Deuteronomy 28:15 - Meaning and Application

Having seen the bright side of the cloud, which faces the obedient, we now come to the dark side, which faces the disobedient. If we do not keep God’s commandments, we not only miss the promised blessing, but we bring the curse on ourselves. That curse is as broad in misery as the blessing is in happiness.

Notice, first, how fair this curse is. It is not a curse without cause, or for some small offense. God is not looking for excuses to condemn us, and he is not quick to argue with us. The things named here as bringing the curse are these:

1. Despising God, by refusing to listen to his voice (Deuteronomy 28:15). That is the highest kind of contempt, as if what he says does not matter, or as if we owe him nothing.

2. Disobeying him, by not doing his commandments, or not carefully keeping them. No one falls under his curse except those who rebel against his command.

3. Forsaking him. “It is because of the evil of your deeds,” not only because you slighted me, but because you abandoned me (Deuteronomy 28:20). God never turns away from us until we first turn away from him. This also shows that their idolatry, leaving the true God for false gods, would be their ruin more than anything else.

Next, notice how far-reaching and effective this curse is.

In general, “All these curses shall come upon you and overtake you” (Deuteronomy 28:15). Even if a sinner tries to escape, it will be useless. The curse will follow him wherever he goes, seize him, and overtake him. When God’s anger is after a sinner, the sinner would like to run from it, but he cannot (Job 27:22). If he escapes one danger, another will still reach him. There is no fleeing from God except by running to him. There is no escape from his justice except by fleeing to his mercy. See (Psalm 21:7-8).

Wherever the sinner goes, God’s curse follows him and rests on him. He is cursed in the city and in the field (Deuteronomy 28:16). The strength of a city cannot protect him, and the open country cannot shield him from this ruin. He is cursed when he comes in (Deuteronomy 28:19), because the house of the wicked is under a curse (Proverbs 3:33). He is cursed when he goes out, because he cannot leave the curse behind him. It has gone into him deeply, like water into his body and oil into his bones.

Whatever he has is also under a curse. The ground is cursed for his sake, and everything that comes from it, so that he is cursed from the ground, like Cain (Genesis 4:11). His basket and his store are cursed (Deuteronomy 28:17-18). His possessions are, in effect, forbidden to him, because he has no real right to enjoy what stands under God’s judgment. To people whose mind and conscience are defiled, everything else is defiled too (Titus 1:15). All their comforts become bitter to them. They cannot enjoy them in any true way, because God’s wrath is mixed in with them. And if they are clear-minded, they can see that all these things are condemned and ready to be taken away, along with all their joys and hopes forever.

Whatever he does is under a curse as well. Everything he puts his hand to is cursed (Deuteronomy 28:20). That means constant failure and disappointment. People who set their hearts on the world and expect happiness from it will find this a steady source of trouble. This curse is the exact opposite of the blessing described earlier in the chapter. So too, whatever joy heaven holds, hell has not only the absence of it, but the opposite of it. “My servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry” (Isaiah 65:13).

Many specific judgments are listed here as the fruit of the curse, by which God would punish the Jews for turning away from him and disobeying him. These judgments are of many kinds, because God has many arrows in his quiver, including the four sore judgments (Ezekiel 14:21), and many more besides. They are described in a very serious and vivid way, so that people, knowing the terrors of the Lord, might be moved, if possible, to turn back. The same warning is repeated several times to make a deeper and longer-lasting impression. It also shows that if people keep on disobeying after they think a judgment is over, and say, “Surely the bitterness is past,” it will return with double force. When God judges, he will prevail.

One of these judgments is bodily disease, which would spread through their land. God sometimes uses sickness to discipline and refine his own people. “Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick” (John 11:3). But here sickness is threatened as a mark of wrath against his enemies, meant to bring them down. So sickness can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on the heart’s condition under it. Still, whatever sickness means to one person, widespread disease among a people is certainly a national judgment.

He threatens painful diseases, such as a severe skin disease, starting in the legs and knees and spreading, like Job’s sores, from head to foot. He threatens shameful diseases, such as the boils of Egypt, the same kind of sores and swellings that came on the Egyptians when God brought Israel out from among them, along with hemorrhoids and scabies, ugly diseases that fit those who had made themselves vile by sin. He also threatens deadly diseases, such as the plague, wasting disease, and fever, which stand for both long-lasting and sudden sicknesses (see Leviticus 26:16). All of them are incurable (Deuteronomy 28:27).

Another judgment is famine and a lack of food. This could come, first, through lack of rain (Deuteronomy 28:23-24). The sky over their land would be as dry as bronze, while other lands would receive dew. When the sky is like bronze, the ground naturally becomes like iron, hard and unfruitful. Instead of rain, dust would be blown from the roads into the fields and damage the little produce the land had.

