1 Carefully obey Jehovah your God. Faithfully follow all his commandments that I give you today. If you do this Jehovah your God will place you high above all the other nations in the world.
2 These are all the blessings that will come to you and stay close to you because you obey Jehovah your God:
3 Jehovah will bless your towns and your fields.
4 Jehovah will bless you with many children, with abundant crops, and with many cattle and sheep.
5 Jehovah will bless your grain crops and the food you prepare from them.
6 Jehovah will make you successful in your daily work.
7 Jehovah will cause your enemies who rise up against you to be struck before you: they shall come out against you one-way, and shall flee before you seven ways.
8 Jehovah will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you put your hand to, and He will bless you in the land Jehovah your God gives you.
9 Jehovah will establish you as a holy people to himself. He swore this to you, if you obey the commandments of Jehovah your God and walk in His ways.
10 All the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of Jehovah, and they will be afraid of you.
11 Jehovah will make you abound in prosperity, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your animals and in the produce of your ground, the land that Jehovah swore to your fathers to give you.
12 Jehovah will open for you his good storehouse. The skies will give rain to your land in due season. It will bless all the work of your hand. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow.
13 Jehovah will make you the head and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath. If you listen to the commandments of Jehovah your God, which I charge you today, to observe them carefully,
14 and do not turn aside from any of the words I command you today, to the right or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
15 If you do not obey Jehovah your God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
16 Cursed will you be in the city, and cursed will you be in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading bowl will be cursed.
18 Cursed will be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock.
19 Jehovah will curse everything you do!
20 If you do evil and reject Jehovah, he will bring on you trouble, confusion, and rebuke in everything you do. Soon you will be quickly and completely destroyed.
21 He will plague you with disease after disease on you until there is not one of you left in the land.
22 Jehovah will strike you with infectious diseases, with swelling and fever. He will send drought and scorching winds to destroy your crops. These disasters will be with you until you die.
23 The sky above will look like copper and the ground below will be as hard as iron.
24 Jehovah will send dust storms and sandstorms on you from the sky until you are destroyed.
25 Jehovah will cause you to be stricken before your enemies. You will go out one way against them, and flee seven ways from them. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
26 Your body will be food to all birds of the air, and to the beasts of the earth. And no man shall frighten them away.
27 Jehovah will strike you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed.
28 You will become insane and go blind. Jehovah will make you so confused,
29 that even in bright sunshine you will have to feel your way around like a blind person. You will tell day from night! For the rest of your life, people will beat and rob you. No one will be able to stop them.
30 A man will be engaged to a woman, but before they can get married, enemy soldiers will rape her. Some of you will build houses, but never get to live in them. If you plant a vineyard, you will not be around long enough to enjoy the first harvest.
31 Your cattle will be killed while you watch. You will not get to eat any of the meat. Your donkeys and sheep will be stolen. No one will be around to force your enemies to give them back.
32 Your sons and daughters will be dragged off to a foreign country. And you will stand there helpless. Even if you watch for them until you go blind, you will never see them again.
33 A foreign nation will take all the crops that you have worked so hard to grow. You will receive nothing but constant oppression and harsh treatment.
34 You will lose your mind (experience insanity) because of all the suffering.
35 Jehovah will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils. From the sole of your foot to the crown of your head they will not heal.
36 Jehovah will bring you and your king, whom you set over you, to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. There you will serve other gods made of wood and stone.
37 You will become a thing of revulsion. All the nations where Jehovah will send you will make an example of you and laugh at you.
38 You will plant many crops in your fields, but harvest little for locusts will destroy your crops.
39 You will plant vineyards and tend them but will not drink the wine from them. Worms will eat them.
40 You will have olive trees throughout all your coasts, but you shall not anoint with the oil, for your olive shall drop off its fruit.
41 Even your infant sons and daughters will be taken as prisoners of war.
42 Locusts will take over all your trees and the fruit of your land.
43 The alien who is living among you will be lifted up higher and higher over you, while you go down lower and lower.
44 They will be able to make loans to you, but you won't be able to make loans to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail.
45 All these disasters will come on you. They will be with you until you are destroyed. This is because you did not obey Jehovah your God and keep all the laws that he gave you.
46 Everyone will look at you and your descendants and realize that Jehovah has placed you under a curse for a very long time.
47 You did not serve Jehovah your God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things.
48 You will serve your enemies whom Jehovah will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
49 Jehovah will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you will not understand,
50 a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young.
51 They will eat the offspring of your animals and the crops from your fields until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, no new wine, no olive oil, no calves from your herds, and no lambs or kids from your flocks. They will continue to do this until you are completely desolate.
52 They will blockade all your cities until the high, fortified walls you trust come down everywhere in your land. They will blockade all the cities everywhere in the land that Jehovah your God is giving you.
53 Because of the hardships your enemies will make you suffer during the blockade, you will eat the flesh of your own children, the sons and daughters, whom Jehovah your God has given you.
54 The kindest and most sensitive man among you will become stingy toward his brother, the wife he loves, and the children he still has left.
55 He will give none of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all that he has left. These are hardships your enemies will make you suffer during the blockade of all your cities.
56 The kindest and most sensitive woman among you, so sensitive and tender that she would not even step on an ant, will become stingy toward the husband she loves or toward her own son or daughter.
57 She will not share with them the afterbirth from her body and the children she gives birth to. She will secretly eat them out of dire necessity. These are hardships your enemies will make you suffer during the blockade of your cities.
58 You might not faithfully obey every word of the teachings that are written in this book. You might not respect this glorious and awe inspiring name: JEHOVAH your God.
59 If so, Jehovah will strike you and your descendants with unimaginable plagues. They will be terrible continuing plagues. They will be severe and lingering diseases.
60 He will bring all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded. They will cling to you.
61 Jehovah will also bring you every kind of sickness and plague not written in this Book of the Law. They will continue until you are dead.
62 You were at one time as numerous as the stars in the sky. But only a few of you will be left. This is because you did not obey Jehovah your God.
63 Jehovah was very glad to make you prosperous and numerous. Now Jehovah will be more than glad to destroy you and wipe you out. You will be torn out of the land you are about to enter and possess.
64 Jehovah will scatter you among all the people of the world. He will scatter you from one end of the earth to the other. There you will serve gods made of wood and stone that neither you nor your ancestors ever knew.
65 You will find no peace among those nations. There will be no place to call your own. There Jehovah will give you an unsettled mind, failing eyesight, and despair.
66 Your life will always be in danger. Day and night you will be filled with terror. You will live in constant fear of death.
67 Your hearts will pound with fear at everything you see. Every morning you will wish for evening. Every evening you will wish for morning.
68 Jehovah will send you back to Egypt in ships, even though he said that you would never have to go there again. There you will try to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves. But no one will want to buy you.