The Wilderness · c. 1406 BC
Chapter 18
Choose Life
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants,to love Yahweh your God, to obey his voice, and to cling to him; for he is your life, and the length of your days, that you may dwell in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.
For parents
Moses warns what will happen if Israel turns away from the Lord: disease, defeat, dead bodies left for the birds, another man sleeping with a man’s bride-to-be, and children carried off as captives (Deuteronomy 28:15–44). In a siege, he says, people will eat their own children, even the gentlest man and woman among them (28:53–57). It is told plainly, as a warning, without detail. He also warns that the people will be scattered and will offer themselves as slaves (28:64–68). Among the curses in 27:20–23 are sleeping with a close relative and having sex with an animal, told in a few soft words.
and the of gave the people this command: “Keep every commandment I give you today. On the day you cross the to go into the land the your God gives you, set up some big stones and coat them with plaster. When you have crossed over, write on them all the words of this law, so that you may go into the land the Lord your God gives you. It is a land flowing with milk and honey, the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
“Once you are across the Jordan, put these stones up on and coat them with plaster, as I command you today. Build an to the Lord your God there, an altar of stones. Don’t use any iron tool on them: the altar of the Lord your God is to be built of uncut stones. Offer on it to the Lord your God. Also sacrifice and eat there. Rejoice in the presence of the Lord your God. And write all the words of this law on the stones, very clearly.”
Then Moses and the spoke to all Israel. “Be quiet and listen, Israel!” they said. “Today you have become the people of the Lord your God. Now you must obey the Lord your God, and do his commandments and his laws, which I am giving you today.”
The same day Moses gave the people this command: “When you have crossed the Jordan, , , , , and are to stand on to bless the people. And , , , , and are to stand on Mount Ebal for the .
“The Levites are to call out in a loud voice to all the men of Israel, ‘A curse on the man who makes an , carved or cast in metal, a thing the Lord hates, made by a craftsman’s hands, and sets it up in secret!’ All the people are then to answer, ‘.’
“Then the Levites are to curse anyone who dishonors his father or his mother, anyone who moves the marker at the edge of his neighbor’s land, anyone who leads a blind man the wrong way on the road, and anyone who keeps justice from the foreigner, the fatherless child or the widow. After each one, all the people are to say, ‘Amen.’
“They are to curse anyone who sleeps with his father’s wife, because it dishonors his father. They are to curse anyone who has sex with any kind of animal, anyone who sleeps with his sister, whether she is his father’s daughter or his mother’s daughter, and anyone who sleeps with his mother-in-law. Each time, all the people are to say, ‘Amen.’
“They are to curse anyone who kills his neighbor in secret, and anyone who takes a bribe to kill an innocent person. And last: ‘A curse on anyone who doesn’t keep the words of this law by doing them!’ All the people are to say, ‘Amen.’”
“If you listen carefully to the Lord your God,” Moses said, “and are careful to do all his commandments that I am giving you today, then the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come on you and reach you, if you listen to the Lord your God.
“You will be blessed in the city, and you will be blessed in the field. Your children will be blessed, and the crops of your ground, and your young animals, your calves and your lambs. Your basket will be blessed, and your bread bowl. You will be blessed as you come in, and blessed as you go out.
“When your enemies rise up against you, the Lord will make them fall in front of you. They will come out against you one way, and run from you seven ways. The Lord will send his blessing on your barns, and on all your work. He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you.
“The Lord will make you his own holy people, as he swore to you he would, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God and follow his ways. All the peoples of the earth will see you are called by the Lord’s name, and they will be afraid of you.
“The Lord will give you plenty of good things: many children, many young animals and rich crops, in the land he swore to your ancestors that he would give you. The Lord will open his good treasure in the sky for you, to send rain on your land at the right time, and to bless everything you do. You will lend to many nations, and you won’t borrow.
“The Lord will make you the head, and not the tail. You will always be on top, never underneath, as long as you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God that I give you today, and are careful to do them, and as long as you don’t turn away from any of the words I am giving you today, to the right or to the left, to follow other gods and serve them.”
“But if you won’t listen to the Lord your God,” Moses said, “and won’t be careful to do all his commandments and his laws that I am giving you today, then all these curses will come on you and reach you. You will be cursed in the city, and you will be cursed in the field. Your basket will be cursed, and your bread bowl. Your children will be cursed, and the crops of your ground, and your calves and your lambs. You will be cursed when you come in, and you will be cursed when you go out.
“The Lord will send cursing, confusion and rebuke on you in everything you try to do, until you are destroyed and soon perish, because of the evil things you did when you left me. The Lord will make disease cling to you until he has wiped you off the land you are going into to take as your own. The Lord will strike you with wasting sickness, with fever, with swelling, with burning heat, with the sword, and with blight and mildew. They will chase you until you perish.
