The Second Sixfold Curse (Deuteronomy 28:21-29).
This is now followed by a further sixfold curse, with each of the six, commencing (in EVV, in MT it comes second with the verb coming first for emphasis) with Yahweh's name.
Whereas the first curses where on their daily lives and mainly affected the fruitfulness of their crops and herds, resulting from famine conditions, these further curses range wider covering pestilence, disease, and sword. The series contains six detailed curses. Note that we have here also a carefully constructed chiastic structure. Pestilence and disease (Deuteronomy 28:21-22), sword (Deuteronomy 28:22), famine (Deuteronomy 28:22-23), famine (Deuteronomy 28:24), sword (Deuteronomy 28:25-26), pestilence and disease (Deuteronomy 28:27).
The personal aspect of these judgments is now outlined in these six statements as all attributed to Yahweh. They will be smitten with pestilence, with various other disasters, with shortage of rain, by powerful enemies, with the boils of Egypt, and with madness, blindness and despair.
The catastrophes mentioned include those regularly described as judgments, plague, disease, famine, and sword (compare 1 Kings 8:37; 2 Chronicles 20:9; Isaiah 51:19; Jeremiah 14:12; Jeremiah 21:9; Jeremiah 24:10; Jeremiah 27:8; Jeremiah 29:18; Jeremiah 38:2; Jeremiah 42:17; Jeremiah 42:22; Jeremiah 44:13; Ezekiel 5:17; Ezekiel 6:12; Ezekiel 12:16; Ezekiel 14:21;
‘ Yahweh will make the pestilence cleave to you, until he has consumed you from off the land, to which you go in to possess it.'
The first main curse sent by Yahweh will be ‘destroying pestilence', a plague of epidemic proportions. Such plagues have from time to time smitten the world and decimated populations. It will ‘cleave to them' (emphasised by its place in the sentence) so that they are unable to shrug it off until they are consumed off the land (compare Leviticus 26:25; Numbers 14:12 and see Exodus 9:3; Exodus 9:15).
‘ Yahweh will smite you with consumption, and with burning fever, and with inflammation, and with fiery heat, and with the sword (or ‘drought'), and with blasting, and with mildew; and they will pursue you until you perish, and your heaven that is over your head will be bronze, and the earth that is under you will be iron.'
This is then followed by a sevenfold description of disasters; consumption (Leviticus 26:16), fever (Leviticus 26:16), inflammation, fiery heat, drought, scorching (1 Kings 8:37; 2 Kings 19:26) and mildew (Amos 4:9; Haggai 2:17). The first four suggest unpleasant human diseases which cause high temperatures, not necessarily individual diseases but a spread of diseases which have these symptoms, the last three are disasters which affect plant life. Drought (the translation resulting from repointing from chereb to choreb to fit the threefold pattern. The vowels were not a part of the original text. But see below for a defence of chereb) comes from lack of rain, scorching from the sirocco which sweeps in from the desert, mildew is a form of plant disease. All these things would be their lot until finally they perished from the earth either through disease or starvation (contrast the opposite blessings in Deuteronomy 28:8). The heavens would be hard and unyielding, with the sun shining remorselessly in the sky, and the earth would be caked like the hardest stuff known to man (compare Leviticus 26:19). In the parallel in Deuteronomy 28:39-40 specific examples are given
However, while the repointing to choreb fits the threefold pattern it can be argued that ‘sword' (chereb - which LXX agrees with) fits better the following verses where after the sirocco (Deuteronomy 28:24) come the enemy and thus the sword (Deuteronomy 28:25-26), followed by disease (Deuteronomy 28:27) and then affliction and confusion (Deuteronomy 28:28-29), a reversing trend to the descriptions above. Thus we should probably retain ‘sword'.
‘ Yahweh will make the rain of your land powder, and dust from heaven shall come down on you, until you are destroyed.'
