XXVIII.
SANCTIONS OF THE LAW IN DEUTERONOMY. THE BLESSING AND THE CURSE.
Almost every specific portion of the Law in Scripture has a passage of this kind at the end. The code in Exodus 21-23 ends with a declaration of rewards and punishments (Exodus 23:20-33). The laws of holiness, ceremonial and moral, in Leviticus, are closed by chapter 26. This book of Deuteronomy, more profound and more spiritual in its teaching, and more earnest in its exhortation than all the rest of the Law, closes with this denunciation — the most tremendous in all Scripture — of the consequences of disobedience in detail. The Sermon on the Mount, the law of the New Testament, closes with a passage that astonished the hearers by its authority (Matthew 7:21-27). The exhortations of our Lord’s ministry, both public and private, have a similar close: for Israel in Matthew 23, for the disciples in Matthew 25. And the Epistle to the Hebrews, the last appeal to the Jewish nation in God’s word, has a similar passage in Hebrews 12, before the final exhortations and salutations. Finally, the Apocalypse itself puts the same kind of close to all Scripture in Revelation 22:10-19.
We may divide this chapter into four parts.
First, the blessings of obedience to the nation as God’s people, Deuteronomy 28:1-14.
Secondly, the curses of disobedience, Deuteronomy 28:15-48.
Thirdly, the prophecy of the conquest of Israel by a strange nation, and the miseries of the siege of the capital, Deuteronomy 28:49-57.
Fourthly, the continued and protracted misery of the rejected nation, Deuteronomy 28:58-68.
The remarkably prophetic character of this chapter is beyond question. Even were Deuteronomy the work (as some recent critics allege) of some later prophet, it is past all dispute that this chapter is older than the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and the last dispersion. Eighteen centuries of misery and oppression, with but short intervals, have branded the truth of this Scripture on the mind of Israel. From this argument there is no escape. No thoughtful Jew denies that the present condition of the nation is the fulfilment of this curse. It must be observed, however, as a most significant fact, that this chapter does not form the close of the Pentateuch. Another covenant is made with Israel after this. And Moses departed with words of blessing on his lips. (See on Deuteronomy 29:1.)
Every one who takes note of the proportions of this chapter according to the fourfold division indicated above, will at once see that, verbally, the curse is larger than the blessing. Why is this? Possibly, because the rebellions and disasters of Israel while under the Sinaitic covenant were to cover a larger number of years than their prosperity. But reason. The curses of God’s broken law in this world, however extended and varied in their operation, are describable and finite. But His love is indescribable and infinite, and were all the blessings of His love to be described in detail, the whole Bible would not have sufficed for the first fourteen verses of this chapter of Deuteronomy.