Deuteronomy 28:30

Hebrew Bible

29 You will feel your way along at noon like the blind person does in darkness and you will not succeed in anything you do; you will be constantly oppressed and continually robbed, with no one to save you. 30 You will be engaged to a woman, and another man will rape her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes, but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies, and there will be no one to save you. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it.

1 Enoch 103:11

Pseudepigrapha

10 And we have been destroyed and have not found any to help us even with a word: We have been tortured ⌈and destroyed⌉, and not hoped to see life from day to day. 11 We hoped to be the head and have become the tail: We have toiled laboriously and had no satisfaction in our toil; And we have become the food of the sinners and the unrighteous, And they have laid their yoke heavily upon us. 12 They have had dominion over us that hated us †and smote us; And to those that hated us† we have bowed our necks But they pitied us not.

 Notes and References

"... After Enoch has told the sinners what their true lot is (being led to Sheol, to darkness, a snare and a flaming fire; 103:7-8), perhaps the clearest profile of the righteous is given. Enoch tells the sinners to not despair over their lot in life, and does so by quoting a righteous person lamenting his distress. Nickelsburg says that “perhaps no other passage in our literature describes the circumstance that give rise to apocalyptic theology with such poignancy and eloquence.” By drawing on vocabulary and phrases from Deuteronomy 28, the irony of suffering the curses of covenant despite not breaking it are obvious. Perhaps nothing exhibits this irony than the exclamation: “We had hoped to become the head and become the tail” (1 Enoch 103:11; compare Deuteronomy 28:13, 44). The righteous are thus oppressed by the wealthy, and when they try to complain to the rulers of the land, they took the sinners’ side instead (103:14-15). Nickelsburg notes, however, that the righteous are never called “poor” and “lowly” only once. It is the social injustice of the situation that is emphasized, more than the social statuses of the groups involved ..."

Berntsson, Peter The First and the Last: Eschatological Reversal in 1 Enoch and the Gospel of Luke (p. 23) Uppsala University, 2016

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