The Consequences of Disobedience

⁴⁹ The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, ⁵⁰ a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. ⁵¹ They will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, or lambs of your flocks until they have destroyed you. ⁵² They will besiege all of your villages until all of your high and fortified walls collapse—those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. ⁵³ You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege by which your enemies will constrict you. ⁵⁴ The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. ⁵⁵ He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. ⁵⁶ Likewise, the most tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, ⁵⁷ and will secretly eat her afterbirth and her newborn children (since she has nothing else), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

⁵⁸ “If you refuse to obey all the words of this law, the things written in this scroll, and refuse to fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, ⁵⁹ then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants—great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses. ⁶⁰ He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you. ⁶¹ Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, until you have perished. ⁶² There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, because you will have disobeyed the Lord your God. ⁶³ This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, so he will also take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess. ⁶⁴ The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. ⁶⁵ Among those nations you will have no rest, nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. ⁶⁶ Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next. ⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see. ⁶⁸ Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”