Deuteronomy 28

Deuteronomy 28:1-14

We have here, 1. The blessings of obedience, ver. 1—14. 2. The curles on defilefulness, ver. 1—67. They are enlarged upon, to affect their minds with the one, and to alarm them by the other.

1. AND it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken the diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day; that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all esteem of the earth. 2. And all the thiefs shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God. 3. Bleffed shalt thou be in the city, and bleffed shalt thou be in the field. 4. Bleffed shalt be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. 5. Bleffed shalt be thy barker and thy fifer. 6. Bleffed shalt thou be when thou cometh in, and bleffed shalt thou be when thou goeth out. 7. The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be the fritted before thy face; they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. 8. The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy thine houses, and in all that thou fetteth thine hand unto: and he shall bleth thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 9. The LORD shall establish thee as fairly people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. 10. And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of thee. 11. And the LORD shall make thee pleitless in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD hears unto thy fathers to give thee. 12. The LORD shall open unto thee his good realizer, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bleth all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. 13. And the LORD shall make thee the head and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath: if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them: 14. And thou shalt not go afide from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

God delights in the prosperity of his people, and to bless them he rejoiceth; whilst vengeance is his strange work. Happy for them, if, sensible of his goodness, they are enabled to walk so as not to provoke his displeasure.

1. God propounds to them the condition on which all their happiness depended; and that was, serious attention to his revealed will, faithful and persevering obedience to his commands, and, particularly, careful watchfulness not to turn afide after idols. As long as we are found waiting upon God in his ways, so long we may be assured he will meet and bless us.

2. The blessings promised are most engaging, great, and glorious, spiritual and temporal, and on doubt look farther, even to eternal blessedness. (1.) Outward prosperity and affluence are promised them. (2.) In dignity they should excel all nations. Wealth, like a river, should flow in upon them, so that the nations around should borrow of them, and be in subsistence to them. Victory constantly should attend their standards, their enemies in fear bow down and lick the dust before them, and be forced to own God’s distinguishing regard for them. Note, They who have God for their friend, will surely at last have their enemies at their feet. (2.) God’s blessing is promised on them

them in all places, and in all undertakings. In the city peace, plenty, and riches, in their traffic should abound. In the field, their labour should be crowned with success beyond their profit, and their undertakings prosperous, under the confluent care of a covenant God. Note, They who have an eye to God in all they take in hand, and keep him in their mind in all their travels, will find his blessings still preventing and following them. (3) Uncommon fruitfulness is affixed them. Their families should increase as a flock, and no want of a portion and provision for them. Their sheep and oxen should multiply exceedingly; their fields stand thick with corn, warmed from heaven with peculiar care; and, when gathered in, still God’s blessing should be upon their stores, preserving them from damage and accidents, and giving them the most comfortable enjoyment of their professions. Thus every earthly bliss, health, wealth, honour, children; in store, all that heart could with, is promised as their portion. Note, They who have an interest in God’s love, may be affixed they shall want no manner of thing that is good. If the gospel directs us rather to Spiritual and eternal, than temporal blessings; yet it affirms us these shall in a measure be added to those who seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. (2) Spiritual mercies are promised them. They who are faithful to that measure of grace they receive, shall grow in grace. (1.) God engages to other bliss them in holiness, to keep them a people separate for himself, and to bless them with his ordinances for their increasing satisfaction. Note, Holiness is God’s work in us; we are called to obey his guilty motions; and when we do so, he is pleased to reward what he hath wrought, by strengthening, establishing, and settling us. (2.) Their religious character should engage the reverence and respect of the nations around them. The evident regard of God to them would be confessed by their enemies, and therein a clear acknowledgment be made of their superior happiness and felicity, arising from his favour and love. Spiritual happiness is the best of portions; and they who have the Lord for their God, possess a joy, which, though the stranger intermeddeth not with, he will be forced to own, is the only real felicity under the sun.

15. ¶ But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments, and his fixtures which I command thee this day; that all the curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee. 16. Cursed shall thou be in the city, and cursed shall thou be in the field. 17. Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store. 18. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. 19. Cursed shall thou be when thou cometh in, and cursed shall thou be when thou goeth out. 20. The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou seteth thine hand unto, for to do; until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me. 21. The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goeth to potish it. 22. The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew: and they shall pursue thee until thou perish. 23. And * thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brash, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. 24. The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. 25. The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them; and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. 26. And * thy carcass shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. 27. The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canh not be healed. 28. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart. 29. And * thou shalt grope at noon-day, as the blind growth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed, and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. 30. * Thou shalt become a wife, and another man shall lie with her: * thou shalt build an houle, and thou shalt not dwell therein: * thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the

grapes thereof. 31. Thine are shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: thine as shall be violently taken away from before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them. 32. Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long: and they shall be no might in thine hand. 33. * The fruit of thy land and all thy labours, and shall a nation which thou knoweth not, eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed away: 34. So that thou shalt be mad, * for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. 35. The LORD shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a fore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head. 36. The LORD shall bring thee, and * thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and * there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone. 37. And thou shalt become * an astonishment, a proverb, and * a by-word, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee. 38. * Thou shalt carry much fend out into the field, and shalt gather for little in: for the locust shall consume it. 39. Thou shalt plant vineyards and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, not gather the grapes: for the worms shall eat them. 40. Thou shalt have olive-trees through, but all thy coasts, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil: for thine olive shall cast his fruit. 41. Thou shalt beget him and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them: for they shall go into captivity. 42. All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume. 43. The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. 44. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: * He shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.

