Deuteronomy 28:49

Hebrew Bible

47 “Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth as the eagle swoops down50, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young.

Jeremiah 5:15

Hebrew Bible

14 Because of that, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies said to me: “Because these people have spoken like this, I will make the words that I put in your mouth like fire. And I will make this people like wood, which the fiery judgments you speak will burn up.” 15 The Lord says, “Listen, nation of Israel! I am about to bring a nation from far away to attack you. It will be a nation that was founded long ago and has lasted for a long time. It will be a nation whose language you will not know. Its people will speak words that you will not be able to understand. 16 All its soldiers are strong and mighty. Their arrows will send you to your grave.

 Notes and References

"... Deuteronomy 28 is pronounced by Moses and contains ‘blessings’ (v2) and ‘curses’ (v15), the respective sections being v1–14 and 15–68. Once again, and even more than in Leviticus 26, the section mentioning the dire consequences of disobedience is larger by far, and it forms the conclusion – differing from Leviticus 26, where v39–45 allow us to surmise a positive outcome. As in the case of Leviticus 26, Jeremiah takes up more the punitive part of Deuteronomy 28, and much more intensively. In fact, there is no other book of the Bible that uses Deuteronomy 28 more than Jeremiah does. Deuteronomy is the scroll upon which Jeremiah relies the most, and there is no chapter of Deuteronomy that serves more as a source for Jeremiah than 28. All these aspects underline the importance of Deuteronomy’s curses for the understanding of Jeremiah ..."

Fisher, S.J. The Book of Jeremiah: Realisation of Threats of the Torah – and also of Promises? (pp. 1-9) Verbum et Ecclesia 40(1), 2019

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