God’s Threat 5

If you refuse to obey all the terms of this law that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the LORD your God, then the LORD will overwhelm both you and your children with indescribable plagues.  These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick.  He will bring against you all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and they will claim you.  The LORD will bring against you every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.  Though you are as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the LORD your God.  “Just as the LORD has found great pleasure in helping you to prosper and multiply, the LORD will find pleasure in destroying you, until you disappear from the land you are about to enter and occupy.  For the LORD will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone!  There among those nations you will find no place of security and rest. And the LORD will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair.  Your lives will hang in doubt. You will live night and day in fear, with no reason to believe that you will see the morning light.  In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ You will say this because of your terror at the awesome horrors you see around you.  Then the LORD will send you back to Egypt in ships, a journey I promised you would never again make.  There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will want to buy you.  (Deuteronomy 28:58-68 NLT)