Famine could also come through destructive insects. Locusts would ruin the grain, so that they would not even have seed left for the next year (Deuteronomy 28:38, 28:42). The fruit of the vine, which should have gladdened their hearts, would be eaten away by worms (Deuteronomy 28:39), and the olive tree would lose its fruit in one way or another (Deuteronomy 28:40). The heathen used many superstitious rites to honor their false gods and protect the crops. But Moses tells Israel that the only true way to preserve their fruit was to obey God’s commandments. He is not like their idols, to be treated lightly. He must be served in spirit and in truth. This warning was later fulfilled among Israel (1 Kings 17:1; Jeremiah 14:1; Joel 1:4).

Third, they would be defeated by their enemies in war. Their enemies were likely to be even harsher when they had them under control, because of the severity Israel had shown to the nations of Canaan. That memory would later come back against them (Deuteronomy 28:25). Their retreat would be more shameful and painful because they could have won if they had only stayed faithful to God.

The bodies of those slain in war, or who died in captivity among strangers, would be food for birds (Deuteronomy 28:26). An Israelite who had lost God’s favor would receive so little kindness that no one would even chase the birds away. God’s curse would make him hateful to everyone.

Fourth, they would be confused in every plan, unable to see their own good or do anything for the public good. “The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness” (Deuteronomy 28:28-29). God’s judgments can reach the mind, filling it with darkness and terror, just as they reach the body and possessions. The worst judgments are the ones that make people a fear to themselves and bring about their own ruin.

What they planned to use for safety would keep turning against them. We often see this happen when the help they trusted in only harms them, and does not strengthen them (2 Chronicles 28:20). Those who refuse to follow God’s wise direction are rightly left to be ruined by their own plans. If people shut their eyes to their duty, they deserve to lose sight of their own interest too. They loved darkness instead of light, so let them grope at noon like people in the dark.

Fifth, they would be stripped of everything they enjoyed by a proud and forceful conqueror, like Ben-Hadad was to Ahab, king of Israel (1 Kings 20:5-6). Their houses and vineyards would be taken, along with their wives and children (Deuteronomy 28:30, 32). The comforts they loved most, and hoped for most, would become the enemy’s feast and pride.

As they had lived in houses they did not build and eaten from vineyards they did not plant (Deuteronomy 6:10-11), so others would do the same with their own goods. Their oxen, donkeys, and sheep, like Job’s, would be taken away before their eyes, and they could not get them back (verse 31). The enemy would eat up the fruit of their land and labor, so they and their families would lack what they needed, while their foes enjoyed what Israel had worked for.

Sixth, they would be carried away as captives into a far country, even into all the kingdoms of the earth (verse 25). Their sons and daughters, whom they counted on for comfort, would go into captivity (verse 41). In the end, they themselves, along with their king, in whom they hoped for safety and stability, would be taken too (verse 36). This was fully carried out when the ten tribes were taken to Assyria (2 Kings 17:6), and later the two tribes were taken to Babylon, along with two of their kings (2 Kings 24:14-15; 2 Kings 25:7, 21).

One harsh part of this captivity was that they would go to an unknown land, where the language and customs would be strange, and their treatment would be cruel. There they would serve other gods, meaning they would be forced by their captors to do so, as they were in Babylon (Daniel 3:6). God often makes a person’s sin become his punishment, and uses his own false choices against him. “You shall serve other gods” means, in effect, “You will serve people who worship those gods.” Scripture often calls a nation by the name of its gods, as in Jeremiah 48:7. Since Israel had joined themselves to idolaters, God made idolaters their oppressors.

Seventh, those who were left in the land would be insulted and ruled over by foreigners (Deuteronomy 28:43-44). This happened to the ten tribes through the colonies the king of Assyria sent to settle their land (2 Kings 17:24). It may also point to the slow way strangers would take over their property bit by bit, until they were driven out without noticing it at first. We see this in Hosea 7:9: “Strangers have devoured his strength.” Foreigners ate the bread that should have fed trueborn Israelites, and this was a fitting judgment for bringing in strange gods.

Eighth, their good name among neighboring nations would collapse completely. Those who had once been a name and praise would become a horror, a proverb, and a byword (Deuteronomy 28:37). Some have noticed this warning being fulfilled even now, because when people speak of the worst kind of treachery and cruelty, they often say, “No one but a Jew would have done that.” Sin brings shame on any people.

Finally, to complete their misery, these troubles would drive them out of their own minds (Deuteronomy 28:34). “You shall be mad because of what you see” means they would lose all comfort and hope and fall into utter despair. Those who live by what they see, and not by faith, are in danger of losing even their reason when everything around them looks terrible. A condition like that is truly miserable, when a person is driven mad by what he sees.