“The sky over your head will be bronze, and the ground under you will be iron. Instead of rain, the Lord will send powder and dust on your land. It will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.
“The Lord will make you fall in front of your enemies. You will go out against them one way, and run from them seven ways, and you will be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth. Your dead bodies will be food for every bird of the sky and every animal of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.
“The Lord will strike you with the of , with tumors, with scabs and with itching that can’t be healed. He will strike you with madness, with blindness, and with minds in a daze. At noon you will feel your way along like a blind man in the dark. Nothing you do will go well. You will be treated cruelly and robbed, all the time, and there will be no one to save you.
“Another man will sleep with the woman you are engaged to. You will build a house, and you won’t live in it. You will plant a vineyard, and you won’t enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be killed in front of you, and you won’t eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken from you by force, right before your eyes, and you won’t get it back. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to save you. Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people. Your eyes will grow tired from watching for them all day long, and there will be nothing you can do.
“A nation you don’t know will eat the crops of your ground and everything you have worked for. You will be treated cruelly and crushed, all the time, until the things you see with your own eyes drive you mad.
“The Lord will strike your knees and your legs with painful boils that can’t be healed, from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. And the Lord will take you, and the king you set over yourselves, to a nation that you and your ancestors have never known. There you will serve other gods, made of wood and stone. Among all the peoples where the Lord leads you away, people will be shocked at you. They will make up sayings about you and make fun of you.
“You will carry a lot of seed out into the field, but you will gather little in, because will eat it up. You will plant vineyards and look after them, but you won’t drink the wine or pick the grapes, because worms will eat them. Olive trees will grow all through your land, but you won’t rub their oil on your skin, because your olives will drop off. Sons and daughters will be born to you, but they won’t be yours, because they will be taken away as captives. Locusts will eat up all your trees and the crops of your ground.
“The foreigner who lives among you will rise higher and higher above you, and you will come down lower and lower. He will lend to you, and you won’t lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail.”
“All these curses will come on you,” Moses said, “and will chase you and reach you until you are destroyed, because you didn’t listen to the Lord your God and keep the commandments and the laws he gave you. The curses will be a sign and a wonder among you and your descendants forever.
“You didn’t serve the Lord your God joyfully, with a glad heart, for all the plenty you had. So you will serve your enemies, the ones the Lord sends against you, hungry and thirsty, with nothing to wear, and in need of everything. And he will put an iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.
“The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flies: a nation whose language you won’t understand, a fierce-faced nation that has no respect for the old and shows no kindness to the young.
“They will eat your young animals and your crops until you are destroyed. They won’t leave you any grain, new wine or olive oil, any calves or lambs, until they have made you perish. They will surround all your towns and shut you in, until the high, strong walls you trusted fall down all over your land. They will shut you in, in every town, all through the land the Lord your God has given you.
“In the siege, in the misery your enemies will bring on you, you will eat your own children, your sons and your daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you.
“Even the gentlest, most delicate man among you will look with hard, selfish eyes at his own brother, at the wife he loves, and at the children he still has left. When he eats his children, he won’t share with any of them, because he will have nothing left in the siege, in the misery your enemy will bring on you in all your towns.
“The gentlest, most delicate woman among you would not even dare to put her foot on the ground, she is so delicate and gentle. She will look with hard, selfish eyes at the husband she loves, at her son and her daughter, at the newborn baby who has just come from her body, and at the children she bears. Because she has nothing at all, she will eat them in secret, in the siege, in the misery your enemy will bring on you in your towns.”
“If you aren’t careful to obey all the words of this law that are written in this book,” Moses said, “and to fear this glorious and fearsome name, Yahweh your God, then the Lord will bring terrible on you and on your descendants: great plagues that last a long time, and harsh sicknesses that last a long time. He will bring on you again all the diseases of Egypt that you were afraid of, and they will cling to you. On top of that, until you are destroyed, the Lord will bring on you every sickness and every plague that isn’t written in this book of the law.
“You were as many as the stars in the sky, but you will be left few in number, because you didn’t listen to the Lord your God. Just as it made the Lord glad to do you good and to make you many, so it will make him glad to make you perish and to destroy you. You will be pulled up out of the land you are going into to take as your own.
“The Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. There you will serve other gods, made of wood and stone, that you and your ancestors never knew. Among those nations you will find no ease, and no place to rest your feet. There the Lord will give you a trembling heart, eyes that grow dim, and a spirit that wastes away.
“Your life will hang by a thread. You will be afraid night and day, and you won’t be sure you will live. In the morning you will say, ‘I wish it were evening!’ and when evening comes, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the fear in your heart, and the things your eyes will see.
