Your sons and daughters will be given to another people, while your eyes look on and long for them continually; but there will be nothing you can do. [2 Chr 29:9] A people whom you do not know will eat the produce of your land and all the products of your labors, and you will never be anything but oppressed and exploited and crushed continually. [Judg 6:1-6; 13:1] You shall be driven mad by the sight of the things you see. The LORD will strike you on the knees and on the legs with sore boils that you cannot heal, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. The LORD will bring you and your king, whom you appoint over you, to a nation which you and your fathers have never known; there you will [be forced to] serve other gods, [lifeless gods of] wood and stone. [2 Kin 17:4, 6; 24:12, 14; 25:7, 11; Dan 6:11, 12] And you will become a horror, a proverb [a mere object lesson], and a taunt [a derisive joke] among all the people to which the LORD drives you.
“You will bring out a great quantity of seed to the field, but you will gather in little, because the locusts will consume it. [Hag 1:6] You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because the worm will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourselves with the oil, because your olives will drop off. You will have sons and daughters, but they will not be yours [for long], because they will go into captivity. [Lam 1:5] The cricket will take possession of all your trees and the produce of your ground. [Joel 1:4] The stranger who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, and you will go down lower and lower. He will lend to you [out of his affluence], but you will not lend to him [because of your poverty]; he will be the head, and you the tail.
“So all these curses will come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He has commanded you. They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever.
“Because you did not serve the LORD your God with a heart full of joy and gladness for the abundance of all things [with which He blessed you], you will therefore serve your enemies whom the LORD sends against you, in hunger and in thirst, in nakedness and in lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke [of slavery] 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 swift] as the eagle swoops down [to attack], a nation whose language you will not understand, a defiant nation who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young, and it will eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who will leave you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the offspring of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish. They will besiege you in all your cities until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land; and they will besiege you in all your cities throughout your land which the LORD your God has given you. Then you will eat the offspring of your own body [to avoid starvation], the flesh of your sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the misery by which your enemy will oppress you. [2 Kin 6:24-29] The man who is most refined and well-bred among you will be cruel and hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain, so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, because he has nothing else left, during the siege and the misery by which your enemy will oppress you in all your cities. The most refined and well-bred woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and pampered, will be cruel and hostile toward the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter, and toward her afterbirth that comes from between her legs and toward the children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the siege and the misery by which your enemy will oppress you in your cities.
“If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, to fear and honor with reverence this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses. Moreover, He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you. Also the LORD will bring on you every sickness and every plague which is not written in this book of this law, until you are destroyed. Because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, you who were as numerous as the stars of heaven shall be left few in number. It shall come about that just as the LORD delighted over you to make you prosper and multiply, so the LORD will delight over you to bring you to ruin and destruction; and you will be uprooted [violently] from the land which you are entering to possess. And the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other; and there you will [be forced to] serve other gods, [lifeless gods of] wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. [Dan 3:6] Among those nations you will find no peace (rest), and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul. Your life will hang in doubt before you; night and day you will be filled with anxiety and have no assurance of living. In the morning you will say, ‘I wish it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’—because of the dread in your heart with which you tremble, and because of the sight of your eyes which you will see. The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I said to you, ‘You will never see it again!’ And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no one to buy you.” [Hos 8:13]
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