Year 7, Day 179: Deuteronomy 28

Theological Commentary: Click Here

I’ll never forget one of the first lessons that I learned in my first Old Testament class in seminary.  My professor, Dr. Brooks Schramm, told us that when it comes to blessings and curses, the blessings section is always dwarfed by the curses section.  I think that there are some very good reasons for that.

As we look at this chapter, we do notice that the blessings section is fairly small.  Why can it be so small?  Does God really just enjoy cursing people more than He enjoys blessing them?  The answer, obviously, is no.  The reason that the blessings section can be so small is because human beings who are doing the right things in life don’t need to be told why they should be doing them!  If I have it in my head that I don’t want to lie, cheat, steal, or have sex with someone who isn’t my wife then I don’t need to be told why I don’t want to do those things.  I’ve already figured out my life is better when I don’t do them, so consequences aren’t necessary!  Instead, God can simply tell us that we will reap the fruit of our decisions in every facet of our life.

As we look at the curses section, we can understand why it is so long.  The curses section is written to warn people who are doing – or more importantly, who are contemplating doing – things that are contrary to God.  These people need to be told that such behavior is wrong.  They need to be told why it is wrong.  They need to be told how their life will be affected by doing such things.  It takes time to develop the ethics, the reason for the ethics, and the consequences in life for not having ethics.  It is necessary to do, but it takes time to develop all of that thought.

Before I leave this passage, I want to speak specifically about the Hebrew people and then broaden that out to a generalized perspective.  When we read Deuteronomy 28, we do get a sense that this chapter is prophetic in what will happen to the Hebrew people.  They do fall away.  They do get cursed with other nations, disease, famine, and the other things mentioned here.  Eventually, they do get plucked from the land by Assyria and Babylon and escorted away into slavery.  All of the promised laid out in this chapter do in fact come true.

I think this is a witness to all of human culture.  As human beings, our pattern is to forge a nation.  Out of that forging comes several generations of people with strong drive, strong ethic, and good morality.  However, the further we get away from that forging event, the further we also get from our ethics and morality.  Culture degrades into moral relativism.  People do what seems best in their own hearts, not what is best.  The cultures falters.  If it doesn’t correct itself, it fails and someone comes in to take over.

We can see this pattern all over the globe.  Obviously, the Hebrew people lived this out.  So did every dynasty in Egypt.  So did the Babylonians and Assyrians.  So did the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans.  So did all of the dynasties in China.  So did all of the dynasties in India.  The Holy Roman Empire did this.  The Ottoman Empire did this.  The British Empire has gone through many cycles of this.  I believe that the United States is going through a similar cycle.

The point to remember in all of this is that the more cultural relativism pervades – people doing what is right in their own eyes instead of adhering to a higher moral and ethical standard – the further we get into the faltering stage of a culture and the closer we get to sheer and utter failure.  I don’t believe we are there yet, but I don’t think one has to look too far in the daily news to see signs of cultural faltering occurring all around.

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