“The Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, back along the way I told you that you would never see again. There you will offer yourselves to your enemies as slaves, men and women, and nobody will buy you.”
These are the words of the which the Lord told Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of . This covenant was in addition to the one he had made with them at .
Moses called all Israel together and told them, “You have seen all that the Lord did to in the land of Egypt, to all his servants and all his land. You saw with your own eyes the great tests, the signs and those great wonders. Yet to this day the Lord hasn’t given you a heart that understands, eyes that see, or ears that hear.
“I have led you for forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes haven’t worn out on you, and your sandals haven’t worn out on your feet. You haven’t eaten bread, or drunk wine or strong drink. This was so that you would know that I am the Lord your God.
“When you came to this place, the king of and the king of came out to fight against us, and we struck them down. We took their land and gave it to the Reubenites, to the Gadites and to half the tribe of , to be their own. So keep the words of this covenant and do them, so that everything you do will go well.
“All of you stand today in the presence of the Lord your God: your chiefs, your tribes, your elders and your officers, every man of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the foreigners who live in your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who carries your water. You are standing here to enter the covenant of the Lord your God, and the oath he is making with you today. He is doing this so that today he may make you his people, and so that he may be your God, just as he told you, and as he swore to , and , your ancestors.
“I am not making this covenant and this oath with you alone. I am making it with everyone who stands here with us in the presence of the Lord our God today, and also with those who are not here with us today.”
“You know how we lived in the land of Egypt,” Moses said, “and how we came through the middle of the nations you passed through. You have seen their disgusting things, and the idols of wood, stone, silver and gold that they had among them.
“This covenant is so that no man or woman, no family or tribe among you, will turn their heart away from the Lord our God today, to go and serve the gods of those nations. It is so that no root will grow among you that bears bitter poison.
“Suppose someone like that hears the words of this curse, and in his heart he tells himself he is blessed. He says, ‘I will have peace, even though I do whatever my stubborn heart wants,’ to destroy the moist with the dry. The Lord will not forgive him. Instead the Lord’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man. Every curse written in this book will fall on him, and the Lord will wipe out his name from under the sky. Out of all the tribes of Israel, the Lord will single him out for harm, just as all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law say.
“The generation to come, your children who grow up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a far land, will see the plagues on that land and the sicknesses the Lord has sent on it. They will say that the whole land is sulfur, salt and burning, that nothing is planted there and nothing grows, not even grass. It will be like , , and when the Lord destroyed them in his anger and in his fury. All the nations will ask why the Lord has done this to this land, and what this great, burning anger means.
“Then people will answer, ‘It is because they turned away from the covenant of the Lord, their ancestors’ God. He made it with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods they didn’t know, gods he had not given them. So the Lord’s anger burned against this land. He brought on it all the curses that are written in this book. In anger, in fury and in great rage, the Lord pulled them up by the roots out of their land and threw them into another land, where they are to this day.’
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may do everything this law says.”
“All these things will come on you, the blessing and the curse that I have set before you,” Moses said. “Then, when you remember them among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, when you and your children come back to the Lord your God, and you obey his voice with all your heart and with all your soul, doing all that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you free from captivity and have compassion on you. He will gather you back from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.
“Even if some of you have been driven out to the farthest parts of the sky, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you back into the land your ancestors owned, and you will own it. He will be good to you, and make you more in number than your ancestors.
“The Lord your God will , and your descendants’ hearts, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. The Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and were cruel to you.
“You will return and obey the Lord, and do all his commandments that I am giving you today. And the Lord your God will make all the work of your hands go well, and he will give you plenty of children, young animals and crops. The Lord will again be glad over you and do you good, just as he was glad over your ancestors. He will do this if you listen to the Lord your God and keep his commandments and his laws, which are written in this book of the law, and as long as you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
“This commandment that I am giving you today isn’t too hard for you, and it isn’t far away. It isn’t up in heaven, so that you would have to ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and bring it to us, and tell it to us, so that we can do it?’ And it isn’t on the other side of the sea, so that you would have to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea for us, and bring it to us, and tell it to us, so that we can do it?’
“But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so you can do it.”
“Look,” Moses said, “today I have set before you life and prosperity, and death and harm. I command you today to love the Lord your God, to follow his ways, and to keep his commandments, his laws and his rules, so that you may live and grow in number, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are going, to take it as your own.
“But if your heart turns away and you won’t listen, and you are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you will surely perish. You won’t live long in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to go in and take it as your own.
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants, to love the Lord your God, to obey his voice, and to cling to him. He is your life, and the length of your days, so that you may live in the land which the Lord swore he would give your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”