9. 15-44. They who will not be confeainted by God’s love, must perish under his disposition. We have here a curle threatened, extensive and terrible enough to make the ears of every one who heareth it to tingle.

10. The cause of it affigned: their contemptuous disregard of God, their wilful disobedience to his will, and especially their impious forsaking him to follow idols. If we cast off God, no wonder he rejects us. In his judgments he will appear just: none suffer under his curle, but those who rebel against his commands.

11. The curle itself here denounced, vast, comprehensive, and inevitable. Wherever the dinner goes, colder than his shadow it pursues him. The fenced cities, or rural scene, afford no protection, can give no relief. Whatever he hath, the curle is upon it: the very ground groans under it in barrenness; his possessions are forfeited by sin, and embittered to him; the poison of wrath mingles with every enjoyment; every word of his hand is unsuccessful; vexation and disappointment torment him without ceasing, and no prospect of their end. Wore, woe, woe, to the finish soul, against whom God cometh forth thus armed with indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish. But left general denunciations should not have the willful-for effect, he descends to particulars; each like a poisonous dart armed with a mortal fling, and every famer set up as the mark on whom God would in particular empty his quiver. Delicate shall seize upon their bodies, not as the rod of correction, but as the stroke of judgment. Loutalome ulcers, (fainfuls punishment for the loathomeness of sin) shall cover them from head to foot, and make them an abhorring to others, and a burden to themselves. Agonizing pain shall torture them from the burning fores, and no cure or palliative be found; and after days of anguish, the pining consumption, or raging fever, or mortal pestilence, shall finish in torment a life of misery. Famine shall aggravate their pain and sickness; the heavens shall drop down no dew, and the incrusted earth be incapable of vegetation: and if a leaf appears, or blade of grass, God’s terrible army, the locusts, shall be at hand to devour it: so that the seed sown shall not be reaped; whilst the worm shall mar their vineyards, and the fruit of the olive fall, shook down by flurry blasts, or withered with incessant drought. To add to their plagues, the sword of the enemy shall overtake them, irresistible in fury, merciless in vengeance; and so abhorred should they be, that no man passing by would bury their carcasses. nor so much as fray away the birds which peryed upon them. infatuated withal, their counsels should be foolish, and madness of heart make them a terror to themselves; whilst every refuge they fled to should fail them, and their alive difterth them as much as their enemies. Their enjoyments shall now vanish as a dream; the wife they have espouted he violated; their substance consumed by the oppressor; their houses plundered, their

H h h cattle Before Chall (4) 1

cattle driven away for a spoil, and serve to fealt their enemies, which themselves are fanished with hunger. From free-born sons of Israel, who kept the nations at their feet, they should drag the galling chain of captivity heavily along; should behold their sons and daughters plucked from their embraces, doomed to fervile labours, or devoted to more fervile lulls. Idolatry, which had born their sin, shall become now their punishment; and racks and fires compel them to serve those gods in a strange land, after whom they went a whoring in their own. The few that remained in Canaan, far from experiencing a happier estate, should there be inflicted and tyrannized over by their lordly matters, and groan in vain under loads of taxes and debt, without pity, or hope of release from their opperifors; contemptible in every eye, the very heathens would take up a taunting growth against them; which overwhelmed with their miseries, they should stand silent in terror and alluishment at their own plagues, the fument of which should be dark unfathomable despair, and at last the dreadful effect thereof raging and incurable madness. Who can review this earth without trembling? yet these things to the sinner are but the beginnings of sorrow. Learn hence, (1.) What a fearful thing is to fall into the hands of the living God. (2.) That when we see spreading diseases, we should deprecate the wrath that is gone forth. (3.) That blindness of heart is among God’s heaviest curses. (4.) That they who fall themselves to work iniquity, shall find their iniquity turned into their plague, and the idols they serve become their torment. (5.) That the most dreadful of all estates is despair. (6.) That this is often the cause of madness. (7.) That all these evils date their origin to departure from the living God.

