In Deuteronomy 28:20 onwards we will see how the curses would happen in the life of the children of Israel should they choose to disobey God. The miseries that they would experience would impact practically every aspect of their lives. From verses 20 to 68, Moses enumerated a whole variety of evil and misfortune that would befall them. In verses 20-26, the first series of evil they would experience when they forsook the Lord and walked in disobedience were described.
Firstly,
God guaranteed that they would be utterly frustrated, confused, and vexed mentally
until they were destroyed totally. Secondly, they would be plagued with
pestilences that would wipe out their health physically. They would be
inflicted with consumption, a disease better known as Tuberculosis today. On top
of that, their crops would also be greatly affected. Famine, drought, and all
sorts of natural calamities would befall them and drastically affect their
harvests.
In
verse 23 when God said that heaven would be like bronze, He was telling them
that their prayers would go unheeded. The earth would be like iron suggests that
the ground would be so hard and unusable for cultivation of crops. Thirdly, in
place of the natural rain, they would experience “rain of powder and dust.”
This we surmise would be tornadoes that would stir up powder and dust from
the earth and hinder the proper cultivation of their crops.
In
these verses of 20-24, five times the word “until” was used. God was telling
them that all these calamities would continue to happen to them to ensure
their utter destruction. The final mishap in this first series is described in
verses 25-26. God warned them that they would only experience defeat in their
battles with the enemies. They would be terrorized. They would be routed and
made to flee from their enemies. Their defeat would become a personification of
what terror would be like to the nations. Verse 26 said that many of them would be left dead and their
carcasses would be food for the wild animals and birds of prey with no help in
sight.
The
tragedies that would befall them when they disobeyed God cannot but be the
best impetus for them to be obedient to God. This first series of
judgments should be sufficient to keep anyone on track with God. But alas,
their history sadly revealed that they did not keep their obedience and had to
suffer many of the relentless dealings of God. What about us? We should learn
from them. We don’t have to wait for calamities to happen to us to make us obey
God. Instead, we should let our love for God lead us into a life of obedience,
and keep us following Him unwaveringly. Live for God!
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