Under Yahweh's hand, instead of raining water the heavens would rain powder and dust. This may have in mind the sirocco on a huge scale sweeping sand in from the desert. And this would continue until they were destroyed. This in huge contrast with the regular covenant promises of rain (contrast Deuteronomy 28:12). Dust will come down from heaven instead of the rain. ‘Dust from heaven' is a contrasting parallel to the heaven giving rain from God's treasure house (Deuteronomy 28:12). And this will destroy them for it will destroy their vegetation. The parallel Deuteronomy 28:38 (according to the analysis) reveals their vegetation as being destroyed by locusts, an even more devastating curse.
‘ Yahweh will cause you to be smitten before your enemies. You will go out one way against them, and will flee seven ways before them, and you will be tossed to and fro (or ‘will be an object of horror') among all the kingdoms of the earth, and your dead body will be food to all birds of the heavens, and to the beasts of the earth, and there will be none to frighten them away.'
Yahweh will also cause them to be smitten by their enemies. Central to the covenant had been His driving their enemies from before them (contrast Deuteronomy 28:7). That will now be reversed. He will drive their enemies towards them. Note the contrast with Deuteronomy 28:7. It will now not be their enemies who will be scattered ‘seven ways' after marching confidently forward, but they themselves.
And they will be ‘tossed to and from among the nations' like something unwanted by anyone, or alternatively ‘will be an object of horror' to them (the basic verb means ‘to move, to tremble', compare its use in Ezekiel 23:46), and their bodies will be thrown to the scavengers, and there they will be left to be torn apart, for there will be no one interested enough to scare them away and bury the body. Instead of having dominion over the beasts and the birds (Genesis 1:28), the beasts and birds will eat them up (Psalms 79:2; Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 12:9; Ezekiel 39:17-20; Revelation 19:17-18). They will be totally alone and deserted, especially by Yahweh. He will not care what happens to their bodies. Being unburied was seen in those days as a fate worse than death.
The translation as ‘object of horror' would fit better with the parallel in the analysis in Deuteronomy 28:37 ‘an astonishment, a proverb and a byword' where the threefoldness intensified the curse.
‘ Yahweh will smite you with the boil of Egypt, and with plague boils (or ‘tumours'), and with the scurvy (or ‘eczema', etc.), and with the itch (or scabies, etc.), of which you cannot be healed.'
The boil of Egypt was an unpleasant disease which they had known from Egypt and which was infamous (Exodus 9:9-11; compare Leviticus 13:18-23). A similar disease is identified in an Egyptian medical text. Plague boils indicated the presence of the plague among them, compare Deuteronomy 28:21 (also 1 Samuel 8:11-17 for what probably represented plague boils). For scurvy (or eczema, etc.), compare Leviticus 21:20; Leviticus 22:22. The itch may represent scabies, and other similar skin diseases. We must not look for individually identified diseases, but diseases described by their symptoms. Note the final comment, ‘from which you cannot be healed'. The constant emphasis is on the unpleasantness of the diseases and the permanency of their fate. We can contrast here Deuteronomy 8:4 where they had been kept even from foot diseases in the wilderness.
In the parallel Deuteronomy 28:35 in the analysis the boils will smite knees and legs and ‘from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head', an intensification of the curse. Yahweh would smite them with clinical depression and schizophrenia producing insanity, both of which are regularly the product of trauma, especially childhood trauma, and with blindness, and with delusions. The traumas of life resulting from Yahweh's desertion, and the evil living resulting from their rebellion, would have their inevitable consequences. Some have connected this with widespread syphilis which would result from consorting with temple prostitutes, but this must be considered doubtful. The picture is one of abject helplessness and defencelessness, groping their way even in day time, not prospering as they had under the covenant (compare Deuteronomy 28:8; Deuteronomy 28:12), and being prey to every robber with none to defend them. We are intended to contrast their previous state when Yahweh had been their protector and they had not needed to fear.
God's instruction had warned against taking advantage of people's blindness (Deuteronomy 27:18; Leviticus 19:14), but now advantage would be taken of them, for they would not be among a people who feared Yahweh. There is here a reversal of covenant blessing.
The blindness and its effects are emphasised. But there is also a spiritual impact. They are also blind towards God. They have turned from the light and are thus now in darkness.