Deuteronomy

When was the last time you poked around in this, the fifth book of the Bible? I thought so. Here, many laws and rules and ways and means are laid out for the Israelites by God. It can be kind of slow because God always repeats himself several times when talking about important things. "Do ABC like XYZ. In the way of XYZ, do ABC. ABC shall be done by XYZ." I was just continuing my reading of Deuteronomy while eating breakfast this morning, and I was astonished what I read - THE GREATEST, MOST ELABORATE THREAT OF ALL TIME!

At the end of chapter 26, God's commands are wrapping up. In chapter 27, we hear about building an altar and people are cursed if they do things against God. But chapter 28 is the best.

It starts off with ways you'll be blessed for obeying God, then goes into ways you'll be cursed if you disobey God. Verses 58-59 and 62 summarize it well:

58 If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then the LORD will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses....62 Then you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, because you did not obey the LORD your God.

Basically, you screw up and God destroys you. But like I said, this is only a nice summary of the wrath God will bring down upon them if they don't obey his commands. It starts back in verse 15 and continues all the way through the last verse of the chapter! That's 54 verses! It's like a page and a half in my Bible! There are a couple of places (like v58-62) where it looks like God's done threatening them, but then he picks right back up one or two verses later. It's fantastic.

I love a good threat.