Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Blessed in the City and in the Field
Deuteronomy 28:1-14
1 It shall happen, if you shall listen diligently to Yahweh your God’s voice, to observe to do all his commandments which I command you today, that Yahweh your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. · WEB
The blessings cover every place a person can be and everything a household can produce, and they are described as pursuing the obedient.
The chapter opens with a condition and a promise, and the promise is put in an unexpected way. All these blessings will come upon you, and overtake you, if you listen Deuteronomy 28:2.
Overtake is a hunting word. It is used later in this same chapter of the curses pursuing a man until he perishes Deuteronomy 28:45. Here the same verb describes good coming after somebody and catching him — a man walking through his life with blessings gaining on him from behind.
The list that follows is built to be exhaustive rather than specific.
You shall be blessed in the city, and you shall be blessed in the field Deuteronomy 28:3 — the two places a person can be. Then the produce: children, crops, herds, flocks Deuteronomy 28:4. Then your basket and your kneading trough Deuteronomy 28:5 — the container things arrive in and the bowl they are prepared in, which is the whole of a household's food economy in two objects. Then blessed when you come in, and you shall be blessed when you go out Deuteronomy 28:6 — every arrival and every departure.
Four categories covering place, produce, provision and movement. Nothing is left outside them, and the same four are about to be repeated word for word with the verb reversed Deuteronomy 28:16–19.
The specific promises are ordinary and agricultural. Enemies who come out against you one way, and will flee before you seven ways Deuteronomy 28:7. Full barns. Rain in its season from his good treasure in the sky Deuteronomy 28:12 — the storehouse image belongs to the country described earlier, which drinks water from the sky rather than a river Deuteronomy 11:11.
And the standing they are promised is not private. All the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by Yahweh's name Deuteronomy 28:10. The blessing is public and it is meant to be read by outsiders, which is what the earlier claim about the law's visible wisdom expected Deuteronomy 4:6.
The summary image is the head, and not the tail Deuteronomy 28:13, and the condition is attached to it in the same breath.
What none of this offers is exemption from work. The blessings are on barns, fields, flocks and the work of the hands — a farming life, blessed, rather than a life without farming.
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