Verse 27
"And Jehovah will smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. Jehovah will smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart; and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and robbed alway, and there shall be none to save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build a house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shall not use the fruit thereof. Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: thine ass shall be violently taken away from before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to save thee. Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people; and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day: there shall be naught in the power of thy hand. The fruit of thy ground, and all thy labors, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway; so that thou shalt be mad for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. And Jehovah will smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore boil, whereof thou canst not be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the crown of thy head. Jehovah will bring thee, and thy king whom thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation that thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone. And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all the peoples whither Jehovah shall lead thee away."
The destruction of Israel as a kingdom is clearly prophesied here. It is not necessary to suppose that this prophecy was written at a time after one of the kingdoms of Israel, or both of them, had been removed into captivity. Long before either the northern or southern kingdom had been removed by captivity, the prophet Amos had written: "Behold the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth" (Amos 9:8). The monarchy of Israel was itself an affront unto God and represented the rebellion of Israel against God.
Kline and others pointed out the chiastic arrangement in this paragraph, a rhetorical sequence featuring a contrast by parallelism in reverse order. Thus, we have:
(a) incurable disease (Deuteronomy 28:37);
(b) madness (Deuteronomy 28:28);
(c) continual oppression (Deuteronomy 28:29);
(d) frustration (Deuteronomy 28:30-32);
(c) continual oppression (Deuteronomy 28:33);
(b) madness (Deuteronomy 28:34); and
(a) incurable disease (Deuteronomy 28:25).[5]
Such minute attention to arrangement and detail indicates the care and forethought which lie behind every paragraph in the Word of God.
It would appear that many of the disasters predicted in Deuteronomy 28:30-34, "were the consequence of defeat in war and oppression by foreign powers."[6] An example of the historical fulfillment of this is found in Judges 6:3-6.
THIRD DENUNCIATION
Summary: "This series affects every kind of labor and enterprise until it has accomplished the total ruin of the nation, and its subjection to its enemies."[7]
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