The sky above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron.

The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.

"The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off.

The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, eczema, and scabies, all of which cannot be healed.

The Lord will also subject you to madness, blindness, and confusion of mind.

You will feel your way along at noon like the blind person does in darkness and you will not succeed in anything you do; you will be constantly oppressed and continually robbed, with no one to save you.

You will be engaged to a woman and another man will rape her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it.

Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you.

Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it.

As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives.

You will go insane from seeing all this.

The Lord will afflict you in your knees and on your legs with painful, incurable boils -- from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

The Lord will force you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there.

You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you.

"You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it.

You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them.

You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe.

You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity.

Whirring locusts will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil.

The foreigners who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower.

They will lend to you but you will not lend to them; they will become the head and you will become the tail!

All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given you.

These curses will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants.

instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you.

The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand,

a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young.

They will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, or lambs of your flocks until they have destroyed you.

They will besiege all of your villages until all of your high and fortified walls collapse -- those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you.

You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege by which your enemies will constrict you.

The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children.

He will withhold from all of them his children's flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

Likewise, the most tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters,

and will secretly eat her afterbirth and her newborn children (since she has nothing else), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants -- great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses.

He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you.

Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, until you have perished.

There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, because you will have disobeyed the Lord your God.

This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess.

The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone.

Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair.

Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next.

In the morning you will say, 'If only it were evening!' And in the evening you will say, 'I wish it were morning!' because of the things you will fear and the things you will see.

Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you."

Today he will affirm that you are his people and that he is your God, just as he promised you and as he swore by oath to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

When such a person hears the words of this oath he secretly blesses himself and says, "I will have peace though I continue to walk with a stubborn spirit." This will destroy the watered ground with the parched.

The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger will rage against that man; all the curses written in this scroll will fall upon him and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory.

The Lord will single him out for judgment from all the tribes of Israel according to all the curses of the covenant written in this scroll of the law.

The generation to come -- your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places -- will see the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it.

The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger.

Then all the nations will ask, "Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger all about?"

Then people will say, "Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

"When you have experienced all these things, both the blessings and the curses I have set before you, you will reflect upon them in all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you.

the Lord your God will reverse your captivity and have pity on you. He will turn and gather you from all the peoples among whom he has scattered you.

Even if your exiles are in the most distant land, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.

Then he will bring you to the land your ancestors possessed and you also will possess it; he will do better for you and multiply you more than he did your ancestors.

The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being and so that you may live.

Then the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and persecute you.

You will return and obey the Lord, keeping all his commandments I am giving you today.

The Lord your God will make the labor of your hands abundantly successful and multiply your children, the offspring of your cattle, and the produce of your soil. For the Lord your God will once more rejoice over you to make you prosperous just as he rejoiced over your ancestors,

It is not in heaven, as though one must say, "Who will go up to heaven to get it for us and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?"

And it is not across the sea, as though one must say, "Who will cross over to the other side of the sea and get it for us and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?"

What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess.

I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.

He said to them, "Today I am a hundred and twenty years old. I am no longer able to get about, and the Lord has said to me, 'You will not cross the Jordan.'

As for the Lord your God, he is about to cross over before you; he will destroy these nations before you and dispossess them. As for Joshua, he is about to cross before you just as the Lord has said.

The Lord will do to them just what he did to Sihon and Og, the Amorite kings, and to their land, which he destroyed.

The Lord will deliver them over to you and you will do to them according to the whole commandment I have given you.

Be strong and courageous! Do not fear or tremble before them, for the Lord your God is the one who is going with you. He will not fail you or abandon you!"

Then Moses called out to Joshua in the presence of all Israel, "Be strong and courageous, for you will accompany these people to the land that the Lord promised to give their ancestors, and you will enable them to inherit it.

The Lord is indeed going before you -- he will be with you; he will not fail you or abandon you. Do not be afraid or discouraged!"

Then their children, who have not known this law, will also hear about and learn to fear the Lord your God for as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess."

Then the Lord said to Moses, "You are about to die, and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they are going. They will reject me and break my covenant that I have made with them.

At that time my anger will erupt against them and I will abandon them and hide my face from them until they are devoured. Many disasters and distresses will overcome them so that they will say at that time, 'Have not these disasters overcome us because our God is not among us?'

But I will certainly hide myself at that time because of all the wickedness they will have done by turning to other gods.

For after I have brought them to the land I promised to their ancestors -- one flowing with milk and honey -- and they eat their fill and become fat, then they will turn to other gods and worship them; they will reject me and break my covenant.

Then when many disasters and distresses overcome them this song will testify against them, for their descendants will not forget it. I know the intentions they have in mind today, even before I bring them to the land I have promised."

and the Lord commissioned Joshua son of Nun, "Be strong and courageous, for you will take the Israelites to the land I have promised them, and I will be with you."

"Take this scroll of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. It will remain there as a witness against you,

for I know about your rebellion and stubbornness. Indeed, even while I have been living among you to this very day, you have rebelled against the Lord; you will be even more rebellious after my death!

For I know that after I die you will totally corrupt yourselves and turn away from the path I have commanded you to walk. Disaster will confront you in the days to come because you will act wickedly before the Lord, inciting him to anger because of your actions."

Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

My teaching will drop like the rain, my sayings will drip like the dew, as rain drops upon the grass, and showers upon new growth.

For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; you must acknowledge the greatness of our God.

Remember the ancient days; bear in mind the years of past generations. Ask your father and he will inform you, your elders, and they will tell you.

He said, "I will reject them, I will see what will happen to them; for they are a perverse generation, children who show no loyalty.

They have made me jealous with false gods, enraging me with their worthless gods; so I will make them jealous with a people they do not recognize, with a nation slow to learn I will enrage them.

I will increase their disasters, I will use up my arrows on them.

They will be starved by famine, eaten by plague, and bitterly stung; I will send the teeth of wild animals against them, along with the poison of creatures that crawl in the dust.

The sword will make people childless outside, and terror will do so inside; they will destroy both the young man and the virgin, the infant and the gray-haired man.

I wish that they were wise and could understand this, and that they could comprehend what will happen to them."

I will get revenge and pay them back at the time their foot slips; for the day of their disaster is near, and the impending judgment is rushing upon them!"

The Lord will judge his people, and will change his plans concerning his servants; when he sees that their power has disappeared, and that no one is left, whether confined or set free.

He will say, "Where are their gods, the rock in whom they sought security,

I will sharpen my lightning-like sword, and my hand will grasp hold of the weapon of judgment; I will execute vengeance on my foes, and repay those who hate me!

I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will devour flesh -- the blood of the slaughtered and captured, the chief of the enemy's leaders!'"

Cry out, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge his servants' blood; he will take vengeance against his enemies, and make atonement for his land and people.

For this is no idle word for you -- it is your life! By this word you will live a long time in the land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess."

You will die on the mountain that you ascend and join your deceased ancestors, just as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and joined his deceased ancestors,

You will see the land before you, but you will not enter the land that I am giving to the Israelites."