Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Because You Did Not Serve Him with Joy
Deuteronomy 28:47-68
47 Because you didn’t serve Yahweh your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; · WEB
The reason given for the whole disaster is that obedience was joyless in a time of plenty, and the chapter ends with a return to Egypt nobody will buy.
The most surprising verse in the chapter is the one that explains it.
Because you didn't serve Yahweh your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; therefore you will serve your enemies Deuteronomy 28:47–48.
The charge is not that they stopped serving. It is that they served without gladness while they had everything. Grudging obedience in a time of plenty is named as the thing that brought it all down, and the penalty is stated as a substitution of masters: service without joy is replaced by service in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in lack of all things.
The invader is described without being named: a nation from far off, as the eagle flies, whose language they will not understand, of fierce facial expressions, with no respect for the old or pity for the young Deuteronomy 28:49–50.
The siege that follows produces the passage that is hardest to read in the whole book, in which starvation drives parents to eat their children Deuteronomy 28:53–57. The description is deliberate about who it happens to — the man who is tender among you, and very delicate, and the tender and delicate woman... who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground.
The refined are named because the horror is that a siege reduces everyone to the same condition. The text does not present this as a punishment God inflicts directly. It is what people do to each other inside a walled city with no food, and it happened in the history that followed 2 Kings 6:28–29.
The closing verses widen from siege to scattering. Yahweh will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end Deuteronomy 28:64, with no rest for the sole of your foot, a trembling heart, and a life that will hang in doubt before you Deuteronomy 28:65–66.
The picture of that fear is domestic and exact: in the morning you will say, 'I wish it were evening!' and at evening you will say, 'I wish it were morning!' Deuteronomy 28:67. Dread that has no content and no end, only a wish for whichever part of the day it is not.
And the last verse is the bleakest sentence in the book. They will be brought back to Egypt with ships, offered for sale as slaves, and nobody will buy you Deuteronomy 28:68.
The exodus run backward, by sea, ending in a market where they are not even worth purchasing. The book has spent twenty-eight chapters saying remember that you were a slave in Egypt. This is what forgetting comes to.
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