but you shall be unable to find your way, and you shall be continually abused and robbed, without anyone to help.^{(R) 30} You shall become engaged to a woman, but another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house but not live in it. You shall plant a vineyard but not enjoy its fruit.^{(S) 31} Your ox shall be butchered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it. Your donkey shall be stolen in front of you and shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies without anyone to help you. ³² Your sons and daughters shall be given to another people while you look on; you will strain your eyes looking for them all day but be powerless to do anything.^{(T) 33} A people whom you do not know shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors; you shall be continually abused and crushed^{(U) 34} and driven mad by the sight that your eyes shall see. ³⁵ The Lord will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.^{(V) 36} The Lord will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known, where you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone.^{(W) 37} You shall become an object of horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you.^(X)

³⁸ “You shall carry much seed into the field but shall gather little in, for the locust shall consume it.^{(Y) 39} You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them. ⁴⁰ You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. ⁴¹ You shall have sons and daughters, but they shall not remain yours, for they shall go into captivity.^{(Z) 42} All your trees and the fruit of your ground the cicada shall take over.^{(AA) 43} Aliens residing among you shall ascend above you higher and higher, while you shall descend lower and lower.^{(AB) 44} They shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to them; they shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.^(AC)

⁴⁵ “All these curses shall come upon you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God by observing the commandments and the decrees that he commanded you.^{(AD) 46} They shall be among you and your descendants as a sign and a portent forever.

⁴⁷ “Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and with gladness of heart for the abundance of everything,^{(AE) 48} therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and lack of everything. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.^{(AF) 49} The Lord will bring a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand,^{(AG) 50} a grim-faced nation showing no respect to the old or favor to the young. ⁵¹ It shall consume the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed, leaving you neither grain, wine, and oil nor the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, until it has made you perish.^{(AH) 52} It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the Lord your God has given you.^{(AI) 53} In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you.^{(AJ) 54} Even the most refined and gentle of men among you will begrudge food to his own brother, to the wife whom he embraces, and to the last of his remaining children, ⁵⁵ giving to none of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because nothing else remains to him, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in all your towns. ⁵⁶ She who is the most refined and gentle among you, so gentle and refined that she does not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge food to the husband whom she embraces, to her own son, and to her own daughter,^{(AK) 57} begrudging even the afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs and the children that she bears, because she is eating them in secret for lack of anything else, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in your towns.

⁵⁸ “If you do not diligently observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, fearing this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God,^{(AL) 59} then the Lord will overwhelm both you and your offspring with severe and lasting afflictions and grievous and lasting maladies. ⁶⁰ He will bring back upon you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were in dread, and they shall cling to you.^{(AM) 61} Every other malady and affliction, even though not recorded in the book of this law, the Lord will inflict on you until you are destroyed.^{(AN) 62} Although once you were as numerous as the stars in heaven, you shall be left few in number because you did not obey the Lord your God.^{(AO) 63} And just as the Lord took delight in making you prosperous and numerous, so the Lord will take delight in bringing you to ruin and destruction; you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to possess.^{(AP) 64} The Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known.^{(AQ) 65} Among those nations you shall find no ease, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a languishing spirit.^{(AR) 66} Your life shall hang in doubt before you; night and day you shall be in dread, with no assurance of your life. ⁶⁷ In the morning you shall say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and at evening you shall say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread that your heart shall feel and the sights that your eyes shall see.^{(AS) 68} The Lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, by a route that I promised you would never see again, and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.”

29 ^[b]These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb.^(AT)

The Covenant Renewed in Moab

^2 [c]Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land,^{(AU) 3} the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. ⁴ But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.^{(AV) 5} I have led you forty years in the wilderness. The clothes on your back have not worn out, and the sandals on your feet have not worn out;^{(AW) 6} you have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink—so that you may know that I am the Lord your God.^{(AX) 7} When you came to this place, King Sihon of Heshbon and King Og of Bashan came out against us for battle, but we defeated them.^{(AY) 8} We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.^{(AZ) 9} Therefore observe the words of this covenant and perform them, in order that you may succeed^[d] in everything that you do.^(BA)

¹⁰ “You stand assembled today, all of you, before the Lord your God—the leaders of your tribes,^[e] your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel, ¹¹ your children, your women, and the aliens who are in your camp, both those who cut your wood and those who draw your water^(BB)— ¹² to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, sworn by an oath, which the Lord your God is making with you today, ¹³ in order that he may establish you today as his people and that he may be your God, as he promised you and as he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.^{(BC) 14} I am making this covenant, sworn by an oath, not only with you ¹⁵ who stand here with us today before the Lord our God but also with those who are not here with us today. ¹⁶ You know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed. ¹⁷ You have seen their detestable things, the filthy idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, that were among them.^{(BD) 18} It may be that there is among you a man or woman or a family or tribe whose heart is already turning away from the Lord our God to serve the gods of those nations. It may be that there is among you a root sprouting poisonous and bitter growth.^{(BE) 19} All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves, thinking in their hearts, ‘We are safe even though we go our own stubborn ways’ (thus sweeping away the moist with the dry)^[f]— ²⁰ the Lord will be unwilling to pardon them, for then the Lord’s anger and passion will smoke against them. All the curses written in this book will descend on them, and the Lord will blot out their names from under heaven.^{(BF) 21} The Lord will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.^{(BG) 22} The next generation, your children who rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who comes from a distant country, will see the devastation of that land and the afflictions with which the Lord has afflicted it^(BH)— ²³ all its soil burned out by sulfur and salt, nothing planted, nothing sprouting, unable to support any vegetation, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his fierce anger^(BI)— ²⁴ they and indeed all the nations will wonder, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused this great display of anger?’^{(BJ) 25} They will conclude, ‘It is 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. ²⁶ They turned and served other gods, worshiping them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them; ²⁷ so the anger of the Lord was kindled against that land, bringing on it every curse written in this book. ²⁸ The Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, fury, and great wrath and cast them into another land, as is now the case.’^{(BK) 29} The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law.

⁵⁴ Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest, and he was sitting with the guards, warming himself at the fire.^{(A) 55} Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none. ⁵⁶ For many gave false testimony against him, and their testimony did not agree. ⁵⁷ Some stood up and gave false testimony against him, saying, ⁵⁸ “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’ ”^{(B) 59} But even on this point their testimony did not agree. ⁶⁰ Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?” ⁶¹ But he was silent and did not answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah,^[a] the Son of the Blessed One?”^{(C) 62} Jesus said, “I am, and

⁶³ Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “Why do we still need witnesses?^{(E) 64} You have heard his blasphemy! What is your decision?” All of them condemned him as deserving death.^{(F) 65} Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!” The guards also took him and beat him.^(G)

Peter Denies Jesus

⁶⁶ While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the female servants of the high priest came by.^{(H) 67} When she saw Peter warming himself, she stared at him and said, “You also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth.”^{(I) 68} But he denied it, saying, “I do not know or understand what you are talking about.” And he went out into the forecourt.^[b] Then the cock crowed.^{[c](J) 69} And the female servant, on seeing him, began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” ⁷⁰ But again he denied it. Then after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean, and you talk like one.”^{[d](K) 71} But he began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know this man you are talking about.” ⁷² At that moment the cock crowed for the second time. Then Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.^(L)