Exile and Egypt Reversed Under Curse

⁴⁷ Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart in all your abundance,

⁴⁸ you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

⁴⁹ The LORD will bring a nation from afar, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down upon you like an eagle—a nation whose language you will not understand,

⁵⁰ a ruthless nation with no respect for the old and no pity for the young.

⁵¹ They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain or new wine or oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have caused you to perish.

⁵² They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you.

⁵³ Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you.

⁵⁴ The most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children who have survived,

⁵⁵ refusing to share with any of them the flesh of his children he will eat because he has nothing left in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within all your gates.

⁵⁶ The most gentle and refined woman among you, so gentle and refined she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she embraces and her son and daughter

⁵⁷ the afterbirth that comes from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within your gates.

⁵⁸ If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God—

⁵⁹ He will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary disasters, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses.

⁶⁰ He will afflict you again with all the diseases you dreaded in Egypt, and they will cling to you.

⁶¹ The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and plague not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.

⁶² You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left few in number, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.

⁶³ Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and multiply, so also it will please Him to annihilate you and destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

⁶⁴ Then the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

⁶⁵ Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul.

⁶⁶ So your life will hang in doubt before you, and you will be afraid night and day, never certain of survival.

⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see.

⁶⁸ The LORD will return you to Egypt in ships by a route that I said you should never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”