Study Desk

Your ox will be put to death before your eyes, but its flesh will not be your food: your ass will be violently taken away before your face, and will not be given back to you: your sheep will be given to your haters, and there will be no saviour for you.

Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, and your eyes will be wasted away with looking and weeping for them all the day: and you will have no power to do anything.

The fruit of your land and all the work of your hands will be food for a nation which is strange to you and to your fathers; you will only be crushed down and kept under for ever:

You will take much seed out into the field, and get little in; for the locust will get it.

You will put in vines and take care of them, but you will get no wine or grapes from them; for they will be food for worms.

Your land will be full of olive-trees, but there will be no oil for the comfort of your body; for your olive-tree will give no fruit.

You will have sons and daughters, but they will not be yours; for they will go away prisoners into a strange land.

These things will come on you and on your seed, to be a sign and a wonder for ever;

For this cause you will become servants to those whom the Lord your God will send against you, without food and drink and clothing, and in need of all things: and he will put a yoke of iron on your neck till he has put an end to you.

A hard-faced nation, who will have no respect for the old or mercy for the young:

And to her baby newly come to birth, and to the children of her body; for having no other food, she will make a meal of them secretly, because of her bitter need and the cruel grip of your haters on all your towns.

And even among these nations there will be no peace for you, and no rest for your feet: but the Lord will give you there a shaking heart and wasting eyes and weariness of soul:

And the Lord will take you back to Egypt again in ships, by the way of which I said to you, You will never see it again: there you will be offering yourselves as men-servants and women-servants to your haters for a price, and no man will take you.

For forty years I have been your guide through the waste land: your clothing has not become old on your backs, or your shoes on your feet.

And we took their land and gave it to the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, for their heritage.

So keep the words of this agreement and do them, so that it may be well for you in everything you do.

And your little ones, your wives, and the men of other lands who are with you in your tents, down to the wood-cutter and the servant who gets water for you:

(For you have in mind how we were living in the land of Egypt; and how we came through all the nations which were on your way;

The Lord will have no mercy on him, but the wrath of the Lord will be burning against that man, and all the curses recorded in this book will be waiting for him, and the Lord will take away his name completely from the earth.

He will be marked out by the Lord, from all the tribes of Israel, for an evil fate, in keeping with all the curses of the agreement recorded in this book of the law.