45. Moreover, all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall purise thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hears knell not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee. 46. And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy deed for ever. 47. Because thou serveest not the LORD thy God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things: all therefore shall thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thrift, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. 48. The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, at first as the eagle fleets, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand: 50. A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young. 51. And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which alfs shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kins, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. 52. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trisflect, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, throughout all thy land which the LORD thy God hath given thee. 53. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters (which the LORD thy God hath given thee) in the siege, and in the strained wherewith thine enemies shall dissect thee. 54. So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and towards the remnant of his children which he shall leave: 55. So that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the strained wherewith thine enemies shall dissect thee in all thy gates. 56. The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground, for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil towards the husband of her bosom, and towards her son, and towards her daughter. 57. And towards her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secret in the siege and strained wherewith thine enemy shall dissect thee in thy gates. 58. If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law, that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD, 59. Then the LORD will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, ever great plagues, and of long continuance,

and fore sicknesses, and of long continuance. 60. Moreover, he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee. 61. Also every sickness, and every plague which is not written in the book of this law, them will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed. 62. And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude: because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the LORD thy God. 63. And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you: so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought: and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it. 64. And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, ever wood and stone. 65. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have soft: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind. 66. And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear, day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life. 67. In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even: and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning, for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. 68. And the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again, with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bond-men and bond-women, and no man shall buy you.

9. 45-68. Like the intervals of thunder, when one loud roar is past, after a moment’s pause a louder burst succeeds: so are the judgments of God upon an impenitent people. Far from being exhausted, they are redoubled, and greater still in there. The former curses seem to point ethically at these occasions which God sent upon them, till their return from the Babylonish captivity; these last seem particularly applicable to their present disposition. An event to singular, amazing, and altogether miraculous, that it stands a striking proof of the fulfilment of this prophecy, and an incontestable evidence of the divine authority of the scriptures. The threatening of God here denounced are many and dreadful, and we now see them literally accomplished. 1. They are doomed to stand as monuments of divine vengeance, and as a wonder to themselves and others. Such they are this day, scattered among all nations, yet distinct as ever, and every where evidently lying under some of the curses here pronounced upon them. 2. Because they refused to serve God with chastelunels, when he poured down his multiplied mercies upon them, they are condemned to serve their enemies under an iron yoke, and the most distressing want, which was successively fulfilled under the Afghian and Babylonians, till their last destruction came upon them under the Romans; and now they are in every land without the least power or authority, subject to every opposition of their haughty matters, and in general in abject want and wretchedness. 3. This is threatened to be effected in a way most tremendous: a fierce nation, unhaving and merciless, should fly like an eagle upon them, and after spreading defoliation around them, besiege and destroy every defenced city, and lay them in the dust. The Roman Society is well known; their standards bore the eagle, and these they carried with them, drawing their distant legions to the siege of Jerusalem, which was at last taken and utterly destroyed. 4. The miseries of this siege are here pathetically described: Famine so severe should ensue, that the nearest relations shall not only grodge each other the least morbid, but look with most malignant design to seize an opportunity of staying each other for meat. Nay, such should be the intolerable hunger, that not only the common people, but the nobleman delicately brought up, should be led to murder the wife of his bosom, or the children she bare him, for food: nay, more shocking, that the tender mother, and the delicate lady, shall not withhold their hands from infant poor, nor spare the babe at their breath, or the fruit of their womb. The literal fulfilment of which Josephus remarks, when, amidst innumerable murder, ravages, and shocking sowns, committed by the nearest relatives, he mentions a lady of fashion, who murdered her forking child: one half she had devoured, when the house being broken up by the famished people in search of meat, and they on pain of death demanded it, she produced the other mangled half, to the horror and confusion of the beholders. 5. The most terrible plagues are denounced: plagues wonderful on them and their posterity, and sicknesses are and long continued. And dreadful indeed have been those they have suffered, during more than 1700 years, and the Jews themselves

themselves are constrained to own it. 6. Few of them should be left, of their self multitude, the sword, the famine and the plague should make such havoc among them. Accordingly we are informed now these millions of them perished at once, under the Roman invasion, by these fore judgments, and very few escaped the aloudt universal excision. 7. The doom of those who escape is no less terrible; endowed by their enemies, and dispersed into distant lands, particularly sent by ships into Egypt, and even there is the that scarce a purchaser could be found for them; constrained to the service of gods their fathers never knew, and carrying about with them a trembling heart, in constant terror of new judgments, at morning wishing for night, at night for morning, and having no rest, possession, or abiding settlement in any place; all which were remarkably fulfilled. The number of the slaves was to great after the taking Jerusalem, that it is said thirty were sold for a small piece of silver, and odd multitudes sent by Titus to work in the mines of Egypt, and others, after their last defraud in by Adrian, miserably discovered in their passage thither. Since that time thousands, compelled by the inquisition, have submitted to popish idolatry: and in every place where they dwell, they continue without possessions or fixed abode, exposed to every inflict, and liable to every oppression from the States under which they live. From whence we may observe, (1.) The unavoidable misery of the sinner under the wrath of God. (2.) The certainty of the fulfilment of all God’s theatres, by these instances already accomplished. (3.) The warning we should receive from such an awakening scene of judgments. (4.) That the only way of safety lies in holy fear and humble obedience.